Weekend wanderings...continued. And a belated Thankful Tuesday! :)

Ahhh... like I mentioned in my previous post, the past few days were extremely challenging:

:: Challenge 1: Junior J caught a cold, and kept us up for a few nights.  His coughing got so bad at night that there were instances that he would throw up, and his post-nasal drip kept waking him up, which made him grumpy and cry, which made him cough more...

:: Challenge 2: Both me and the hubby caught the cold from the boy.  I must say, soothing a sick toddler in the middle of the night while nursing a cold (and the sick toddler) is no joke.

:: Challenge 3: My mum, who was helping to take care of Junior J so I could study for my exams caught the cold from the boy too.

:: Challenge 4: I had an extremely difficult exam to study for, and having a sick and very "sticky" toddler in the next room meant that I could only study in bits and pieces since the boy would come looking for me every half and hour or so. Half the time I couldn't understand or remember the things I studied from the lack of sleep, and it didn't help that I had to memorize the names of various bones and anatomy structures...

:: Challenge 5: We were hired by the hubby's friend to be the official photographers for their wedding, so we spent the whole of Saturday running around.  We had decided last minute to buy a Canon 5D Mark II (No Lindsay, you didn't miss anything, I just didn't have time to blog about it! :D) and a 50 mm f1.4 prime lens so that we each could have a camera to shoot the wedding (instead of having to borrow another camera)... but we got the camera the day BEFORE the wedding.  Thankfully, the camera gave no problems (of course, the colour and everything was fantastic!), but I had to get used to the new camera and all the buttons and settings.  Plus, the Mark II is rather heavy, so by Sunday morning I was aching all over from squatting and climbing all over.

:: Challenge 6: I still had to go out for fieldwork while all these things were happening, and the weather was really bad.  Once I got rained on and had to run for it!

BUT!  We survived all that, so I'm glad!  So here's what I'm thankful for:

1. My in-laws coming down for the weekend.  They took care of Junior J throughout, so that we could go out for the wedding shoot, plus that allowed me & hubby to get some very much needed rest on Sunday (which really helped in our recovery).

2. My parents helping to take care of Junior J the past few days so I could study...

3. The hubby, who was on leave last Thursday and Friday and helped to take care of Junior J... His moral support really made alot of difference (though he teased me incessantly for my frequent trips to the toilet thanks to my nervousness... hmph!).

4. The exam is over!  I had severe gastric pains during the paper (which had unexpected questions and was rather tough), but I'm so glad I could write something for each of the questions (though my lecturer must be laughing at all my spelling errors!).  And this is the last exam for my coursework, which means I'm almost done for my studies! :)  No more late nights at NIE, and running out to pump during lecture breaks!

5. My NIE friends, who moaned and groaned together with me while studying, which made learning how to spell "mentomeckelian element" or "carpometacarpus" so much easier...  I still can't spell "maneuverability" though!

6. Great friends, who kept me in prayer, and texted or Facebook-ed me  well-wishes...

7. Good weather at my research site today... plus all the flora and fauna (there were sunbirds, and a pair of hornbills!) I spotted on my way out of the park...

8. God's faithfulness that never fails...

9. Junior J's cough becoming much better...

10. Everyone else recovering from the cold!

What are you thankful for today?