This weekend was one of the most beautiful, fun and spiritually uplifting weekends I have had in a long time, which says a lot because the past few weekends have been absolutely wonderful. 

On Saturday, right around the time that conference was through (which I will talk about in a later post), I opened my door to see my favorite people in the world for the first time in five weeks.

Words cannot explain how happy I felt to see each of them! They made the long, this time, 19-hour drive to see me (detours and other things made the drive a lot longer than it was supposed to be. My poor brothers must have been so darn bored). 

We went and stayed in Salt-Lake for the weekend. I kind of felt like I was on vacation or something because the whole Utah Valley is still new to me!

One thing I love about my family is how totally chill they are. We don't need to have stuff planned, we don't really even have rules on vacation. We just do whatever we feel like, and go explore around. Which was exactly what we did!

We drove up the canyon to Park City, and saw all of the beautiful leaves changing color. 

We also stumbled upon some people practicing their skiing-off-a-ramp-and-into-water sport (sorry, I don't know the real name of it) at Olympic Park, where the winter Olympics were at in 2002. It was way cool. 

Gunnar is being blocked by my giant...whatever strange hairstyle I've got going on...poor kid. 

The Mesa temple will always be "my" temple, but i'd be lying if I said the Salt lake Temple isn't absolutely stunning and breathtakingly gorgeous. Oh, and I ran into Chelsi, the classiest sassiest Asian I know. 

They left today, and it was hard saying goodbye all over again. I, like I too-often am, was an emotional wreck for about a good three hours. But I can't wait till Thanksgiving comes and I get to see them and my lovely Arizona desert again (I miss that beautiful warm place).

I am so grateful for families! I feel like they are becoming more and more unimportant in our society today (which I will also talk about in a later post). But truly, they are the happiest and best thing in the world. 

When they are far away from you? Ya, it sucks. Just like it is sometimes hard that Kurtis is gone, that my friends and cousins from home aren't here to hang out with, and so on. But sometimes it is a good thing, because you realize how blessed you are to have something so wonderful to miss. 

I'd give that weekend six stars out of five. 

Here's to a wonderful new week full of studying and mid-terms. 

Please guys, wish me luck. 

xo