Psst ... hi! It's me, Scottie Andrew, filling in for AJ this week. As usual, expect cute animals below.

I recently burned some cookies. I was trying, futilely, to bake hamantaschen, cookies customarily served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. I did most everything wrong. My poor little mixer nearly started smoking trying to combine the slab of ossified dough. The stubborn dough then stuck to the counter even after I floured it. I tried to shape the cookies into neat little triangles with a dollop of raspberry filling, but most of them ended up looking like bulging red teardrops. I waited to remove the cookies from the oven until they turned golden, which must've been too long because they took on the texture of concrete. They were ugly, poor excuses for dessert. But I ate them. I chewed, considered my mistakes, and swallowed. They weren't great. But, for all my failings, they weren't terrible, either; the raspberry filling was probably the only thing I did right. I certainly learned what not to do, and the experience reinforced for me that I'm far better suited for banana bread. It takes a lot of burned cookies to keep a determined baker out of the kitchen. I'll sooner burn another batch than abandon the hobby for good.

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Our favorites this week

Get going with some of our most popular good news stories of the week

The first hug is the deepest
A hug from a grandparent is a very specific kind of touch: They're occasionally stifling, usually warm and often last longer than you're comfortable with. The ever-cruel pandemic took away those hugs from us and grandparents everywhere — but now, one year after our world changed, some vaccinated grandparents are making up for all the hugs lost to 2020.

Evelyn Shaw's granddaughter Ateret surprised her in her apartment in the Bronx, holding a doctor's note prescribing a hug. The two (pictured above) stood in the apartment, holding each other and crying — Evelyn said she hadn't been hugged in a year. She'll said she'll remember the surprise for the rest of her life.

Theirs and many more hugs were compiled in an emotional clip full of grandchildren bouncing with joy and their weeping grandparents. If you're prepared to cry a bit yourself, grab a tissue (a sleeve will do, too), press play and let the tears flow.

A taste of normalcy, dressed in PPE
Across the pond, residents of nursing homes are once again holding hands, planting kisses on each other's cheeks and enjoying trips beyond their rooms since the pandemic began. CNN peeked into some very heartfelt reunions at UK nursing homes after Britain allowed residents to receive one visitor (under some strict guidelines, including a negative Covid-19 test). The results were deeply moving.

Eighty-nine-year-old David Alexander hadn't seen his wife Sheila in person since October. Wearing rubber gloves, a plastic apron and, of course, a surgical mask, he gripped his wife's hand tightly and gifted her a bunch of daffodils from their home garden.

George Baulch had been cooped up in his care home since the pandemic began, banned from venturing beyond the building's courtyard. So his first outing into the English countryside with his fellow residents filled him with hope he hadn't felt in a year.

"We've been locked up for weeks and weeks and weeks," he told CNN. "(I) never thought it was going to happen again for us. And now we're here."

They found 2020's silver lining

This week marked a certain unwelcome anniversary, one that still feels sort of inconceivable even as we continue to live through it. But it's heartening to know that, despite the pandemic and the pain it's wrought, so many people found ways to blossom anyway.

Lizette Cortez, an immigration lawyer in Texas, did the seemingly impossible and opened her own law firm in the first few months of the pandemic. She started small, meeting a few clients remotely, until she opened her first physical office near Dallas and plans to open another. Her first client, fittingly, was her own mother, who she helped apply for US citizenship.

Vaccines will change our lives, once they're widely available, and it's only a matter of time until we can laugh and hug and be together again without fear. Maybe then, more of us will have our own silver linings to share.

Raise a glass to...

The young women of Boy Scouts! This year, the scouting organization welcomed its inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts, the highest rank a Boy Scout can earn. More than 1,000 young women and girls make up this year's Eagle Scouts, a distinction achieved only after earning 21 merit badges, assuming a leadership role and running a large service project — all before the age of 18. That's a lot to ask of a high schooler, so only around 6% of Boy Scouts ever graduate to Eagles. Now, count young women like Ysa Duenas among the hard-working few. For her project, the 17-year-old created foot-operated sanitation machines for her local YMCA.

It hasn't always been easy for the first girls of Boy Scouts — Duenas and others told CNN that the boys in their troops didn't want them there, so they found camaraderie with their fellow female Scouts instead. "Being able to have that community of, you know, strong independent women who were able to drive themselves empowered me," the Eagle Scout said. May she and her fellow Eagles soar to even greater heights next.

You gotta see this

Reptiles aren't cute in a traditional sense, but appreciation for their scaly sweetness is long past due. Take, for example, this smiley serpent. It's got not one, but THREE orange smiley faces stamped on its skin — just TRY and find a puppy that can boast the same! The smiles came about by accident, breeder Justin Kobylka told CNN, in an attempt to create another pattern during breeding. This lavender albino piebald ball python hatched with a happy face (or three) anyway, perhaps Mother Nature's way of imploring snake haters to open their hearts to the legless wonders. The beady-eyed beauty sold for a whopping $6,000 — because in the reptilian world, apparently, happiness does have a price.

Heroes among us

Nine years ago, Wesley Hamilton got caught up in an altercation with a stranger outside an apartment complex. He was shot twice, and the resulting injuries left him paralyzed from the waist down. Like many survivors, he struggled with his new reality, and suffered physical and psychological complications from his inactivity. It was his daughter, Navaeh, who ultimately became his lifeline. "I was determined to be a better person and a better father," Hamilton says. "My love for her is greater than she'll ever know. And that love inspired me to ... take control of my life." Hamilton ended up studying nutrition, started a healthy eating regimen and took up weightlifting. He lost 100 pounds within a year. But that was only the beginning. He then became an award-winning adaptive athlete and eventually a certified adaptive CrossFit instructor. Since 2017, his non-profit, Disabled But Not Really, has empowered dozens of people through adaptive physical training and nutrition coaching — helping them take their health back into their own hands and rise above their limitations.

Wanna get away?

Welcome to Labaun Bajo, the gateway to Indonesia's dragon archipelago. The name means "Place Where the Sea Gypsies Stop Over," but for travelers looking for rich nature and balmy peach sunsets, they're more likely to stay awhile than skip through. The town also marks the beginning of Komodo National Park, a flurry of volcanically upthrust islands and coral reef off the coast of Indonesia's Flores island, that it holds UNESCO World Heritage status. You're familiar with Komodo dragons, right? They live just nearby, on Komodo island.

Who knew?

Decapitation: It's not just for cockroaches! Sea slugs, too, can survive beheading (and often behead themselves) before they regrow THE REST OF THEIR BODIES! The resilient little gastropods can remake everything, from their hearts to the tips of their tails, a mechanism they may use if their former body was infected by a parasite. Researchers found that some slugs took just 20 days to regenerate, and one particularly brazen slug regrew its own body TWICE! The things we do for perfection.