happiness.

driving around virginia for a week meant a lot of time to think. (okay, okay, that's not true. bri and i fell asleep almost immediately every time we got in the car. i felt like a kid that conks out as soon as the car seat is buckled. but still. i've had lots of thinking time lately.) i've thought about a lot of things: life, dreams, relationships, friendships, family, career, learning, school, work, what i like, what i don't like.

and i thought about the times in the past year that i've been most happy. not the long-term, life-is-great kind of happiness that happens every few months when everything clicks just right for a few weeks, but the momentary, this-is-what-life-is-about happiness.

this is what i decided.

1. summer days with paige. also known as jpm. it was exactly how summer is supposed to be. every day after class was done, either i'd go straight to paige's or she'd come straight to my place. we did our homework and made dinner and ate nilla wafers and went for long drives and sang loud and talked about boys and life and dreams. and every day i just thought, "yes. this is it."

(ps my biggest regret in life is that i will never have paige's lips. that is all.)

2. sitting on the sea lion beach at la jolla last march. i could have sat there all week. i had everything i could ever have wanted that day, including an invisible dog named benjamin, and i just couldn't keep my smiles inside. and i freaking love those sea lions.

3. running friday afternoon errands with chelsea. somehow it turned into a bit of a tradition this semester--i pick her up from class, we run random and usually entirely unnecessary errands (e.g. buying craft supplies or hunting rexburg's grocery stores for just the right kind of cheez-its), and then we go home and dispense with our friday night activities. i could never have made it through this semester without that girl, straight up, and even though this semester was a crazy weird time for both of us, friday afternoon errands were just happy.

4. the cabin. i don't know if it's the location ( a gorgeous tree-surrounded lake in wisconsin), the skiing (there are usually at least a couple days during which the water is a perfect ten), or being with my family in a place where friends, school, and jobs just don't seem to matter as much as laying on the dock, but i am almost always blissfully happy at the cabin.

and after making this list of my top four happiest moments in the last year, i realized: there is a really, really good reason that this kind of happiness doesn't happen very often. i'm glad it doesn't. i'm glad that i'm not one hundred percent on every second of every day. because then when these happy moments strike, i can just stand back and think, "yes. this is it."

(also i would like to point out that three out of four of my happiest moments occurred in the sunshine. so if anybody would like to buy me a ticket to the sun, that would be just fine. please and thank you.)