Jeanette, the Sigma 17-70 is a good step up from the kit lens and not too expensive ($300-400 depending on where you buy). Quite a few members including Mike and myself have them, I bought mine after favourable comments by Terry Lovejoy in
this thread. I've only pointed mine skywards once and was pleasantly surprised with the results. The 17-70 is a reasonably fast lens varying from F2.8-4.5 from the wide end to the telephoto end of the zoom. If you want to see how this lens performs so a search of the forum for Sigma 17-70, Mike in particular has a lot of images taken with that lens.