Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few favorites from the past week:

1. Jeremy’s birthday and visit. My oldest son came down from RI last Thursday through Tuesday and we celebrated his birthday over several days. Though technology has greatly helped span the gap, there’s still nothing like having a loved one actually here.

2. A computer fix. My last Firefox update created some annoying problems — not major, but bothersome. Jeremy was able to fix those and it has made my computer time so much nicer.

3. Aussie Sydney Smooth No Frizz hair gel. My hair is a mess without it.

4. Jesse’s getting his driver’s license. Earlier this week I confessed I had mixed emotions about this, but it has been nice already that he can take himself to and from school.

5. Getting up earlier. I never thought I’d say that — not setting my alarm clock is one of the best parts of summer. But over the summer I tend to stay up later and later and then get up later — I don’t sleep more than usual, just at different times. Yet I do feel I get more accomplished when I get up earlier even if I do need a nap during the day. So school starting this week and the change in schedule is a good thing, but it is taking me a few days to adjust.

Bonus: I got word just this morning that an article I submitted to a magazine was accepted. 😀 I’ll let you know when it comes out, which may be any time within the next two years.

Have a great weekend! My birthday is on Sunday, and since that’s a busy day, we’re doing some celebrating Saturday and then having cake on Sunday after church. I’m not at the age yet that I don’t enjoy birthdays — I think I always will!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Last week I had to search a little for five faves — not this week!

1. Jeremy (my oldest son) is home! His flight was delayed and didn’t get in til 1:30 this morning, so we’re all a little bleary-eyed, but happy.

2. Surprising friends at a wedding. The daughter of some of our oldest and dearest friends was getting married, not in her home town about three hours from us, but way up in northern Ohio. We were so sad that we couldn’t go…but then the week before my husband looked on the map, saw it was only eight hours away, and as we didn’t have anything else planned for the weekend — we decided to go and surprise them. We left early Saturday morning, got to the hotel with a little time to rest and eat, went to the wedding, slept, and then zipped (ha!) back here Sunday. You have to understand, I am not very spontaneous and I don’t usually travel well, but I thoroughly enjoyed this trip! My “travel issues” were at a minimum, and it was such a joy to see our friends and celebrate this special time of the first wedding among their children. The change in routine was very refreshing instead of stressful (for me — my poor dear hubby had to drive another six hours the next day). And I got two books read during the drive! (I could just about have made a whole FFF just from this trip!)

3. Seeing old friends. Besides the friends I mentioned, about seven other friends from early married days in SC were there whom we hadn’t known were coming, and it was fun to catch up with them.

4. French Silk Pie at Perkins, not a place we go often, but I love that place! We stopped there for lunch on our way home as a break from fast food. I couldn’t eat it at lunch time, but we had a cooler to keep on the way home. Not so good for the diet, but a wonderful occasional splurge.

5. A master packing list. I created one on the computer some time ago, and that helps so much!

We’re looking forward to a weekend with the whole family together and celebrating Jeremy’s birthday on Monday. Hope you have a great weekend, too!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

This week it’s been a little difficult to come up with five favorite things. It hasn’t been a bad week, per se, but there have not been any standout moments that I could easily list. I try not to repeat things on FFF, but then, I know it’s perfectly fine to be repeatedly thankful for regular occurrences. 🙂 So you might have seen a few of these before, but they’re still favorites.

1. Air conditioning.

2. The end of July. I’m not ready for the summer schedule to end but I am definitely glad this hot month is over and we’re one month closer to cooler weather in the fall. It’ll still be hot here for many weeks to come, though.

3. Pizza and movie nights with the family. Streaming Netflix has been great!

4. Encouraging comments from readers.

5. Not needing many school supplies and finding good deals on them. One really nice thing as kids get older is that they can reuse many school supplies from the previous year. I had a minimal amount to buy and was pleased to find some great deals. Even last year’s school uniforms fit!

I’m looking forward to the coming week mainly because my oldest son, Jeremy, is coming home for his birthday! We haven’t seen him since Christmas (except for Skype and Face Time), the longest stretch that we’ve been apart from any of our kids.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few favorites from the past week:

1. Chicken teriyaki. Back in SC we used to love a Japanese place in the mall. It was fast food but a nice switch from burgers and breaded, fried chicken. And the people there seemed to know the families of their regular customers — I think they acted like that with everyone, really, but if I was there by myself they asked about the rest of the family. Then the guy who was assembling our food asked if we wanted “yummy yummy sauce.” 🙂 We always did. The same Japanese place is in the mall here in TN, but the mall is 20 minutes away, so it’s too far out for a quick stop for dinner. The food was still good: the people, though, were different, of course, and the guy on the end — well, I couldn’t understand exactly what he was saying, but he was holding the ladle of sauce over my plate, so I assumed he was asking me if I wanted some. So it was a little surreal in some ways, but I’d been craving their chicken teriyaki and it was good to have it again.

2. Jesse’s home! I know, I mentioned last week that my youngest son was due back after being on a mission/camp trip for ten days, the longest he has ever been away before. But I was just anticipating it last week, and this week I have the reality. 🙂

3. Air conditioning in my car. I know I have mentioned AC before, but the car is probably the place I can cool off the quickest, with the AC turned up and the vents aimed right at my face.

4. Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge. I’ve enjoyed getting back into these books.

5. A low-key week after a very busy one.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few faves from the past week:

1. Protein bars. I just discovered them. I think I knew about them but just recently tried some. I have a low blood sugar, and they help over that “low” that sometimes comes mid-morning or afternoon.  And the ones with chocolate satisfy that craving.

2. The cool button on my hair dryer. Just drying my hair can induce sweatiness: it feels so good to blow some cool air after all the heat.

3. This single serving pizza has a really good flavor and makes for an occasional nice lunch along with a few carrots.

4. My mother-in-law’s physical therapist. She saw one at her last assisted living place, and he’s the one who got her set up with a walker. But the therapy stopped once she got stable with it. Now she is having an increasingly hard time getting up from her chair, and the nurse at her new place recommended a physical therapist which, thankfully, her Medicare and supplemental insurance are taking care of, plus he comes to her place rather than having to bundle her off somewhere. We don’t know how much her problem is just aging and how much is just the fact that decreased activity leads to decreased ability. But I am glad they have someone working with her…and that she’s willing, for now, to do what he says. 🙂

5. Jesse’s coming home! OK, that doesn’t happen til tomorrow, but I can count the anticipation today! He’s been away at a combination camp and mission trip with his youth group for ten days — the longest he has been away from home before. It’s been awfully quiet around here.

It will probably be later tonight or tomorrow before I can catch up with you — company coming tonight means cleaning and cooking today! Have a great weekend!

(Oh, by the way — those of you who guessed last week that my new cross stitch project, at least the part I’ve done so far, was a nest are correct. Good work!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few faves from the past week:

1. Independence Day, all that it stands for as well as the fun part: time off, time with family, barbecue, fireworks, etc.

2. Grandma’s birthday.

3. Caramel Cake. I had seen a caramel cake mix in the store and wondered what it was like: caramel can sometimes taste too sweet or rich for me. But as Grandma did not have a preference for her birthday cake, I decided to try it. It was really good!

I hadn’t meant to make it look tiger-striped: I used the pre-made caramel icing and then tried to drizzle a chocolate glaze over it but it didn’t drizzle. Her birthday was on Saturday and thankfully all the family was over again on Sunday for dinner and more cake for dessert, so I wasn’t left alone in the house with it for too long. 🙂

4. Good deals. Jesse needed some clothes for his youth group’s combination mission and camp trip, and pants with a 34″ inseam are hard to find. But we found those as well as shorts and swimming trunks at Sears and got a gift card towards our next purchase as well.

5. Starting a new cross stitch project. Can you guess what it is yet?

Bonus: Losing another 2.5 lbs.!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few faves from the past week:

1. Biggest Loser Power Walk video. I found that with bad knees and balance problems, I couldn’t quite do all the exercises on the Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout game for the Kinect (though it actually seems to be adapting and not bringing up as many of the ones I can’t do. One advantage to it “seeing” me, I guess.) But I was thinking that I either needed to walk more or find something that was primarily walking, and then I saw this video at W-Mart. It’s been a nice supplement, and they have “modified” steps for those who can’t do all their variations.

2. Losing 3 1/2 lbs. using both programs. Woot! My first week I actually gained almost a pound. No fun. I’m glad to be going in the other direction now!

3. Small clock radio. I’d been looking for a clock radio for my bathroom. My family found a couple that were meant for the shower, but I wanted something for the wall or counter top with big numbers so I could see it from anywhere — the shower ones had really small clock faces. And here in the South having to fight off mildew due to the humidity, even while running a fan — I just didn’t want to have to deal with that on a radio in the shower. But I found this little travel one:

Big numbers, doesn’t take much space, and the radio is surprisingly clear. It came in handy one night when we lost power because of a storm — I put it on my nightstand, and it has a little button to push to shine a light on the clock face.

4. A new Karla Dornacher print. I ordered this from Karla’s shop:

And she included a sweet note and a few extra goodies, too:

5. Productive days. I haven’t gotten quite as much done as I had planned so far this summer, but had a couple of really productive days this past week. This past Saturday my husband hung up several things for me and I got some cleaning out and organizing done later in the week. The living room looks much more finished and put together now. I had promised when we moved in here last August that I’d give you a house tour some time — I’m almost ready. 🙂 One project Jesse helped me with is the game closet:

I didn’t take a “before” photo, but it would have shown two boxes with the games we’ve played recently set on top. That set of wicker shelves is old — we got it from a friend who was moving and used it for several years, and then when we were just about to get rid of it, Jason and Mittu wanted it. They had to get rid of some things to move into their new apartment, and that’s when it hit me that this would work for the games. A new coat of spray paint, and voila!

Have a great weekend! We’re celebrating Grandma’s 83rd birthday tomorrow.

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

Here are a few faves from the past week:

1. Father’s Day and the opportunity to show some appreciation and love to my husband. Not that we need a special day to do that, of course, but we enjoy those special days.

2. A task completed. I finally got my TN driver’s license. (Shhh, it was supposed to be done within 30 days of moving here last August…) I kept forgetting — and I needed to send off for my birth certificate and kept forgetting that, too. Finally got it done, and without much wait once I was there — I took a book because usually anything of that nature takes a while, but I didn’t even crack it open. My DL photo is probably the worst ever, and no, I am not showing it to you. 🙂 But I am very glad that ‘s done with for the next six years.

3. Electricity and safety. We’ve had a series of pretty severe thunderstorms every evening since Tuesday and we lost power for several hours Tuesday night. Unfortunately tens of thousands are still without power and a lot of people have trees down and parts of buildings damaged.

4. A repair instead of a replacement. A tooth in Grandma’s dentures came out a couple of times, and Jim found a denture repair kit and glued it back, but this week it came out again and got lost. We thought it was probably way past time to get her dentures checked out, anyway, and made an appointment. (Grandma, frugal as she is, protested, saying she wouldn’t live long enough to get use out of new ones…) But the dentist said it would actually be better to replace and fix the tooth rather than create a new set of dentures, and they cleaned and polished them while they had them. So that was nice in that it was a lot cheaper and it was much less of an ordeal for her (if they had made new dentures they would have had to make a new mold, etc.).

5. This guy:

That round thing is a little bird feeder that sticks onto the window via a suction cup. We have it on my mother-in-law’s window and another standing bird feeder in the grass. This guy was in this feeder when I came in, and Grandma was getting such a kick out of him, that she hardly paid attention when I said I had her new fixed dentures. I was afraid he was going to get stuck, but thankfully he got through. Personally, squirrels have kind of lost their cuteness to me over the years because they can be pests, but she got such enjoyment from his antics, and seeing him like this was pretty funny.

Have a great weekend!