I know that I am partial because they are my nephews, but aren't they the cutest?!
Here is a bathtime pic of Eric (2) and his 1 month old baby brother Tommy.....aaaaaaaaawwwwwww. Again we would like to say welcome to the world Thomas Dawson and we love you ALL as big as the world!

Life in Alaska has warmed up considerably, the last few days have been in the mid 40's which as you can guess has made things pretty sloppy around town. Alot of our snow has melted but there's still a could 2 feet on the ground. Bret went back to the slope today, but we had a great 2 weeks of family time. Work is still busy, I start my operational excellence project manager training on Monday. I have 5 days of class, then 3 more in March and 4 in April...hopefully by then I will know what I'm doing and will have impressed them enough to hire me. Keep your fingers and toes crossed. Next week will be quite hectic as we are actually working on a project while we go to class, so it will be alot of long days. It will be well worth the effort though and I really love this kind of work.

Lee is doing really well in school and has found an adventure series of books that he really likes. He's read about 10 of them and has got to the point that he can read one of them every 2 days....wow...it's very cool. He has also taken up a recent interest in WW1 and WW2. He has been checking books out of the library and watching alot of shows on the history, he certainly knows more than I at this point. It is amazing to watch really, his mind is like a huge sponge and he can tell you the blow by blow events of just about any major battle. For those of you who know Bret well, you can just imagine how the 2 of them will discuss the wars and battles at great length. They've even got several of the battles mapped out on one of their PS2 games and they can play out the whole seen over, and over again. Not really my cup of tea, but it's great to watch the two of them together, not to mention see Lee so passionate about a topic that he searches it out and studies it all on his own. Very cool.

While Bret was home he did the state part of his CDL and now has his official liscence...be afraid....be very afraid! LOL Otherwise life has just been bumping along as usual. It's tax time so we're busy gathering all of our lovely w2's and trying to guess how much we'll get back....lol....

We hope this finds you all well, I haven't been as up to date on this as usual but I knew I wouldn't get to it at all next week so I wanted to check in and keep everyone posted. We're gaining over 5 min a day of sunlight right now and it is amazingly beautiful as always. Bret and I were talking the other day, and it's hard at this point to imagine living anywhere else. A year and a half later, we still strongly believe that this was the best decision we've made thus far. Lee has completely blossomed here, Bret has a job that has huge long term potential, and I'm working towards one of the biggest and exciting career steps I could ever make. If you would have asked us a year ago....we never would have dreamed that we would be where we are. It has been a long and arduous road, but we finally feel like we're making headway and we really would like to thank EVERYONE who has supported us in soooooo many ways, through this adventure. When we first arrived things got pretty icky, but we stuck by it and are on the up swing now.

Thank you sooo much to our parents first and foremost, and also to all our friends and family. It seems in this day and age that we don't say it enough but we LOVE AND CHERISH all of you, and very much appreciate all of your love and support.

TAKE GOOD GOOD CARE!

Bret, Jan, and Lee :)