Happy New Year!  We spent New Year's at home and watched Little Women with Joie.  She learned that she was names after Josephine March and was glued to the movie for the first half.  After that she lost interest of course,  but when the movie was over she kept saying Josephine again again!  It's cool we can watch movies like that and have her interested still,  so we're not always watching kids movies.  We hoped to see the Northern Lights as our fireworks but we missed them but 15min we think. We watch the solar weather online and try to catch them in our area.  We were going to go outside and kiss at midnight because we had our first kiss on New Years at midnight in a bathroom at a church building New Year's dance.  But since our bathroom is outside now and it was -18 F ourside we decided it would ruin the original kiss if we tried to recreate it and we went to bed to keep warm.

Temperatures have gone all over the place and we've had weather from everywhere too.  We've had blizzards and cold temperatures to clear skys and even colder temperatures,  to days like today with it at 30 F and just overcast with a chance of snow, or rain maybe, who knows?  With the temperatures going up and down so much 30 F feels like summer and I've been going out in a t shirt and shorts! 

The kids are doing great and so is Zach, I never really talk about him but he is doing great.  He loves his job and is in great shape from all this shoveling and chopping wood.  We just weighed ourselves last sunday and he is the same weight he was in highschool!  I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight and haven't even been trying!  So now I'm starting to try to get in shape just to see how good I can be.  The kids help with that.  I do leg lifts with Fox and work my arms with Joie.  Still working on the sit ups...don't happen often. 

So yeah, the kids are doing great.  Fox is doing a mini pushup and can support his weight on his legs.  He goes in his bouncer alot and loves it.  He's very vocal and trys to keep up with his sister.  He never crys unless something is really wrong and gets along great with his sister.  In this picture she was holding him and saying smile baby smile as Zach tried to take a picture of them.  She smiled real big and tried to get him to too.  His eyes are still dark but his hair is starting to lighten on top.  We're excited to see what he looks like in a year.  Joie  is talking in mini sentences and can use big words like durable.  She's really good at communicating what she wants and we're grateful to have such a smart lil girl.  She loves her books and we read alot.  She can't get enough of the snow and we have to try to keep her inside when it's so far below 0.  She got some wind burn on her cheeks from sledding in the super cold weather.  Once she and Zach went down the hill and got too much speed and did a backflip and got quite a bit of air.  They landed on Zach's neck and had snow all over them.  Zach thought Joie would get upset but she just licked the snow off her lips and said "Yummy snow!".  Then she played peek a boo with her hat while Zach rushed her inside cause he was cold too.  Then she started to cry cause she didn't want to go inside yet.  She's meant to be an alaska girl.

Our branch is really growing with another family coming here in 2 weeks!  They are a couple our age with a 5 month old girl.  Now we have 3 babys in the branch and one toddler Joie and 2 primary kids.  We actually have 2 toddlers and 5 primary kids but one family hasn't been able to make it to church in a while.   It was nice to have the Lehman's son and his family here for the holidays.  Joie loved having someone her age to play with at church and we liked hanging out with them too.

 Last year was eventful and had alot of great memories.  The New Year has begun and we're excited to see what this year has to bring!