What has brought me happiness this week?

I've been pondering happiness a lot this week. My roommate and I have been talking a bit about it too.

Although happiness is sometimes not as easy to feel as when I was younger, I feel like joy can often be found if I simply look around. Therefore, I wanted to talk about a few of the things that brought me happiness this week!

• Family: Last Sunday I went up to my parents' house and my whole family was there. It was the best ever. Ever.
• Friendship bread: On Monday, my friend brought me a loaf of friendship bread along with a bag of bread starter. I haven't had this kind of bread in years, but it is so delicious! I ate it slowly throughout the week and loved it. But also, I especially loved seeing my friend Kristen who brought it to me!
• Bad day kindness: I may have had a couple bad days this week. Work and school have been really stressful. However, on one of those days, I mentioned to a couple of my friends that I hadn't had a very good day, and they gave me hugs and invited me to hang out with them and were just so kind. 
• Texts from friends: Being invited to things or being asked what I'm doing tonight makes me feel so cared about. I feel like maybe it's a silly thing. But I know that my top love language is quality time, and I think that just knowing that people want to spend time with me makes me feel very loved. I also love when people text me. This week I got several invites and texts, and it made me happy!  
• Carpool: I mentioned my carpool on here at one point, but I think I managed to wake up for carpool all three days this week, and that was pretty happy, and I also really love my carpool friends. 
• Snow: It snowed during institute on Wednesday. I may have snuck out after learning about the snow and walked around in its beauty for ten minutes or so! 
• Realizations of answered prayers: This week I kept realizing that God answers my prayers, and I also kept hearing stories about God answering prayers. I know he hears and answers prayers. I love prayer!
• Psych: Happy and sad. Psych had the last episode ever this week. I liked how it ended though, so that made me happy. And I loved watching it with friends. 
• Spending time with ward friends: I got to see friends in my ward most of the days this week. I love them.
• Spending time with any friends: I got to see several friends this week. I love them!  
•  BOWLS FOR HUMANITY!: I was so excited for Bowls for Humanity, which is a really cool event where local students and local artists donate pottery and bowls to the Food and Care Coalition and then people can look at the bowls and buy them and eat soup. All of the money goes to charity. I was sad that the whole gang couldn't come this year, but I still had a lot of fun and perhaps spent more than I should have. (Oops! but I really loooove the bowls I bought)
• Music: On one of my bad days this week, I was in a really negative mood, but I had also been planning to audition for a local musical with Miss Lauren L that night. I so did not want to go. I just wanted to go to bed or something. However, after getting home from school, I started practicing for my audition. Singing and music helped pull me at least a little bit out of my negative feelings. Music makes me happy.
• Avatar: I really love Avatar the Last Airbender. When I can, I watch an episode before I get out of bed on Saturday mornings, and I was able to do that this morning! Nerdy, I know.
• Errands with Jordan: This morning my roommate Jordan and I went and got groceries, went to Costco, you know, everyday stuff. But it was really fun. It's not like we were being all energetic or anything, but it was just nice and fun. 

This list is actually longer than I thought it would be, and now I keep thinking of things that I don't want to leave out from the list. However, for the sake of sleep (since I need to go to bed), I will end the list here. Turns out that despite the highly stressful week, there is a lot of good and a lot of happiness that I can find in my life!