January-April
Happy (belated) New Year's to everyone from the Truax Family! Hope everyone is having a great Spring and winding down on the school year. 

Steve survived the cuts at FedEx and Leslie is busy with her work in B2B insurance sales. Amelia is doing great and will be concluding pre-K at the end of May. She'll begin kindergarten at Oakland Elementary in the Fall. Leslie and Amelia will be taking off the summer off to do all kinds of stuff. They'll be going to the YMCA to learn swimming, exercise, dance and who knows what else?! Enjoy the pictures!

Until next time...

Steve, Leslie & Amelia 

August-December
Wow! The time has really slipped away. Sorry for not posting any pictures in 6 months. Family & work seem to be getting most of the time lately. Thanks for hanging in there and checking the site occasionally. We've been slacking on keeping this site up to date.

So, what's been going on with us? Well, Leslie has been busy doing corporate insurance sales and it's beginning to pay off. Seems that she has the golden touch with getting companies to sign on the dotted line. Don't think we've broken even yet on her out of pocket expense versus what she's getting paid, but we're starting to see the numbers getting better.

Amelia has been doing great. She's in pre-Kindergarten and loves the friends she has made so far. She's just now beginning to read and write. She loves her computer and plays at Noggin.com quite a bit. Of course, anything "princess" or "Barbie" she loves as well. It's amazing how much there is for her to play with on the Internet. She's very independent which needs to be nipped in the bud every so often. Boundaries are key for a 4 year old! Just another plug for Amelia, she'll be five at the end of January. We're thinking of having her birthday at a place called "pump it up" where the kids can play on the big, huge blow up slides & toys (these toys are like 2 stories high! Pretty amazing...pretty spendy, but if Leslie keeps cranking in the cash, we'll be having the party there!)

Steve's work has been very stressful over the past month or so. Lots of visibility with upper management, deadlines, etc has kept him up at night churning on how to do his job. Hopefully, things will slow down a bit and get a breather from all the rat race. Other than that, Steve got to play Christmas music at Amelia's school party the other day. He brought his guitar, song book and voice and the kids, teacher and parents had a great time.

Well, we hope you all had a great '08. Have a safe & blessed Christmas season. There's much to be thankful for during this time of year, even with the economic downturn. As the saying goes, God will provide. We hope to hear from you this time of year with cards and phone calls. We sent out our Christmas picture cards today (12/20/08), so many of you should be getting that.

Take care and a Happy New Year!

April-July
It's been awhile since we last posted here on truaxfamily.net. With family, work and all the rest, it's tough to set aside time and update the site. We hope all y'all have been doing well and have had a safe summer so far!

Steve's work is going well at FedEx. Times are pretty tight with money due to the economic downturn, so his job is pretty stable right now. Who knows with $4 a gallon of gas and the fact that FedEx relies upon fuel prices. The job remains challenging and coworkers have been great to work with.

Leslie is still looking for work. It has been pretty difficult over the past months. She did get to work for several weeks at Medtronic but once that concluded, she hasn't been able to find work. She's looking into employee benefit insurance sales for companies but that's still under review. Keep her in your prayers regarding work in the Memphis area.

Leslie, Aunt Cynthia & Amelia traveled to NC and Atlanta to visit cousins. They had a great time with everyone (as usual with the family).

Amelia started pre-K at Collierville Christian Academy. She will attend for 2 years before kindergarten starts. Amelia is growing so fast! She's learning how to cast her fishing rod really well (better than the boys we've seen). She's visited the the zoo this summer a couple times and she really enjoys that. Her favorite animal is the zebra. Amelia's also learning how to roller skate and plant sunflowers (there are pictures of that in the latest gallery).

We went to the annual Epps 4th of July again in Huntsville, AL. That's always a great time. Amelia enjoys cousins and gets to run wild during that. The tough part is reeling her in after 3 or 4 days of fun. Amelia flew in an airplane without us knowing about it. That was a surprise! With all the air rides going on, it doesn't surprise me that this happened, but it would be nice to know in advance! She also got to go in a hot air balloon. She's getting more and more fearless. She saw the balloon all inflated and without hesitation said "let's go daddy!"

We house sat for Leslie's brother David in Nashville over the Memorial Day weekend. We were smack dab in the middle of downtown in the Varidian high rise. We were on the 20th floor. The pool was on the observation deck, which was on floor 30. We could almost reach out and touch the Bell South building in Nashville (this is the tallest building in downtown..the bat building if your familiar with Nashville). We also went to Mammoth Caves during this time. Had a great time with the Utley clan.

The weather in Memphis has been really hot and dry. The pond in back yard is getting lower and lower with lack of rain. Seems that the ducks & geese are the only ones enjoying the heat! August is here (time of this writing is August 2nd) and this is the hottest month. We hope it goes quickly!

Well, that is the update. Hope all is well. Don't be a stranger! Call or write sometime soon! Have a great summer.

February-March
Hope all have had a great 2008 so far. The Truax family has been pretty busy with work and play. We've got a bunch of pictures this time around and we hope to get something up in the very near future.

Leslie has been interviewing for jobs on and off. She's getting a little stir crazy wanting to get back to work. Come fall of this year she will probably get a bit more aggressive but right now she's taking it slow and checking out her options. She's enjoying staying home with Amelia and having a great time learning to read and spell.

Steve's job is going very well. Job responsibilities are ever increasing and always a challenge as a project manager. FedEx has many great opportunities for a techie. Everyone has been very professional and helpful when needed.

Amelia has been enrolled in a tumbling class on Thursday evenings. Since we now have a membership at the YMCA, there's a ton of stuff for kids like swimming, tiny dancer class & other cool kids stuff. She's also very happy to 'officially' be four years old (being '3' is sooo yesterday!) Amelia is also ready to start preschool in the fall. She already has a daycare picked out (we think it was the playground that got her attention).

Have great month, and leave a message at the truaxfamily.net Guest Book to let us know how you're doing...and to just say "Hi!"

January
Welcome to the new Truax Family website! I hope you like the new look. Please feel free to make comments and suggestions. It will probably go through many iterations, so keep coming back to check out the new digs. The reason I've changed the look is that with new technology, I can update two blog sites (one for where I'm currently writing and the picture gallery) and then use RSS feeds which push my blog information into the newsgater readers (see lower right corner of the windows). Not to bore you with the technology piece of the site..but I'm just playing around with some new technology available. I will be adding widgets to the site which will include a calendar, real-time weather, news, etc. It's all free and very easy to put on a site. The biggest problem is my main page layout (I'm not big on the creative layout of a website). Anyway, some of this is all new to me..and I'm just wanting to write and let y'all know what's going on and some ideas behind the truaxfamily.net changes.

Hope everyone had a great & safe New Years! We stayed home, shot off some fireworks (yes, they sell them here in Tennessee for New Year's Eve). Amelia had a great time. We shot off roman candles over the pond behind our house. It was very cold. Fortunately, this weekend (1/5/08) is warmer.

That's it for now. Steve.