It has been so long since I have written on this website that I am not sure where to start!!  Today is the first day of summer and it is already hot here in northern Texas.  It seems like an oxymoron to call it ‘Northern’ Texas.  Northern to me sounds cold...that’s not the case here.  We have reached well over 100 degrees somedays and my electric bill has already been over $200 and we haven’t even made it to July yet!  Wowzers!!!  On a positive note - we are all doing great.

Stevie is growing like a weed and changing not every day but it seems like every hour.  It’s truly amazing to see how much she takes in, learns, and then repeats.  In the last blog, I talked about her taking her first steps and now she is running!  She is starting to say new words all the time and her vocabulary consists of (but not limited to) daddy, mama, bubble, yea, uh oh, kitty, dog, bear, duck, cow, moo, book, baby, doll, peas, and many others.  Though not all of them sound perfect, we know what she means most of the time when she says these words.  She also will copy almost any activity you do.  She loves to dance to music and she has some moves!!  She also loves watching cartoons (Nick jr. is her favorite) but we keep these to a minimum.  We don’t want her to be hooked on TV at such a young age.  Stevie has discovered hot wheel cars and loves to make the vroom sound while pushing them around.  I think Steven is thrilled that she likes to play cars!!  My parents finally have their pool up and running so we have already been swimming several times.  Stevie LOVES the water.  It’s hard to keep her out of it actually!  She even loves playing in the sprinkler in the front yard (you can see some pictures of this in the 12-18 months folder.)  Stevie amazes us everyday and she is such a joy in our life.  Steven and I sometimes ask each other what we did with all of our time before she came along and we can’t quite figure it out!!

Most all of our time is consumed with Stevie, but we also have a few other things going on.  We started remodelling our kitchen about two months ago.  It is nearing completion and we can’t wait for it to be finished!!!  My Dad installed all of the new cabinets and we had the countertop installed about two weeks ago.  All we have left is the backsplash and several small items.  Picking out the tile for the backsplash was the hardest decision to make but we finally found what we wanted and ordered it from a company online (after looking...in the heat...at several other places.)  We are just happy that it is almost finished and we won’t have to spend every weekend on it anymore!!!!

We travelled to Seattle in May for my brother’s wedding.  We had an amazing time.  We did lots of sightseeing and had a fabulous time at the wedding.  It was sad to leave because I don’t get to see Troy very often.  He and Heidi will be coming to Texas in October though - woohoo!!!!

I think that updates the major things in our lives.  No one wants to read about the boring piddly stuff!!!  We hope everyone is doing well and if we haven’t seen you in awhile, we hope to soon!