January is just flying by. Things are going pretty well here. You can tell that we are a little behind from Christmas because we still have our little Christmas tree up, and we are the only house on the block who still has Christmas lights hanging in the front yard. It has been such a mild winter so far you can't even blame it on the weather. Sad.

So things that are new: Soren started last week teaching as an adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College NOVA. He is teaching an organic chemistry class on Saturday mornings. His first class was last week and he said he had about 20 students in his class. The department chair said that most of the students are taking his class, with plans to go into the health profession (pharm, med school or dentistry). I never had to take ochem to get into nursing school but I hear that it is not walk in the park. Soren has been working really hard in the last couple of weeks to iron out his lessons plans and crunch the numbers to show some real life examples of how ochem is useful. He bought a chemical model set right around christmas that you can made models of the chemical structure of things. When he opened it we came to two conclusions, first that emily probably shouldn't get ahold of it or she would scatter it around the house. and second I hope that by the time emily goes into kindergarten not only will she be able to spell water but she will also be able to show us the chemical structure. I am hoping that she takes after Soren in the science department.

Emily is doing really well. She started nursery at church! hurray! which means I can go to sunday school and Relief Society again. plus she gets to spend 2 hours on sunday playing with toys with kids her own age. She is getting better at talking and now says hi and bye bye. it is funny when you go in to get her in the morning she says hi and when you put her in bed at night usually she says bye bye when you shut the door. I know I have said this before but it is funny to see them as little people.

Things with me are pretty standard, just trying to keep up with Soren and Emily. I did venture into new territory the other day and I made turkey Empanadas. I will be the first to say that I am very much a gringo and I have never had an empanada before but the ones I made were pretty tasty. I really like the combination of rasins and olives which sounds strange but it was good.

Happy January!