It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

After all the busy-ness of the last couple of weeks, this one has been refreshingly relaxing, at least since Sunday. Here are five favorite parts of it.

1. Jesse’s graduation party. We enjoyed visiting with a few friends and then munching on leftover goodies for the next few days. 🙂 Plus after the flurry of housecleaning in preparation for it, it was nice not to have to think about all of that for a few days.

2. Chinese take-out. After the party my son and daughter-in-law offered to pick up Chinese take out for dinner. It was lovely to just crash and relax afterwards.

3. Timothy (baby grandson in the NICU) is at 5 lbs. now! They’ve said going home is “on the horizon.” I think they’re primarily just waiting for his heart-rate drops to stabilize: he’ll have to go 5 days without one before he will be able to go home.

4. Catching up on sleep. Much needed, much appreciated.

5. Catching up on my Feedly account of the blogs I try to keep up with – though I am behind again now. 🙂 But I should be able to catch up again over the weekend.

Hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend!

 It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Wow, it’s been another whirlwind week. Hopefully next week will be a “normal” one. But overall it has been a good week, and here are five favorite parts of it:

1. More progress for Timothy. I decided to go ahead and share my grandson’s name, since his dad has on his blog (he has some helpful posts there about dealing with life in the NICU). He turned one month old this week! The first part of the week was rough, with more heart-rate drops than I think he’d had in a day to date, but as of yesterday he was having only 1 or 2 a day and he is in a crib now instead of an incubator.

2. Jesse’s graduation from Community College with an Associate’s degree.

Plus, we’ve been planning a graduation party for him this coming weekend, so we didn’t have any kind of celebration planned for graduation night, but Jason and Mittu brought over a cake and balloon and made some goodies. It was just the right touch to celebrate on his actual graduation night.

3. Mother’s Day. My family always makes it a special day, especially my husband. Grilled steaks, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and some sweet and thoughtful gifts, as well as having the family all together (my son in RI was there via Face Time), made for a great day.

4. Projects done. For some time now I’ve been wanting to make a DVD for Jim’s mom of a slide show of photos set to music, something I’d never done before (either the slide show to music or the DVD), and I decided to try to do it for Mother’s Day. I thought seeing the photos bigger on the TV screen would be helpful to her. Somehow (thank God for His help and direction!) I was able to figure out the film part, and Jim was able to burn it to a DVD. Then I had wanted to make a scrapbook of Jesse’s school portraits and class photos for his high school graduation two years ago, but wasn’t able to, so I decided to try to do that for a graduation party we’re having for him tomorrow. Got it mostly done last night (now just to clean house and make food for it!).

5. Found gift cards. Jim had given me a couple of gift cards for Michael’s at Christmas, but I haven’t been able to find them. I just came across them this week.

I apologize for not being around much this week, either here or on your blogs. Between regular life, caring for Jim’s mom, hospital visits to see Timothy, graduation, Mother’s Day, and these projects, as well as preparing for Jesse’s party tomorrow, my time at the computer has only come in small bits lately. But after tomorrow there are no extra events on the calendar for a while, and no new projects to do (at least that I know of right now), so hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with you then.

Happy Friday!

 It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends. Here are five favorite parts of the last week:

1. Stability. My little grandson in the NICU was having a lot of trouble earlier this week with apnea and bradycardia (episodes of breathing rate and heart rate slowing down). They put him on a CPAP machine, and the episodes are infrequent now. They have no way to predict how long he’ll be on it: they say some preemie babies have these episodes almost until their original due date, while others don’t. Otherwise he is doing well.

2. A finished internship. My youngest had to complete an internship for his associate’s degree this semester. He had to get a certain number of hours in, and I was concerned because he did not find an internship until a few weeks into the semester. But he got it finished and turned in all the paperwork yesterday. That is such a relief!

3. Lesser storms than predicted. Much of the country has experienced severe weather this week. We had thunderstorms one night with predictions of hail and a tornado warning, but thankfully none materialized in our area. My heart goes out to many who lost loved ones or property.

4. Ibuprofen and Icy Hot patches. I did something to my lower back earlier this week – I am not sure what. But those two products made it bearable and enabled me to function. It’s almost completely back to normal now.

5. Good food. Two favorites: Jim made teriyaki chicken on Sunday, and yesterday I made one of my favorite things for lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich with leftover meat loaf. Yum!

Hope you’ve had a great week as well!

 It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends. Here are five favorite parts of the last week:

It has been quite the week here! My #1 favorite below will likely be the favorite part of this year!

1. The birth of my first grandson. Though he is very premature, and we would’ve liked for him to have waited a little while til his body was more ready to meet the world, it has been nice to be able to see him and touch him. Everything is going well so far, though he will probably be in the NICU for a couple of months yet. My latest update is here.

2. An in-house dinner date. My youngest was out last Friday night, so I called my husband and he brought home take-out from Red Lobster. Good stuff.

3. Working on a project together. My husband and I went together last Saturday to pick out plants to replace some bushes he took out as well as some for hanging pots and for a row in front of the rose bushes. Then we came home and worked on the hanging pots together, then he planted the rest. Often we have to “divide and conquer” to get things done, so it was fun to do this together.

4. Replacement bush. Some of you may remember a “fave five” from several weeks ago where I mentioned finally getting rid of a bush by the front door that I never liked. We replaced it with a hibiscus and added another planter. I like it much better! I was going to take a before and after picture, but we had some unexpected frost this week that is making the hibiscus look a little shriveled. I hope it can bounce back.

5. Pizza from a place that I love but my husband doesn’t care for. I was craving it on the way back from the hospital earlier today and sprang for one. 🙂

Hope you have a great weekend and a wonderful time reflecting on the meaning of this Easter season, that “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3-4.)

 It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Some weeks you have to really search for five favorite things: some weeks you have enough to do a couple of “fave fives!” Here are some highlights from my week:

1. Getting a haircut. Nothing radical, but I had either been unable or unmotivated to get to it for weeks and was way overdue. My hair cooperates much better at a certain length. And I was able to snip at a couple of areas I didn’t like as well and have it all turn out ok – that doesn’t always happen. 😀

2. Putting winter clothes away even though we’re still having some cold days. I do still have sweaters and jackets in the hall closet. 🙂 Those dark, heavier things that are so cozy in the fall and winter just seemed oppressive to me now. Love the look of my closet with springy colors! I used to work in a fabric store and loved the transformation when we got the store ready for spring and put away the wools and darker fabrics.

3. The first day of spring! I had thought, for some reason, that it was Sunday, so I was delightedly surprised when I went on Facebook and say people heralding the first day of spring yesterday.

4. Job offers for my youngest son. He’s about to finish up his associate’s degree in May. In one of his classes different groups are doing projects for businesses in town, and in a meeting the man they are working with, he told Jesse he’d like for him to send him his resume. Of course, that might not lead to anything, but it was encouraging! Then his school held a job fair this week, and Jesse visited booths and passed out resumes. One in particular seemed to hold some promise.

5. Getting rid of a bush I’ve always disliked that was right by the front door. I don’t know what variety it was, but it looked like a fir tree collapsed in on itself. I’ve never liked it and asked about getting it removed, but my husband wanted to keep it there. It’s been dying out (no, I didn’t help it along 🙂 ), and he finally removed it last Saturday. Now we get to decide what to replace it with!

Bonus: Not getting the snow that was forecast one day this week. Right now my weather apps are showing that we might get some next week – hopefully it will pass us by then, too.

Hope you’re having a great week!