Friday's Fave Five #68

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope everybody had a wonderful holiday and a great New Year's celebrations. Welcome to the first FFF of the new year, the first FFF of a new decade. I, myself, cannot believe it's 2010. So let's get right into kicking off the new year. If you are new and need to guidelines or details you can make a stop here and then join right in.

It was so hard to narrow down this whole week down to just five favorites but I think I did it.

1. Christmas itself. I love Christmas and all it represents. The celebration of the birth of Jesus, God made flesh, the greatest gift of all, come to earth for you and for me. It just boggles my mind, that the God and Creator of all loved us so much that He left everything to come down to us.

2. Family all together and here for the holidays. So nice to have us all together for the holidays, just being together. We didn't go a whole lot of places or do a whole lot of things, but we spent a lot of priceless time together.

3. A gift of hoar frost on my birthday. So gorgeous. God truly showed his artistry that morning! My son and I went to the lake for a bit and it was just beautiful. Now the pictures are sort of in reverse order. Blogger for some reason is not letting me "slide" the pictures down very easily lately. But it doesn't make a difference to the beauty, just the order of the story.

No it is not snowing in this picture. It is actually the hoar frost falling off the trees as a lick of a breeze knocked it off.

It was so crisp outside. Everything just stood out against each other.

This is not snow on the branches but the frost. Look how thick that is.

Such a peacefull scene. The white in the foreground is actually the lake covered in ice and snow.

The contrasts in greys, whites and browns was stunning.

An absolutely amazing day. I could have stayed here taking pictures all day if my fingers hadn't have been freezing off. This is just a sampling of the tons of pictures I took.

4. The whole week off to spend time with my kids. That is really rare for me with my job. A whole week off at Christmas. And the way the holiday days fell made for an extra long holiday! The time was precious with my girl home from school and my other two kids.

5. Anne of Green Gables marathon with my girls. This is a favorite thing to do with my girls each year. We watch it through once a year or so. It's a mom and girls time. No guys allowed.

6. One extra one this week was hubby taking us out on my birthday to a brand new restaurant in town. Another special family time. I can't believe, me the rule follower, just broke my rules. :v)

I know it's hard to narrow down a week like this last with Christmas, but what were your favorite fives? If you do a post, please sign on to Mr. Linky so we can come and visit. I look forward to that tomorrow with a nice cup of coffee.