Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers we love and cherish! Thank you, Pop-pop Mietling, Gramps Babikow, Pa-pa Schultz, and Grandpa Mietling, for all your love and support!

Sophia has been growing so quickly lately. It is remarkable! She has gotten so tall and is looking more and more like a little girl. She now loves to close doors. Every door in the house will be closed if it is in her power to do so. Today we went to Best Buy to explore and run around a large, air-conditioned space; Sophia was enamored with the blue and yellow balloons. She easily procured one with her beautiful smile, bouncing curls, and chubby, outstretched arms! We now have a yellow balloon floating in the dining room, ready for more play tomorrow.

Our little girl is also really exercising her speech. She repeats a lot of what we say and is moving into full sentences (though with the little words missing). She loves Veggie Tales and Mary Poppins and is getting very good at singing the songs, in particular Cheeseburger (from the Silly Songs collection) and Chim Chiminy (from Mary Poppins). She also imitates Dick Van Dyke's dancing which is hilarious. So much joy and laughter to be had as a father and a mother. Thank you, God, for this wonderful blessing!

We recently took a short vacation to Chattanooga for an overnight. We had such a wonderful time, though interspersed with much rain. Sophia had a blast as she got soaked in a downpour and then later when she played in the memorial to the Trail of Tears on the riverfront in Chattanooga. It was a really fun family vacation with beautiful views and really good coffee.