Happy new year! As always, the holidays are coming to an end too quickly so I am reminding myself to hold on to that holiday feeling.

I’ve borrowed the title of this post from a regular blog series by Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandmybest which often features swimming, gin, walking and chocolate. (Another thing I love about Kate’s blog: her annual analysis of the books that appear most frequently on ‘best of the year’ book lists — in 2022, that’s 54 books from 52 lists).

Here’s my list of quotidian joys:

• Daytime naps. However will I manage when I go back to work next week?

• Scrub wrens outside the kitchen window, Chirstmas bells in the garden and Striped marsh frogs in the pond. Here is a recording of some of the birds I heard while walking the dog:

• Playing new (to us) board games: Wingspan, Pentago, Chess Plus, and Sequence

• Christmas presents: a nail bracelet and wind-up critters among many other joys:

• School holiday fun from our list of adventures plus treetops ropes courses (I joined the teenagers on two runs), movies, and catching up with friends and family

• Anticipating books I have on hold at the library, working my way through the unread book pile and finding new additions in the little street library