Three beautiful things from my past week all involve my volleyball friends:

1. Sergio and his wife are having a baby this month, and a bunch of us went in on a group gift. We had agreed to a plan, which included my taking care of the ordering. I knew the money would follow, but yesterday and today it started to pour in and kept doing so. Today, I got to go and buy some extra books to zero us out. When we presented him with the gift and he read everyone’s messages, he nearly broke down and I got a touching email from him when he got home to open some of the gifts with his wife.

2. Chris proposed to his girlfriend last week and she said yes.

3. My friends Neal and Amy agreed to take part in a literary scavenger hunt with me last weekend. We solved riddles, clues, and puns and visited a number of literary-themed sites (including the main library, where I finally got to ride the slide!) It helps to be able to ignore the signs stating there’s an age limit when you have a tweet from the head librarian giving you the green light. It ended up being such a blast, and while Amy is moving away, I think Neal would do it again with me next year.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?