top five friday: utah edition

#1 - seeing family and friends. arika and kaitlyn picked me up from the airport last friday and we had our very own 'airport moment':

holy hannah, i've missed these girls. we had so much fun together!

i don't care what you say, i have the cutest nieces in the entire world.

so fun being with the familia!

i also got to grab some lunch with my buddy vince and see my soccer coach from high school. sure do miss those guys, but it was good to catch up!

#2 - my nephew's baptism. this is our first nephew to be baptized on zachary's side and i am so glad i was able to go! triston is such a sweetheart. seriously. like one of the sweetest, most respectful kids i know. i'm so proud to call him my nephew and i'm so happy he made the wonderful decision to be baptized!

#3 - every sunday, zachary and i write notes to each other in church. don't worry, we still pay attention, but i honestly look forward to the note writing a lot. so much so, that zachary actually bought me a little red notebook for our anniversary and it is our official 'notes writing' journal. one of our traditions when we do this is to draw a few pictures of the things that are on our mind at the time. then the other person has to guess what they are. some of them actually end up to be pretty funny. since we weren't together this sunday though, i decided to draw what i was thinking on my phone and send it to him. here's what i came up with:

now, i know i'm no artist, but does #4 look anything like a cookie to you? if so, may i ask who in the world cuts a cookie in to 8 slices?? come on.

#4 - sending my baby brother off on his mission. this was kind of bittersweet. i'm so excited for him and for all of the things he is going to learn, but it's sure sad to see him go. tampa, fl has some very lucky peeps.

#5 - excuse me while i get serious here for a minute, but i had an epiphany on my trip. i realized that there are some really good people out there. i feel like i see the world as a black hole of lust, money, and selfishness sometimes, so it did my heart good to see some little acts of kindness. the first time this hit me was when i was on the bus on my way to the airport here in cali. i didn't realize they don't give you change when you pay your fare, so after frantically searching for a dollar bill, i decided i'd just have to suck it up and give them my five. i didn't care so much about the money, i think i was more frazzled by the fact that i was traveling alone in a place that i'd never been to before. there was a lady and her son sitting across from me and she must have seen how distraught i was when she tapped me and held out three ones and some quarters to trade for my five. she didn't speak a lick of english, so hopefully my repeated "gracias" let her know how much i appreciated it. it doesn't sound like a big deal, but trust me - at the time, it was a very big deal. the second time i noticed how great some people are was on my flight back to california. before i even boarded, the pilot announced a handful of times that it was going to be a pretty bumpy ride. my stomach sank to my toes. when i got on the plane, i saw that in my row there was an old-ish lady in the aisle seat and a young{er} man in the window seat. my seat was the window seat. i asked him if he was in the right spot and when he realized he wasn't, he moved to the middle. i was afraid that he would secretly hate me the entire time though, so i told him that i normally wouldn't even care about which seat i was in, except that i am terrified of flying and i like having the window to look out of...that way if we plummeted to the ground, i would have at least some kind of warning. both the lady and the man must have taken this as a cry for help {not my intention} and said that they were going to talk to me for the entire ride to keep my mind off of things. and they did. that's two hours of talking to a couple of people that i had never even met. surprisingly, it did a fantastic job in distracting me and was actually really fun to get to know them. usually i sit quietly by myself and stress about every little bump, so it made me grateful for their good souls. these were only a couple of the things that i saw, but it really did strenghten my faith in mankind.

what are you loving this week?

-the wife