I live in Thanksgiving daily....

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone and I'm still full of thanks. On my mission I had an affirmation that I loved and adored and thought was absolutely hilarious. I got it from a scripture in Alma. My affirmation said, "I live in Thanksgiving daily.....and I eat like it too!" Not exactly the most spiritual but it made me smile. I didn't take the opportunity to tell anyone what I was thankful for this year, so now I'm going to. I'm omitting the obvious ones such as the gospel, my family, friends, house, job, my mission, America...you know the ones that I am thankful for but I'd like to focus on the smaller things that bring me joy. Here we go...

1. The sound of snow falling off the trees onto my umbrella. I was walking home the other day after it snowed and I walked under a tree and the snow falling off the tree onto my umbrella was the coolest sound. I'm not going to lie, the first time it scared me, but then I found myself going out of my way to walk under trees. I can't even type the sound it made, but it was wonderful.

2. Nutella and Pretzels. WOW! seriously, this is heaven in my mouth. I loooove it! I can't even explain how many endorphins were released when I discovered this goodness.

3. Compliments from cute boys. Who am I kidding, compliments from anyone are wonderful, but when it comes from a cute boy! Oh baby oh baby...nothin' better!

4. Children's laughter. Can you really hold it in when you hear a child laughing. The alarm on my phone is of one of my nieces laughing and I'm 100% sure that's one of the reasons I'm learning to be a tolerable morning person. I love how they laugh at just about anything.

5. Hookie 5. That's my favorite game. I love it! Even though my neighbors get mad at us for being to loud, it's totally worth it. Wanna play?

6. Fresh Bread. Come one come all, GET IN MY BELLY!! I know it's something to be eaten in moderation, but so is everything else! I eat fish VERY MODERATELY, like none at all, so I feel that for as much fish as I don't eat, I get to make up for that in eating bread.

7. Music. There aren't many genres that I don't like. Sometimes I consider myself a walking jukebox. Yes yes, Pandora and I are basically Best Friends.

8. Being simple minded. The other night I had one of the best nights ever! It was completely free too! Some of the most wonderful people I know were all in my apartment. We watched a silly movie while we were waiting for Jana to get home from her date. After the movie, we were just talking (and when I say talking I really mean paint balling the sidewalk with paint balls and my slingshot.) when Angela and I decided to build a fort out of the kitchen chairs and blankets. We climbed inside with our trustee mascot Judice, Kade, Rebecca, and Youtube. We giggled because every time we heard the slightest noise outside we figured it was them and we went from laughing hysterically at some movie to complete silence. OK, not complete...hello it's us! That's impossible to be completely silent around us. Silence is humor with us. When she finally got home, after an awkward moment involving a bodily function and fort rearranging, we decided that it would be a riot to learn the dance from the movie we just watched. Below is the evidence...

We should make a movie now because we are so much better! Well, I should say that I am so much better. Kade has always been amazing.

9. Steamers! Yum! They are at 7-11 by the hot chocolate. 1.06 for the smallest one. My friend Matt and I always get them and they definitely bring smiles to my face and warmth to my body.

10. Nicknames. I feel such a connection and bond for those that I give nicknames to and with those that give me names. A few of my favorites would be that each one in my family has a different name for me. My dad calls me Willa, mom calls me Beelers, Jamie calls me Julz, Jodi calls me Julia-Boolia, Darci calls me Bee, Emily calls me Goonie, and Morgan calls me Jewee. I love nicknames. The stories of how they come about are fantastic! (Most of the time that is.)

I am definitely thankful for much much more but I'm pooped...and also tired. So for tonight I say BEANS AND NACHOS! (that means goodnight in Juliaeese!)

My life is like Hookie 5...

I love Hookie 5 (now I think it's called Wackey 6, and if you talk to my friend Sean he calls it loco quatros) In Hookie 5 which, according to the box, is "an excellent game for young women and children!" Anyway, most of the time it's a fairly fast paced moving game. You can work with a partner or you can be on your own team. You're racing against others trying to reach the same goal. Sometimes the other players will lay down just what you need so you can get a step ahead, and sometimes those other players beat ya to what you needed to do. How does this relate to my life you might ask? I don't know. But what I do know is that I love trying to figure out the different ways in life to achieve my goals when another player beats me to what I needed to do. So, here's what's going on. I met Trevor in January in the temple at my mission companion's wedding and I've have had a crush on him ever since. This is fairly odd, OK not fairly odd, but extremely odd because the longevity of my crushes rarely last 15 minutes. So for me to be interested in someone since January is quit the feat. I've always liked him and he's always liked me but we vary in the degrees of "likeness." Sometimes I like him a lot more than he likes me and sometimes he likes me a lot more than I like him. This past summer our timing was on and we officially dated this summer but we broke up when I moved back up here to Logan for school. Since then we've still been super good friends and this past little while we have been on the same page in likeness, or so I thought. Long story short, I was under the impression that we were going to get back together and I was really excited about that but when I brought it up he explained that he couldn't date me because he's got a lot going on right now and he's got a lot of health problems. I was of course sad, but OK with it. He's not the normal boy in that sense. If he says he still wants to be friends, he will. I really appreciate that about him. So since then when we had our little D.T.R (define the relationship) I tried to get over him because I knew it wasn't going anywhere, but he started treating me just as he had before like when we were dating so it made the getting over him part harder. Anyway, this past week, not to be cliche but "the ball was in his court!" He didn't really attempt to contact me. The few times I talked to him it was because I initiated conversation through text messages. I guess why this is so hard for me is because I've been getting so many mixed signals from him. He has no intent on pursuing a relationship with me but he sends me sweet messages, holds my hand, bought me a 30.00 SWEATER, and as a joke he took me ring shopping. Do you blame me for being a girl and being confused on the status of our relationship? I hadn't heard from him in like 2 and 1/2 days when last night he texted me this message. " Hey how was your week? OK, so I'm just going to tell you this now. Some days I like you and others I don't so let's just plan on being friends. Sorry I know this is random to say this but hey I might as well tell you this so you can move onto other relationships that come your way. I've just been thinkin a lot about us and that's the conclusion I ended up with. But you're awesome!!!" OK, let's just pause here a moment. WHAT THE HECK!!!! I can't explain how many emotions I have felt since he told me that. I wasn't a jerk back to him, but I definitely let him know that I wasn't extremely happy about this little situation we were in. So, that's what's going on with Trevor. If we were playing Hookie 5, this would be a situation in which someone just went out and I still had all 12 cards in my pile left.

Hooplah...of the Julia sort.

So, lately my life has been crazy, wonderful, crazy-wonderful, stressful, bliss, basically you name the emotion and it has managed to weave itself into my life life these past few weeks. Here's the update. Halloween was OK. I've decided it's not my favorite holiday. I enjoy dressing up but I definitely have to be in the mood. I love the colors and smells of fall, but I don't particularly enjoy Halloween. We managed to make it eventful none the less. Our ward had a costume contest/party/meat market mingle/FHE the Monday before Halloween. Thanks to Darci, Jamie got to me my Mr. Yes yes, I was Mrs. Potato head, and Jamie was my Mr. Potato head. We wowed the other ward members with our amazingness and ended up winning the contest. That was fantastic because the prize was dinner from the bishopric. On the actual Halloween day, I spent the morning studying for my giant sociology test. (I'll have you know I only missed 8. That was pretty dang good. I'm quite proud of this!) So I studied for a while, when I heard a knock at the door and it was my friend Niels. He's my home teacher and also dating my roommate Sarah. She wasn't home so he sat down and chatted for a while. While he was there we heard another knock at the door and whom should appear? That's right, the cutest little 50's kid's you've ever seen. (Except when I was a 50's girl.) We had a grand ol' time with the Johnson kids. After they left I studied for a bit more then had to go to work. When I got home, we already had plans to have a little girls night/anti-Halloween party. My friend Rochelle and Jamie and I watched a movie and ate Ore's. It was splendid. That was my Halloween. Good, but just another day. Oh! The day before, my friend Matt Smitheram came down from Pocatello to visit. We were just playin at Jamie's apartment when she got asked to go babysit the Adam's kids (Brother Adams is the 1st councilor in the bishopric in my ward.) When they (Jamie and Rochelle) left Matt and I decided they couldn't come back to a normal apartment. So we tried to build a tower out of books in the middle of their apartment but we didn't have enough books and the books we did have weren't strong enough to make a tower that would please Matt and I. So....I had some leftover string in my apartment and so we decided to string their apartment. We had so much fun. We turned up the music and made a giant spiderweb-thing.

I'm not sure that these pictures do it justice for how cool it looked. So that was fun to do. They left it up for a while but their one roommate got frustrated with it and took it down. Good times were had by all. The next adventure would be our "Bride and Prejudice night." It's the story of Pride and Prejudice told by Indians from India. Of course we had to dress up for such an event so we invited our neighbor boys and a few other friends and danced our little hearts away trying to learn the amazing dances they have in the movie. We even put a dot on Judice the cat. She's our apartment mascot. We love her.

So, that basically brings us up to speed on what's going on in my life. Work is good, school is stressful beyond all belief but good still the same.