Thankful Thursday

Happy Thursday to you! Today's post is rather random. :) Just things I'm thankful for today...

1. Prednisone. So, remember that MRI Micah had a couple weeks ago? Yup, turns out the arthritis is spreading. Lovely. The week following the MRI the pain got to be enough that Micah consented to going onto prednisone for 10 days to quell any flares and get things back to "normal." (He'd been offered the prednisone before the MRI but resisted, as he doesn't like admitting it hurts...so his agreement to take it shows how not great things were. He hadn't felt able to do his normal activities for a month before starting the prednisone.) But. He's been on the prednisone now for almost a week and feels SOOO much better...literally jumping around the house. Whew. We know it's not a cure...just treats the symptoms...but incredibly thankful that the prednisone means he can resume normal life. (We'll be meeting with his rheumatologist next month to discuss what's next.)

2. Shen Yun. Last weekend, Asher and I went down to Denver's Performing Arts Complex to watch Shen Yun and it was terrific. The performers were so impressive and it was beautiful to watch. Thankful mostly, though, for the lovely afternoon with my boy:

3. Photo wires. We recently added pictures from our Curacao trip to our wall of trip photos. 

I love how they all look and that it's such a simple way to display things (each family vacation has its own wire). (Yes, we've taken more vacations than this. We're pondering what to do as we run out of wall space here...)

4. A bunch of random purchases. I've made a number of purchases lately that I'm loving...

• These slippers so that I can just slip them on and drive Noah to work without having to find socks or tie anything, lol. I've also taken to wearing them to the climbing gym...easier to switch to climbing shoes. Until sandal weather is back, thankful to have these.
• A mascara that doesn't smudge! I'd seen a bunch of ads online for this and then my sister told me she uses it also so I went ahead and ordered it and have not been disappointed. Yay! (I don't usually even wear mascara because I'm lazy like that, lol, but it's nice to have a good option when I want to.)
• This ultrasonic retainer cleaner so that Micah and Asher's retainers aren't completely disgusting.
• A new larger drying rack to replace multiple older, smaller ones we'd been using. We actually end up air drying a number of things every time we do laundry so this has been very useful and takes up less space than what we'd been doing before. 
• Gotta love new things that make life better!

5. New light fixtures. Speaking of new things, we also replaced light fixtures in Asher & Micah's rooms recently. (I don't have pictures, but we replaced the old ones with these.) The old ones were fine but very difficult when Nathan needed to change light bulbs and apparently the LED light bulbs we'd switched to didn't do as well (or last as long) in the enclosed fixture. So we switched to an open fixture design. Voila.

And while we were doing that, I got to thinking that the light fixture in my office has been bothering me for some time with how not bright it was. So I convinced Nathan to replace it for me with this:

Yup. Totally doesn't go with anything in the house. :) But I decided that it's only fair that I finally have something a little more feminine in this house of men. And. It's totally brighter and I love it. (I am now thinking about replacing the curtains to something fancier, too, lol.) 

So that's my random list for today. Wrapping up a rather uneventful spring break around here...didn't have any plans since really only Micah was on spring break anyhow. We've just been dealing with car maintenance (ugh), spring cleaning and continuing (still) to wait to hear back from three colleges in CA. Hope your Thursday's going well!