Friday's Fave Five #412

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to Friday's Fave Five!  I'm sorry I was a no show last week which was a bummer, it being the last friday and Fave Five of 2016 but it just couldn't be helped.  Real life interrupted and I just had to go with the flow.  Our daughter and son in law drove up from Saskatchewan and about an hour out from here they had a breakdown.  So it was parents to the rescue and by the time we got home it was late and we were all exhausted and hungry .   My time for writing the post just disappeared in a poof.   Then Friday was my birthday and my family had plans and I wasn't about to put that on hold while I got on the computer.   So here we are in 2017 and looking at the first week to look for blessings and be thankful.  Please join us!

1.  Family together.   This last holiday I am more thankful  than ever to have family together at holidays.  I gained a whole new appreciation of the effort it takes for those who have to travel to get here.  Taking time off from work, making pet arrangements,through snow storms, bitter cold, and sometimes downright scary roads my brood worked to get home.  Though we were actually all 6 together at the same time only about 3 days out of the week and a half it was all treasured.  Son was in and out as he was working ambulance shifts.  Oldest daughter and hubby couldn't make it till the 29th but it was wonderful to have them no matter when they could come.  Our youngest, working in retail, had to work a lot but it was nice when she was able to hang out and nice that she had New Years off to celebrate with us.  

2.  Travelling mercies.  Our son works ambulance about 45 minutes from here and towards to the mountains.  During the couple weeks he was home and driving to work for his shifts he had some of the scariest driving conditions.  Quite a few days it was crazy windy and he drives through an area that is notorious when the wind howls.  There were several overturned semi trucks on some of the days and one day he even felt his car being pushed towards the ditch.  We had a white Christmas which saw a crazy amount of snow over 3 days and he had treacherous roads while that was happening to contend with too.  In fact, sadly, the shift before his had to deal with a horrible fatal highway accident.  So getting the texts saying he had arrived safely and seeing him walk in the door after his shifts found this mama very, very thankful!

3.  Lovely birthday dinner cooked by my oldest girl.  Long story short, because of the car breakdown my birthday dinner was postponed for a few days so we could all be together for it, but my girl wanted me to still have a night off of cooking so she spur of the moment cooked up an absolutely delicious chicken fajita dinner for me.  Mexican is one of my favorites meals and so this was a lovely unexpected birthday gift from her.

4.   Game time.  All my kids are board game fans so when they come you know there is going to be some noisy shenanigans going on.  This year we bypassed the familiar and tried some new games.  We played a wildly crazy and hilarious game that totally messes with your head called Ghost Blitz.  It's listed on amazon for kids but it was all adults playing it here and it was fun.  Then on New Year's the young adults played an insane game called Bean Boozled.  A gift from my son to his cousin, this game is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.  It's basically a Russian Roulette of Jelly Belly jelly beans where you spin the dial and for each color of bean you can land on you will either get a yummy flavor or a horrendous one.  And you don't know till you start chewing.  Defintely a fear factor vibe to the game.  You can make your own rules so our rules were you had to actually swallow the bean to get the point.  If you spit it out no score.  My brave sis and her hubby played the game at Christmas but "politely" opted out at New Years stating that one game was plenty for them.  I totally jammed out but gamely tried the lime/ grass clippings which was the tamest of the "yuck" flavors.  Gotta hand it to them they played about a dozen rounds.  No way I woulda/coulda done that.

I believe this was the reaction to the Buttered Popcorn/ Rotten Egg.  Guess which she got.

And this was the dead fish/strawberry banana smoothie color.  The bucket being good- naturedly offered by his wife while his the rest of us were having a good laugh tells you which flavor my son in law got.   Happy to say nobody actually used the bucket.

And this is definitely the spoiled milk, her biggest disliked flavor at anytime.  Unfortunately she never did get the alternate flavor of coconut.

And another game was played, Time Stories. but it was way too involved and long for me but it was nice to hear the young people around the table playing for hours.

5.  A really blessed birthday.  From the beautifully thoughtful gifts my family gave me, to those who were here during the actual day indulging me in some boxing week shopping, to the fajita meal and finally to the dinner out when were all together I have to say I felt truly blessed and truly thankful for every moment.  

I'd like to take this moment to wish you all a very blessed 2017.  May you have many moments that lift you, that bring you joy and laughter, and may you find those blessings daily.  Thank you for sticking with me on this little space on the internet, the highs and the lows, the prolific times and the writing slumps.  Thank you for the encouragement and friendship.  It means more than you will ever know.

So now it's your turn.  What are your blessings from the first week of 2017?