Thankful Thursday on Tuesday

May has been a very long month. And it's not even over yet. ;P I know I'm behind on my Thankful Thursday posts--and I have a minute now--so here are some of the things I've been thankful for this month...

1. New things hanging on the wall. Nathan got me this awhile back and we finally updated it and hung it a couple weekends ago...

Technically, Nathan's been to one or two more but we only scratched off parks we've been to together. We've got some work to do, lol. It's nice to have the reminder hanging where we can see it regularly, and we're looking forward to making more progress on the list. 

Also on our walls...we try to pick up a magnet during our travels (has to be a place we've been to personally)...

As you can see, though, our shadow boxes were full. Obviously, this is great...it means we've done some good traveling! The downside was that at this point I couldn't find a matching shadow box and we had no room to add another one near these others anyhow. Given all that, we decided not to worry about matching exactly and to just start a new area...

So thankful for our many travels!

2. Science. At his last appointment with his rheumatologist (May 10), Micah opted to participate in a research study he qualified for and is excited to contribute to science. It's a study to evaluate TNFi therapies (the types of medications Micah's been on for his arthritis) for juvenile arthritis patients. They're trying to see whether the medications are being over-prescribed so randomly assign participants to either continue on their meds as normal, taper the meds (spread them out further--so, in Micah's case, have infusions every 6 weeks instead of every 4 weeks), or stop the meds altogether. 

Micah had been planning to try the 6 week intervals over the summer anyhow. In the randomization, he ended up assigned to the group stopping all meds (which he was pretty happy about). Soooo. We've canceled his infusion appointments (should have had one May 18th on the previous schedule) and accompanying meds. He'll need to see the rheumatologist every 3 months now instead of every 6 months but that seems preferable to infusions every month. If he starts having flare ups, he'll just go back on the infusions and that result will be logged for the study. Now we wait. 

Thankful, as always, for the fabulous doctors and opportunities at Children's.

3. Nathan's work trip. Nathan was in San Francisco again earlier this month, this time for work (instead of collegiate taekwondo). Thankful that he was able to have the face-to-face time with some of his co-workers and that things here were fairly uneventful in his absence.

4. That Asher was the one sitting in the chair. A couple of weekends ago, quite unexpectedly, Asher's chair suddenly gave out. The welds on the bottom and the attachment to the chair, itself, just failed. One minute he was just sitting at the table, and the next he was on the floor. Fortunately, he was mostly just surprised and is unhurt. 

Because we'd repaired the seat portion of one of the other chairs previously, we happened to have an extra set of the chair feet hardware. Nathan fixed the attachment point and replaced the hardware and claims that the chair is good to go now...

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried now about all of the chairs, lol. I may be keeping my eye out for new kitchen chairs. ;) In the meantime, though, I'm very thankful that it was Asher sitting in the chair when it failed, as I'm not sure the rest of us would have come away uninjured. 

5. A little help from my friends. This past weekend has reminded me how very appreciative I am to have the wonderful friends that I do. I won't get into specifics but huge shout out to Lynne, Deanna, Sarah & Molly along with my baby sisters...love you all! 

Also, enormous thanks to Michelle for placing some peonies at my dad's grave yesterday for me and my mom. (Mom was here for my niece's graduation and spent some time both here in Fort Collins with us and down in Longmont with my brother and his family.) 

So blessed to have friends still in Prosser who can help out with things like this at a moment's notice. 

Okay, that's what I've got for now. :)