This month has been kinda crazy. It started out fairly cool, then we had about a week or so of horribly hot and muggy weather, which doesn't work so well in our house if it doesn't cool down at night, and now we're finishing off with some cooler weather, which is a total relief. I've been told that miserable weather is what works best for corn to grow, so somebody was glad and enjoying it. :) Anyway, we've been working really hard in our garden all month; it looks pretty good and we are already harvesting salad greens, more than we can even eat. So many people have birthdays this month, so if we didn't manage to tell you happy birthday, we are sorry and meant to. It seems like life just keeps passing us by too fast.
Because Mandy didn't have to take her Praxis II again, we were able to go up to Appleton and visit Grandma Marx and other family for a day. We spent some brief, but cherished time, with both Leo and Gavin's families, allowing Willow to see all her Kuck cousins at one time for once. We had a wonderful Father's Day, enjoying some time with Mandy's dad. We are finishing out the month very busy. We witnessed the marriage of Chad and Laura on Saturday the 27th of June. We were able to go strawberry picking at Kirschbaum's, which has become a great tradition in our family. And now we are focusing on packing for our trip out to California, which should be very awesome.
Willow has continued to grow, physically and otherwise, into a very vibrant little girl. Her favorite phrase right now is "silly Willow" with an attitude I can't duplicate here. She has been enjoying playing with her airplane, especially with lots of passengers and her chicken driving. She is really getting into pretend play and copying others actions and words. She especially likes to walk around the house having animated phone conversations with our stereo remote, which is clearly really a phone.
We celebrated Mother's Day in May, but a mother is always a mother. I really am blessed to have a great mother and grandmother that help me be a better mother to Willow. I hope I can teach her to be a great person and mother someday.
Mandy was able to do several subbing jobs in May, since she no longer had classes. Some of the experiences were frustrating, while others were awesome. However, adding several days of subbing to working on the weekend, starts to feel like working constantly; luckily a reprieve came in June.
We started really planting seeds and plants in our garden. It will be a work in progress for awhile, but once we got the fence up, it started to look more like the dream garden in our mind. Hopefully next year will be even better.
We've managed to make it to the farmer's market a few times this year. We always enjoy using fresh produce, instead of processed/canned foods.
In the last week of May, I finally got my Praxis II scores. I was so relieved that I did indeed pass, and completely suprised when I actually aced the test and was sent a certificate of excellence from ETS.
On May 30th, we managed to have a real family night, which we haven't had time for in awhile. It was simple, with a pizza dinner and movie, but it was really nice to focus on just family for a few hours.
We are looking forward to Andrea finally coming to live with us. We spent a night setting up her bedroom and hope she will love it here. Willow has been trying out her bed and wishes it was hers. It will be great to include her in our family life.
Willow continues to grow. She is really getting into pretend play, making pretend eggs and eating them, taking care of her baby dolls, playing with her stuffed puppy dog, and having tons of fake phone conversations with the stereo remote. She loves trying to unlock our doors with keys, never the right ones. I think she has grown several inches since April, which seems like a lot. She is 22 months old on June 10th, and time is going so fast.
On May 31st, we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Dorothy and Bob were nice enough to take care of Willow for the afternoon and night, though it was a bit weird to be just us. We had a wonderful day, eating ice cream, going out for dinner, and just spending some time reminiscing about our wonderful life so far. We have definitely had a great six years, and look forward to our future.
