Yesterday turned out to be a good day.

First good thing: The hat Karissa (If you're reading this, hi Karissa!) traded me for a pattern came (And this takes a little backstory, so here goes: A couple weeks ago, I got an email from someone searching for a particular pattern that was in Real Simple Magazine a couple years ago. Because I had referred to the magazine (numerous times) on my blog, she thought I might know how to track the pattern down. As it turns out, I had the issue with the pattern in it, and I knew I would never use the pattern, so I offered to remove it from the magazine and send it to her (it was on a separate tear-out sheet). She asked if I wanted her to knit me a hat in return. Of course I did. She asked what color. I told her to surprise me.) The hat came yesterday. Yay, pink!



I really like it.

The other good thing that happened was at Youth Group. Before we started (while we were finishing dinner), the minister walked in. He said "There are a couple people we need to recognize tonight." He had a piece of paper in his hand and I thought "Oh, some of the kids made the honor roll at school or had some good accomplishment in sports, and he's going to mention it. That's nice."

I was mistaken. It was me, and my co-leader, and the guy who's kind of been the purse-strings and the motivator (and our driver for several trips) that were being recognized. We each got an engraved pen and pencil set.

Later on, I found out it was not the minister's idea to do that, it was the kids.

They can be really ornery sometimes, but they're good kids. They have interesting discussion in class, and sometimes they're really funny and sweet. I'm glad I do this. And the pen and pencil set makes me happy, it's something tangible I can look at when I get into the "I never win teaching or research awards on campus, I stink" mindset - because, I'm doing something even more important in my free time, and people recognize that what I'm doing has value.