Friday Favorites - May 1, 2026

Might as well jump in at some point and try to catch up a bit - when better than a Friday Favorites post on the first of the month???  Just a quick check-in to recap April and say "hey, I'm still here, still reading. . .just busy with work, tennis, finding time to spend with Tom, the kids, and the doggies".  Ha!  A GREAT life :)I was wondering what I was doing May 1st last year. . .apparently the same thing I am doing May 1st this year, just in a different location:

Same job, though, in case anyone was wondering ;). This room upstairs got painted and repurposed as a permanent place for me to work on days that I don't have to go into the office.  It's a great space and then, at the end of the day, I can shut the door and be done.  Most days I have company:  

I've come a LONG way from our sudden "have to work from home" set up in 2020 - 

Gosh, that was terrible.  This set-up moved to another part of this room before I got to go back to work. . .then my next job was FT in office to this one, which has turned into hybrid, although I tend to go in more than I stay home.

OK, let's talk FAVORITES since the last time I blogged:

Heading up to Ohio at the end of March to celebrate our mother's 75th birthday!!  We picked up my brother from the Cincinnati airport on our way to South Lebanon where we all spent the weekend together.

Tom, my sister and I made it to the Air Force Museum in Dayton:

Then went out to lunch at a local brewery with our brother:

Later that day Tom joined me, my sister, and her friend for pickleball:

And the next day Jodi convinced us to go for a COLD walk:

Topped off by another brewery lunch where we started the TN/MI basketball game until it was apparent we (TN) were outmatched and tucked our tails and got on the road to head back to TN.

A FAVORITE way to spend the weekend. Our dad was out of town that weekend so we didn't get a chance to see him.

Easter Sunday and our entire family together!!!  

Nana and Grandpa and the Maxwells were there too. . .LOTS of great food :)

Never, ever too old for Easter Baskets :)

Stephen has started going down to Kiawah Island on Easter Sunday and spending a week with his aunt and uncle - I'm the lucky mom who gets pictures from them :)

 The girls and I are heading that way for Mother's Day weekend - so excited!!

These two attended a wedding of a mutual friend - I love having a Daughter-in-Law who understands how important pictures are to me!!!

She was beautiful that evening (and always) too:  

 The next day is a Top Ten FAVORITE day of the year for me - 

The first day we get the boat on the lake!!!

And, what is apparently a "tradition" now since we did the same thing last year - a drive over to Mike's Landing.  

It was a windy but gorgeous day!!!

And then a favorite that I would never have put on a bingo card was a Rod Stewart concert with one of the biggest Rod Steward fans I know!!!  I got a last-minute invite from these ladies and found myself in some primo seats on a random Wednesday night in April :)

Fun fact:  our First Dance was Rod Stewart's "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You".  (It was supposed to be the Van Morrison rendition - the DJ got that wrong. . .now a memory that I saw Rod perform it live 31 years later!)

A favorite every month - our monthly Birthday Friends dinner - this month it was the two in the middle in white, the shorter one has been my tennis captain for many, many years :). Yes all these ladies play tennis but we don't all play together on the same team.

Another FAVORITE was a random Tuesday night when Robert (that's his truck and trailer in the background) rolled into town!  He and his Junk It Chatt partner had a job up here it East TN that was over two days so they came by for dinner and to get Nana and Grandpa outside for some cornhole.  I caught Nana's first bag in the hole :)

The grandparents were paired up with their oldest and youngest grandboys.  

What a beautiful, pleasant, perfect evening to be a family.  These are the days that make a good life, right?

One of my tennis teammates who lives full-time in SC has season tickets to Vols baseball and she invited me to go with her last Friday night!  We had dinner and headed downtown - it was a double-header and they had won that afternoon. . .and then pulled out another "W" that evening!

The Vols love nothing more than beating 'bama :)

I've never had 10 Friday Favorites before!!!

I didn't want to leave this last one out, though.

Last Saturday a group of us went to see a high school play (Newsies) that one of our friend's sons had the lead in (that's him, taking his final bow).  It was so much fun!!  Earlier in the month I got to do this with our travel group - the one who organizes our European trips is the drama teacher at an area high school and we got to go see her students perform in their spring play too.

This is what I love - having the luxury of TIME to invest in my friends, their families, and their accomplishments.  Being able to be there to cheer on and support theirs and their family's efforts and achievements.  When you are living your life and growing your family, they take up all the space (as they should), right?  But now we have some space to venture out from this world into other spaces and it is so GREAT.  

Anyway, Debi was really happy that we could all come see and support her son and his school.  The added benefit was that we got to meet her extended family, in from Texas, who she talks about all the time - that was neat too.  We did get a picture of the five of us who were able to go and her (she's the tallest and yet one of the shortest in her family!)

Wow, April was a month to remember.  I've missed blogging but glad I had a chance to put all this down here.

I'll keep checking in and hopefully writing a little here-and-there.  I did start a different post a week or so ago - it's not time-sensitive so maybe I'll get that out at some point.  When I read other blogs they inspire me to write.  It's getting to the "publish" button that's difficult for me - ha!

Happy Weekend - Happy May!

Love,

Jenni

P.S.  Here's the link-up if you want to participate or follow some other bloggers and their FAVORITES :)

Andrea at Momfessionals and Erika at A Little Bit of Everything

Thank you for hosting!!!