Friday's Fave Five #565

Happy 2020!  Welcome to the first Friday's Fave Five of a new year and a new decade!  I'm so please you have joined me in starting our new year off with a step in the right direction...one of intentional gratefulness for the good blessings in our lives.

I missed the last FFF of 2019 and now I kind of regret it, it being the last FFF of a decade.  But I didn't think of that at the time, all I was thinking of was soaking up every second of my visiting kid's time that I could with nothing interfering with that.  So I missed it in favor of quality time with them.

But I'm starting the year off with a heart of gratefulness for God's goodness in my life.

~family togetherness~ this past couple of weeks I have been particularly grateful for that family together time.  While I am always extremely thankful for that, this year in particular it has hit me hard because of another family's very hard Christmas.  It's a family I have known since high school, the father I worked with when we worked for the school district in the same classroom and I have had the cousin's children in my dayhome and we bought our last vehicle from the uncle.  You see, the 26 year old son went missing at the end of November.  Headed back to school after visiting with his mom here.  A week later the police contacted the family saying his  very burnt out truck had been found by some hikers in another province at the beginning of a very remote trailhead.  At this point they reported him missing.  They had no idea he had not made it home.  He is still missing.  It's like he's vanished off the face of the earth in the midst of some very suspicious and weird findings.  No one knows a thing.  All this has grieved and broke my heart for him and his family.  I've been praying for them and his safe return every time I think of it during my day.  But it also made me especially aware this Christmas to be in the moment and of being mindful of cherishing my own family as I knew another family is living in fear and grief, trying to hold out hope that their loved one will be found and returned to them.  So I set the computer aside and enjoyed my adult children while they were here very aware of how precious that time is.

~winter light festival~  On Friday after Christmas we headed out to go see the movie "Jumanji 2"  but when we were 2 people away from the till it was announced that the show was sold out.  There was nothing else we all wanted to see, so we left the theatre kind of disappointed.  We tossed some suggestions around for another activity, but for one reason or another none of them were meeting our criteria.  And then I remembered the winter light festival at the Japanese Gardens.  It's only been going a couple of years here in our city but I've always wanted to go but never have.  So we grabbed a St*rbucks and headed over.  It turned out to be awesome.  We actually had lovely weather.  Wintery but not bitterly cold or windy.  The displays were lovely.  No Santa's or sleigh's or that kind of thing.  But they worked the lights beautifully into the serenity of a Japanese garden complete with waterfall and stream and Mount Fuji made out of the lights.  It even had a Dragon boat made of lights as our city always hosts Dragon Boat races in the summer.  There were fire pits at regular intervals to warm up and we all got a turn at "ringing" the huge bell.  It was beautiful and also meaningful as the gardens always remind us of my Hubby's uncle, who was the mayor of the city when the Japanese Gardens were imagined and built.  It was built to celebrate Canada's centennial in 1967 and recognized what Japanese families and culture had contributed to our city.  The Prince and Princess of the Japanese Imperial family came and opened the gardens.  It's a lovely, peaceful place and looked beautiful all decked out in her lights.  This may become a tradition, weather permitting.

~yummy Christmas meal~ This year I really had a hard time deciding what to make for our family Christmas meal.  It was a weird year where the kids were arriving on different days, those days being Christmas Day and Boxing Day, so I really tossed around just going super simple.  But the turkey dinner won out and I'm so thankful it did.  It's traditional for us.  And it turned out really good.  I finally figured out to rest the turkey for a full hour.  Not a drop of juice ran onto the cutting board and the turkey was super moist and tender.  And there is the turkey buns we get to eat for days, so a break from cooking!

~a very relaxed lovely birthday~  I got to do all my favorite things...coffee, reading, shopping and sushi dinner.  Couldn't of been a nicer day.

~relaxed new year's~ New Year's is always a tough one for me.  By then I'm starting to feel the exhaustion of the holidays and I'm not much of a partier.  And this year especially I wasn't feeling it.  When the kids are here my sis usually has us all over for munchies and games or a movie.  But this year the oldest and her hubby had already gone home, our son was going to his friend's who he hadn't visited with yet and our youngest ended up staying at her home nursing a migraine.  So we just stayed home.  Hubby wasn't feeling 100% so he went to bed early and I got some precious down time to myself.  It was wonderful.

Thanks for joining me once again for FFF.  It wouldn't be the same without you!  What were your favorites from the last week?