Normal driving for a few minutes after the engine has warmed up with a 180 thermostat will create enough heat to evaporate any small amount of water that might have condensed in the engine. The water vapor thus evaporated is circulated with crankase fumes through the PCV system and fed through the intake manifold to be burned off with the fuel mixture. The coolant temperature does not need to exceed the boiling point of water for this to happen.

I run a drilled 180F thermostat in my '95. It is used for a lot of short trips where the engine does not warm up before it is shut off. This does cause a small amount of water to condense in the engine, but just one normal warmup is sufficient to remove the water. This is supported by oil analysis. I recently had my oil analyzed after driving my car for about twenty minutes to make sure I got a warm sample of oil. The oil analyzed 0.0% water.

Yes... 2000 SLE has the Dex....

As long as you stay with the size hole that Bill Buttermore listed, you'll do fine. Anything much larger will let too much coolant through when the theremostat is closed where it will throw a code.

What cold Missouri winters are you talking about? Im not familiar with those

It was almost 80 one day last week, lets not forget that shall we?