Friday, January 30, 2015

Friday 5: Celebrating Simplicity


5 simple happenings from the week worth celebrating.

Here's to Vaughn doing a fantastic job at her 1st grade music program.

Here's to finding magical mermaid drawings all over the house.
(Got scrap paper? Send it my way. We go through a TON!)

Here's to...look closely...what's missing...
Here's to finally getting rid of bathroom step stools for the kids!
(8ish years with those suckers! Nice to have them out of the way!)

Here's to naan pizza's saving dinnertime once again. 
 Crazy day? Busy night? You're 3 ingredients away from dinner in a pinch. (Naan, spaghetti sauce, cheese.) If you have a bag of salad in the fridge - bonus points! Makes it look more like a well planned dinner! 

Here's to the end of Parenthood. 
I've enjoyed this show and am sad to see it come to an end. Whether you watched the show or not, do yourself a favor and watch the movie the show was based on. It's a good one and a favorite of mine. 

What are you raising a glass to tonight? I double dog dare you to leave a comment and tell me!
Whatever it may be, cheers!!! 

3 Responses to “Friday 5: Celebrating Simplicity”

  1. I accept your dare...this happened last week in my house but is worthy of being celebrated again. Backstory first: my mother had a liver transplant nine years ago. She had what's called a living donor transplant where they take part of a matching donor's liver, in this case, 60%, and connect it to the nerves, etc. inside the recipient. The man who saved my mother's life is my hero and is unbelievably humble about what he did. The surgeons told us before the transplant that they wouldn't give a verdict on whether or not the surgery was a success until five years after the operation (because the highest mortality rate for liver transplant recipients is within the first five years). At the five year mark, the doctors said to her, "You're going to die someday but, when you do, it won't be because of your liver." However, she still has annual check-in appointments at the hospital where the surgery was performed. Plus, she has monthly blood labs taken at a hospital near us. Every month, I wait out those 24 hours until the lab results are posted. I never get complacent but it has become routine to see perfect numbers for the three lab tests that measure her liver's function. Until last April when my mom's numbers spiked. They went up about 30 points which is significant but not life-threatening considering the labs went right back to normal the following month and stayed there. Until this month. They spiked again, this time going up by 70 points. The hospital that performed her surgery monitors her labs and they called me to say they wanted her to take new labs two weeks later. My mom's local GI doctor called me and asked sooooo many questions to find out if there has been a difference about anything in Mom's life that could have caused the spike. Among her many questions she asked if Mom has been sick (no), traveled anywhere (no), started using herbal supplements (no)...errr, back up a bit there. I told her Mom had started regularly drinking green tea after reading a lot about the benefits from green tea. She asked how much green tea Mom had started drinking. I told her one to two mugs in the morning and one more in the evening. Her GI doctor didn't think that sounded like enough to cause the spike but, since it was the only difference in my mom's life, said to take her off green tea until the labs to be taken, at that point, one week later. I actually whisked away the steaming mug of green tea Mom had sitting beside her. She repeated her labs last week and the results came back normal! So that's what we're still celebrating this week. (And Mom remains under orders to not try green tea again until she's had two more consecutive monthly labs that are normal.) Sorry for the long explanation...hope you found it interesting...but I felt I needed to explain the stakes involved, so you knew why we are still feeling the happy from her normal lab results last week.

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  2. You once wrote about Speculoos Cookies from Trader Joe's. I was curious so I went looking and found Speculoos Cookie Butter. It seems, however, that we've come full circle with Cookie Butter Sandwich Cookies (http://traderjoes.com/digin/post/cookie-butter-sandwich-cookies). They've described it as "...Speculoos Cookie Butter—that deliciously unusual spread, reminiscent of gingerbread and made with crushed Belgian biscuits—between two buttery, shortbread cookies..." And, yes, it's now on my shopping list. :)

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    1. Good to know! I'll have to check them out on my next trip!

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