Hello New Year!!!

Sorry this is a bit late, as usual. But hay! At least I'm doing it..so that's good.

I..reeally love Rexburg. It reminds me of home, a bit bigger than North Pole, but just as much snow.. and a little bit warmer ;). Not quite as pretty as Alaska, but I'll take it over Texas. I'm even learning (and kind of being forced as I am Jonathan's personal unpaid taxi haha) to drive the stick and I drop him off and pick him up from school almost every day. I'm not as afraid to drive here since there are less drivers. I just hate the hills cause I'm afraid when I put the car in gear I'm going to roll back into somebody behind me! And that scares me. Yoikes!... and sadly, I stall the car just about every day. One day I'll get better, I promise.

We spent Christmas in Colorado with Jonathan's sister, and his family drove up from Texas unexpectedly as well, so that was cool. Denver sure is nice. It was a bit different than I would have celebrated Christmas (we focused on Call of Duty..more than Christ :{ ) There's always next year though. I definitely miss spending it with my family.. and it just wasn't quite the same with no snow this time.

After we left we made our way to Salt Lake City to see Temple Square. The next day we traveled to Payson to see my grandparents and it was AWESOME! They miss me so much and we could tell they didn't want to see us leave. Even Jonathan really loved being there. My grandparents shared a lot of stories with us, like when they served their mission in Norway (where my grandma grew up) and my grandpa in his old state just has a super funny sense of humor! Always stealing the sweets while my grandma wasn't looking. So funny. It made me sad we didn't get to be there for very long. But we told them we'd be back during a small school break, or during spring break. Can't wait.

Temple Square was beautiful, of course. We first watched the new Joseph Smith movie, the Prophet of the Restoration. That was great. We got to see Rose Hirt!.. I mean, Sister Hirt! there :) AND out of nowhere did I expect to see JESA!!!! That was soo awesome. So many people from Alaska that I knew. Felt good to see familiar faces.

Next we spent the day and a half in Logan with Jonathan's companion, Corey ,and that was cool. His dad owns the Dominos so he got us free pizza :) and we went to the USU basketball game. Then we played a game called Telestrations. It's kinda like the gossip game telephone, but instead you draw and pass it to the left and they try to guess it, and then the next left player tries to draw what they guessed, and you see how close (or very far away) they got to the original thought. Haha sooo fun. I wanna get that game! When we got to Rexburg we stayed with Kaitlin and Brandon and played Wii NBA Jam and I whooped the boys' butt with my computer! 3 games in a row! Soo funny.

Annnd that's about the extent of our vacation. A LOT of driving to get here. But I'm glad.

It's been a bit hard here having no furniture especially with my back on the floor each night (well, I guess I'm trying to sleep on my side so it's better for the baby). Our good friends Gustav and Andrea let us borrow their extra kitchen table and then bought us a blowup mattress, so that was VERY kind of them! I'm so thankful! (now we just need to get a pump that plugs into the wall..cause when the boys went shopping..they accidentally got a car adapter plug-in lol.. great for camping, not so great for apartment complexes!) So we shall see how we get that thing pumped up! But I am grateful otherwise..

And SOO grateful for all the people who continually pray for us (we definitely need it), all the people who have supported us in any way - by encouragement, monetary items or anything! It has so been gratefully appreciated. We couldn't have gotten this far without the help. THANK YOU!

Welp, just wanted to kinda keep people updated. Doing a rather lousy job, but I should be getting better now that our new apt has internet. Woohoo! :)

Love and miss my friends and family all around the world. <3

Anna