Friday's Fave Five #665

Welcome to the first Friday's Fave Five of 2022!  A whole new year to be on the lookout for God's blessings in our lives.  I have to be honest, 2021 had it's struggles.  There were some significant things that I really had to walk through and work through and had it not been for FFF keeping my eyes on the goodness of God in my life I think the year would have been much harder.(  But focusing on those blessings God brought my way even on the hardest of days or weeks made me see how truly blessed I am even when I think I'm having it rough.  It made me see God is there and never left me even if my feelings of doubt or fear or uncertainty or confusion cried out louder.  I'm so glad I had this constant in my life pushing me to intentionally find blessings.  Thanks for sticking with me another year of developing the discipline of thankfulness and gratefulness and looking for God's blessings in each and every week!

So my favorite five blessings from the last week in no particular order:

~ birthday blessings ~  (a carry over from the last week of December blessings) my birthday turned out to be a completely relaxed and lovely day of doing nothing.  I slept in a bit, had breakfast with my kids who were still here and saw them off as they headed to their respective homes, sat around in jammies enjoying coffee and a good book.  I decided I didn't even want to go out for dinner so we just had some favorite takeout and watched some tv together in the evening.  It was totally what I didn't even realize I wanted or needed and it was perfect.

~ packing up Christmas ~ I love Christmas and I love to decorate for Christmas.  But by the time the end of the month comes I am ready for all the extra decor to be put away and the house to be back to normal.  I traditionally pack everything up on New Year's Day but this year I even put a few things away on the the 31st.  It felt good to have less clutter and the space back in my living room.  

~ new winter jacket ~ Hubby gifted me with a new winter jacket for my birthday.  And I love it.  It couldn't have come at a better time as Alberta has been locked into a deep freeze.  I'm talking into the -29C (-20.2F_ to -33C (-27.4) range with wind chills since Christma.  The coat is warm and to my knees and has a furry collar and hood so I don't even need a scarf with it.  And the sweetheart even bought two different colors not knowing which I would like better and told me I could keep both if I wanted.  I settled on the very light grey one and took the other back (a burgundy one).  I've worn it every time I've been out since and have been so thankful for it.  And look the sleeves actually fit down to where they are supposed to!  Horrible picture but you get the idea of the warm blessing this coat is and how cold it looks outside.  Ignore the tags.  I was still trying to make up my mind which color I wanted to keep and had my son in law take pictures so I could look at it.  I'm awful at making up my mind.

  ~ heat in the house ~ with this deep freeze I am once again reminded how thankful I am that I have a roof over my head and a house with a furnace that provides as much heat as we want.

~ New Year's Eve treat ~  because we stayed home for New Year's Eve we treated ourselves to a favorite meal of Indian food from a favorite restaurant.  Yum.

Well it's back to routine and work and early mornings.  I'm thankful for the nice long holiday I had over Christmas.  What were your New Year's favorites?