Well, we’ve been making good progress on having our next home built.  As you may already know, we plan on moving next summer, but we’re staying in town, only going a few miles from where we are now.  Most of our home plans are custom, meaning that we got to choose the size, locations, etc. of the rooms, and they had to be drafted up, rather than us having chosen one of the pre-planned models that the homebuilder typically builds.  It’s been a fun, exciting process, with many ups & downs, so far, but all toward the progress of a really great end-product, in our eyes!  Just today, we signed the initial documents & put a down-payment on the building.  We had a lot of reading to do, prior to that, to make sure everything was worded correctly & we were getting exactly what we wanted, but it was worth every minute!  We met with our contact & after signing the papers, went out to dinner to celebrate.  The home shouldn’t be entirely complete & ready to be moved into until sometime late next Spring/early next Summer, but we planned that schedule, as well.  The next meeting will be to pick out materials/colors from their design showcase, which should be fun!  We’re learning a lot in the process, and dealing well with all the decision-making, so far.  Here’s hoping for the best, throughout!

Last week, I wrote about the crazy heat we’ve been having, because it was really hot outside, here in our town.  Well, this week we got the relief that we needed, in the form of several rainstorms & thundershowers.  They have been happening mostly during the night, which is nice because our family are all good sleepers & the rain helps lull us & keeps us in that blissful, dreamy state.  The girls have been sleeping in longer in the morning & giving Jeremy & I little breaks from having to get up too early, which has been nice.  The local temperatures have also dropped significantly, making it feel like fall is just around the corner – it’s been in the 70s & 80s for the past few days & we’ve really been enjoying it!  Although the skies have been somewhat overcast, that doesn’t bring us down a bit!  We hope it continues, although knowing the “normal” weather patterns here (if you can call them that), we are probably in for at least one more blast of summer heat, before things settle down & the leaves start changing…

We don’t know exactly how bad the heat has been for everyone around the world this summer, but we’ve been experiencing pretty high temperatures, lately.  The past week or so, our local weather has been reporting highs of between 102 & 106 degrees Fahrenheit.  Although it’s really hot, we thankfully haven’t been affected too badly – no droughts, or anything like that.  We’ve just been staying indoors, for the most part; although our poor air conditioner has a hard time keeping up, sometimes, it’s still cooler than being out in the blistering sun!  We hope everyone else is able to keep cool & enjoy the last few remaining weeks of summer & that we get all get a break from these hot days, soon.