Wow. I Am Blessed.

I just wanted to make sure I noted how amazingly blessed I have been this week - and it's only Tuesday!

In no particular order:

• I have an amazing intern working with Safe Kids Utah who is so on top of things and has jumped right in with whatever tasks we've given her. She's really incredible.
•  I called one of my fabulous visiting teachers and asked if she and her kids could walk the dogs while I'm gone for a few days. My grandpa will be around taking care of him, but he's not really up for giving them walks... he's 87. She said yes even though my sales pitch was less than amazing.
• I bought paint thinner yesterday to try to rub off the graffiti that got sprayed on our fence sometime last week (see below, and I'll post that story later). I walked out the back gate and saw... (see below the below). Someone had cleaned it off! I'm not sure if it was a random good Samaritan, a good Samaritan neighbor, or if the graffiti artist had gotten busted by parents and was made to clean it up. Regardless of how it happened, it happened, and took something off my long-and-getting-longer to do list and I couldn't believe it. I did use a little bit of the paint thinner to clean off a little more of it so it looked like (see below the below the below). (:
• My incredible visiting teaching and I had the following text conversation:
• J: So it is a movie type night -- are you watching any LOTR?
• E: I did a marathon weekend. But heaven forbid I pass up a statement like that! {side note: Jenn, working two full-time jobs is one of the crazy-busiest people I know.} You are more than welcome to come over and we can put on your favorite LOTR or something else..
• J: :) I shouldn't, mind you, but honestly I'm not getting anything done here anyway. Maybe we can watch the best parts of something else??
• E: Come on over. We'll figure something out.
• So she came over and... ended up helping me clean up the kitchen and clean out both refrigerators (see below...). She was here for more than three hours. Not all of that was spent cleaning, but a significant portion of it was. Seriously, she's amazing. I felt really bad that I invited her over under false pretenses (though technically... I really was planning on putting a movie on. my delivery just wasn't there). But she was so helpful, and helped me cross two more thing off my list!
• My youngest brother has a friend who's finishing his degree in engineering. I asked him a question through facebook last week and he answered. I texted him last night asking for follow-up help and he came over tonight for three hours. Incredibly helpful for a project I'm hoping to do next week. I'll post later about that too.
• A co-worker is doing more for me to get things taken care of for a conference I'm going to in June than I was hoping she would need to. I had planned to get more of it done today but got caught up in other time-sensitive things and then had to run out of the office so Missi told me she'd get the rest of it taken care of. She's amazing too.

 Seriously, this week - mostly just this day even - I've been surrounded by wonderful people. And I wanted to make note of it so I didn't forget it. After a week like last week (calling 911 and then a few days later the police, among other things) this was just a wonderfully refreshing reminder that I am given marvelous blessing in my life.

Here are the pictures:

empty space!

more empty space!

And other prettiness captured on my phone: