Hello again! Happy to be back. It's been just over a month since my first blog post. Let it be known that this posting-once-a-month is not going to be a regular thing...

In my last blog post I mentioned how I might want to use this blog to discuss the bloomabilities found in film. Well, on this first #FilmFriday I've decided to highlight a clip found in 13 Going on 30.

13 Going on 30 is a wonderfully cheesy, classic chick flick that just so happens to be one of my favorites:

We need to remember what used to be good.

Jennifer Garner's phrase floated back into my mind soon after my husband Jordan and I moved to California last August to begin a new adventure. I was unpacking and organizing all of our belongings in our new apartment, when I decided to open up and explore the contents of a giant chest my older sister had given me years earlier. Over time I've used the beautiful, big box to hold memorabilia that has been meaningful to me.

I got lost looking at photos of my children in Ecuador, paintings by my dad and little sister, old cards and letters from close friends, airline tickets from my early college years, and lots of little things people would consider junk like old dishwashing jabón, a basket made from palm leaves, cheap Hawaii heart sunglasses, and even five-year-old Amazon chocolate.

I began reading some of my old writings I had etched on scraps of paper. Most were about how I felt about the children who served me while I was volunteering in Ecuador. I traveled back five and a half years ago to the 18/19-year-old me. A lot has changed since that summer. But looking back, I remembered what used to be good: the way the children would squeeze the happiness into me with their tight warm hugs, the way my Savior Jesus Christ was my pillar of light, the way I wasn't afraid to toss around quotations in any eclectic matter on my messy speech notes...

Sometimes, when I look back, I realize how much I've left behind. A feeling of nostalgia washes over me. I yearn to go back to my five-year-old self, my nine-year-old me, my sixteen-year-old Allie. I wonder if I was better then than I am now.

What used to be good is still good. We need to remember that and hold our memories sacred, using the past to bloom into our present selves, so that our future will hold no regrets.

—Alexandra