Friday's Fave Five #90

It's the start of a beautiful, hot, long weekend here in the heartland of America.  Before heading out to celebrate the first holiday weekend of the summer, let's look back to the highlights of this past week.  Join Suzanne at Living to Tell the Story and share your favorites!

1. Friday night, we watched our second daughter, Alexa Janae, graduate from high school.  It was a bittersweet moment seeing her accomplishing a milestone as a young adult, yet sad that the adorable toddler was no more. Yet we have 18 years of memories, and with the advent of digital cameras, tons of pictures of her teen years.

Here she is as a baby.

Adorable toddler holding her new baby sister, Malia.

One of her senior pictures

Janae in her cap and gown in a group.

(I've got more pictures on my camera but haven't transferred them in time for this post!  Bad mom!)

2. On Saturday, Jim and I took a drive to a place called Garden of the Gods.  What beautiful scenery!  I just wished it was named Garden of the One True God!  It is a great place to take pictures.

You won't believe where I was standing to take this picture!

I was worried that I would become dizzy and fall.  Did I mention I have a fear of heights?

This is called the Devil's Smokestack
(Who names these things?)

I don't know if you can tell, but my hubby is standing at the base of the smokestack.  Unfortunately, his clothing blends right in.  He should have worn red!

Here he climbed up and sat in this opening.

I just love taking pictures of God's creation!

3.  The rest of the week, I managed to get some things done around the house.  I had found a lot of goodies at the first yard sale of the year, but had not found places to put them!  I also had to get rid of a couple things to make room.  Decluttering is always good, and always a favorite thing of mine to do.

4.  One of my yard sale treasures was a pair of shutters (actually a bifold door made out of two long shutters). My sweet hubby took them apart and painted them and hung them up in our bedroom for me. It seems that having shutters on the INSIDE of your home is fashionable now.  I just wanted to hide some holes in the sheetrock!  Anyway, I think they look very interesting and it only cost $5 for the shutters and about $12 for the paint.  (Sorry, didn't think to take a picture yet.)

5. 24 years ago today, I became a Mother for the first time.  Elissa Joy's birthday is today and totally a highlight in my life. I am proud to be her mama.

Here she is at about 18 months.

Here she is today, doing one of her favorite things - driving her car!

Okay, that's been my week!  Hope you had a great one as well.  Link up here at Susanne's and share!