Hi cheezdoodle,
did you trim the root ball?

Eric

Hi Eric,
When I brought them both inside, back in September, I pruned and trimmed back the root ball then re-potted in new soil. They are each in a very small container.. about 4-6 cups.

Do you have any pictures I'd like to see them?
It's fine it they grow their leaves you just want to make sure you pick off all the flowers/buds asap so when you set them back out in the spring you will have a nice grand finale when it's time with loads of fruit instead of just a few. That's the general idea.

Eric

I'd say do whatever looks / feels right. In my experience, more is not necessarily better. Maybe I don't harden off gradually enough, but, I find that by the time they're really going in the late Spring / Early Summer, all the leaves it had when inside have been dropped and new ones have taken their place.

Pics might help here.

cheezdoodle, FWIW, I pulled my plants in late September last year, pruned the limbs and root ball and repotted. Like you, I have trimmed them back 2-3 times since then an from this point on, I plan on letting them go until I get them back outside. I will also trim any pods that develop. I probably wont bother trimming buds or blooms, only if a pod sets.
Bruce

Here's the photos of them..
Not sure when but this first one was probably a few weeks after taking them inside:

This next one was just taken a few minutes ago:

I guess my biggest concern is having the new stems become strong enough to support peppers so should I just leave them be now and stop pruning? I had been cutting back all the new growth.

Now's the time when you can determine how bushy you would like your plants to be or just let them be.
You can play around with them a little bit and trim just above a top node and that stem will send out many new shoots and trim them and so on till you have a nice big bushy plant. However when you do this method you may have to stake the plant because it will be top heavy but you will get so much more fruit from it.
If you are going to do this I still would recommend pulling those buds off so the plants can focus on leaf and stem production.

Eric

I would maybe trim the one on the left one more time at the points I circled in yellow below...just above the node. The one on the right looks good and I would let it go. Trimming the buds wouldn't hurt but I personally wouldn't worry too much about them unless they set fruit and then I would definitely trim them.