this is the greatest christmas!

The title of this post is inspired by The Greatest Showman which was phenomenal and definitely the sound track behind these moments and probably most moments to come. BEST MOVIE. 

@ contact music

It seems like everyone I know is really connecting with one of the many themes of the movie. The best thing about the movie for me is its message of making your own happiness through hard work, creativity, and a positive attitude. Anything can be the GREATEST if you make it.

Every night I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it's gonna take
A million dreams for the world we're gonna make.

-a million dreams.

LOVE you, hugh! ;)

and here we go, Christmas 2017 in review

the borscht
Every year during December, our ward does a combined Sunday worship with the Catholics. I've never seen anything like this in all my years as a member of the church and I think it's just the greatest! I volunteered to make soup for the shindig afterwards. I wanted to get rid of a bunch of red cabbage, so I texted my cousin Romney for her favorite borscht recipe from Russia. It turned out lovely, with a rich red color thanks to the cabbage and beets. The recipe called for a whole chopped onion and it was the most acidic onion I had ever encountered in my entire life. I was a flooding faucet! Mascara all over my face. Giuseppe walked into the kitchen and said, "you look like a doofus!"

During the meeting the next day, I noticed a friar in his white robes. I imagined him eating my borscht in the flimsy little foam bowls that were sure to be used and spilling it all over himself! What a nightmare. Later, as the shindig was winding down, he came over and sat by us! And what do you know, he had a flimsy bowl full of bright red borscht! Turns out he's Polish and borscht is a traditional Christmas dish in his culture. He was delighted to see it at the party! He loved my borscht, he told me he wouldn't change a thing about the recipe. I was really pleased with how I creatively asked, "So, what would you do differently?" to figure out if it was good or not. Luckily he ate it successfully and we all became great friends.

the sweetest gift exchange
I had the greatest night with my old roommates! We dined at Terra Mia in Provo and then chatted late into the night at Ally's apartment. We did a gift exchange and seriously, they were the most thoughtful gifts. Madi gave me a handwritten note that said, "I want to wear his initial on a chain 'round my neck, not because he owns me. But cause he really knows me" and a little necklace with a G on it! SWEETEST gift ever. Kylie, of course, created a work of art for us that I'll have hanging up forever. Good friends are the best.

the mysterious tipper
One Friday afternoon during my lunch shift at the sushi restaurant, I waited on a particularly finicky table of 6. The old lady who paid for everyone was very demanding and I was constantly running around fulfilling her random requests. I did a really good job, got everything out quickly, removed used plates and trash from the table promptly, and I was super charming. The greatest waitress. Anyway, after they left and I picked up the checkbook from the table, I noticed she took ALL of the receipts, meaning I had no way of adjusting a tip for her bill! I was so bugged. The restaurant had been so slow that afternoon and I was relying on that table to make the shift worth it. Well anyway, I shouldn't have fretted for so long because later couple tipped us TWO hundred dollars on their little $40 tab and said "Merry Christmas!' Aren't people the NICEST?!

christmas eve
We drove up to Brigham City early on the 24th to go to church with Laura. Afterwards at her home, a doorbell ditcher came by and dropped off the last gift of an anonymous 12 Days of Christmas. Mama Hess was more irritated than gleeful over her stash of trinkets. We watched her unwrap about 8 of the presents she had shoved into the corner that had piled up from the last week. "What am I going to do with all this stuff?" We ended up walking away with a terrarium, a puzzle, and a box of things to go to DI! She did, however, love the leather key clip Giuseppe got her.

a christmas SHOCK
Giuseppe TOTALLY spoiled me on Christmas morning. I was getting a little sad to be honest, because I knew he wasn't hiding any gifts in the appartment- I had deep cleaned multiple times. I thought he might be pulling a Valentine's Day Giuseppe, which means that he doesn't get me anything. However he totally came through with things I LOVE, such as a super long, sturdy yoga mat, a new sports bra, TWO candles from Anthro, a hand cream in my favorite scent (Florence by Tocca), a new lip balm, a romper, and.... PLANE TICKETS TO ROME. I was shocked. Confused. In a large Tumi box, I had opened several gifts from him and I was ready to discard the empty box. "There's something else in there..." he said casually. I saw a Rick Steves Rome travel guide and boarding pass-looking things with the United Airlines logo but it didn't make sense. Half of me was saying, "you're going to Rome. YOU'RE GOING TO ROME." But it just seemed too unrealistic. So I had the lamest reaction, just reading the itinerary over and over saying, "what? What? WHAAAT!?" Once I finally accepted reality, I squealed and jumped and kissed and celebrated. Isn't that the BEST Christmas surprise in the world?! We leave on January 18th! I spent the rest of the day planning our trip. I just CANNOT wait!! 

fun house
One evening I got together with Liz & Tate, Brett, Luke, and his girlfriend Savannah. My high school clan! We met at my parents. Brett was late, so we prepared a warm welcome for him. He gets scared super easily, so we turned off all the lights in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I played the Insidious soundtrack softly in the background and placed Suzi Kin, the mannequin head from high school we demonized, on the table to glow under the dimmed chandelier. I hid under the dining room table prepared to grab Brett's leg as he walked by. Everyone else hid in a different corner of the dark room ready to jump out at him. We texted Brett and told him we were all in the middle of a game in the basement and to just come downstairs. Unfortunately when he opened the door, the soft eery music alerted him that something was off. He stood his ground on the porch. "I am NOT coming in! I am not falling for this! I am NOT coming in!" He yelled about his refusal to come in for several minutes before Luke, pretending to come up from the basement, came to the door and told him his yelling was causing a ruckus and he didn't know where the light switches were and that Ava was just listening to some weird music. He finally convinced Brett to come inside. He bolted through the house but I still managed to pop out from under the table and hiss at him devilishly. His scream was satisfying to us all.

saying YES <3
Later that evening when Giuseppe joined us after work, we decided to pull another prank. It's our thing! I highly doubt the person that we pranked would ever read this blog, so I'll write about it comfortably here. :) A friend of ours who had long since graduated high school was working an evening shift. We found his car in the parking lot of the business and covered it in cotton balls (water freezes them on in the cold!) and a note that said something ridiculous along the lines of, "I cotton not say no to going to PROM with you!" Hahaha.

goodbye 2017
we spent new year's eve at my parent's house. Unfortunately I was sick with swollen glands and a cold and I napped for a chunk of the evening while everyone else played games. I came out in time to see everyone dancing to eighties music. Of course Giuseppe was stealing the show, I don't know where he got his moves from but he's seriously so good. I played a bunch of rounds of Skip Bo with Callie, Giuseppe, and Ava. My mom told us about the woes of Tonya Harding. And then finally it was almost midnight! We counted down from ten while watching the ball drop in Times Square and as soon as it struck midnight, Ava blasted New Year's Day from her bluetooth speaker. It was hilarious as we all ran outside hollering and banging on pots and pans with fireworks going off in the distance, and then Taylor's soft piano music echoing through the house. Love you Taylor! 

TWO YEARS
I love how much we have changed over the past two years. I feel like such a different person from my 19-year-old self and honestly I couldn't be happier about that. There are so many things I want to become and I feel like I'm on the right track to becoming them. Our relationship is so much different too and that's definitely for the better. I love change. 

We celebrated our second wedding anniversary with handwritten letters, dinner, window shopping, and a movie. It was a perfect day, and the perfect end to a perfect Christmas break!

...this is where you wanna be

College Kids

I have a wretchedly sore throat today, so I’m skipping school and catching up on some things. Here’s what’s been going on since I last posted:

I started my senior year a couple weeks ago and I love this semester. I’m taking four French classes and one linguistics class. Two of my French classes are super challenging literature classes and the other two are grammar/translation classes. The grammar/translation ones are sooo fun! I always do the homework for those classes first because I’m so excited. The literature classes vary on enjoyment, depending on what we’re reading. I really don’t like reading epics from the 1500s!! I hated reading those in English and its even harder in old French. But a lot of the later stuff I really enjoy, even if it’s hard to understand. I think by the time I get my degree I will be better read in French classics than in English classics. Formidable!

I’m going to start observing/helping in an ESL class at SLCC later this week, so I’m excited about that. I did a similar project last semester at an elementary school and loved it. I love my majors!

After over a month of babysitting and half-heartedly looking for a job, I landed a position as a waitress at a sushi restaurant! Giuseppe wanted to make a boxed cake we had, but we didn’t have any frosting, so we went to the grocery store. Near the grocery store is a little sushi restaurant with a “looking for servers” sign, so I walked in and 24 hours later I was starting my first shift!

This is actually a dream come true for me haha. I’ve always wanted to be a waitress. Is that lame? I figured I might as well fulfill that dream before I get my college degree! I work weekends and nights, so that isn’t idea but so far it’s the only drawback of the job! The best part? I get fed FREE sushi every Friday and Saturday between my lunch and dinner shift!! They could just pay me in sushi and I’d still work there. Waitressing is kind of hard and stressful, and the kitchen menu is pretty complicated to memorize, but I know I’ll get the hang of it. The other day a man I wasn’t serving asked me to come over to his table. He pointed to his chicken plate and told me, “I didn’t order this.” I called over the waitress who was serving him and he said, “I thought I ordered the (soup)?” but he said the Japanese name for this specific soup. She said, “Yeah that’s what this,” and she repeated the name of the dish he had just said. “Oh. I thought I was ordering ramen.” “Oh, you may have meant the —-,” and she said the name of a type of Japanese Ramen, which was pronounced exactly like the chicken dish but with a slight variation. She just looked at him kind of like, “Yeah, well, this is what you said.” Haha I guess that’s how we do things here?

The poor man was so embarrassed over his “grand pronunciation error” and agreed to eat the meal he had ordered. But then the waitress took the plate and said, “no, no, we’ll bring your ramen right out.”

Giuseppe started school yesterday. He just has two classes until he finishes his business associates at LDSBC in December! He’s not sure how he feels about his IT class yet but his business strategy class sounds interesting. He’s still working full time at Tumi, which I love because he always looks so nice and he manages to get me discounts at Anthropologie and Sephora! Giuseppe likes it too, though of course retail hours are not ideal. He’s started doing some financial advising training, and he’s looking into possible career options in that field. Go G!

We went to California right before I started school. We had so much fun! We stayed with my cousin Carly for a night in St. George, and then ended up in Orange County early Friday afternoon. 

We visited Giuseppe’s grandpa, Les, in the house G spent most of his childhood in. Les asked us if we wanted to go to Disneyland for FREE that afternoon and I was all for it. Giuseppe was kind of on the fence but after I convinced him to stop being boring, we drove over there and had SO MUCH FUN! We had delicious food, went on our favorite rides (Pirates, Indiana Jones, Space Mountain, California Screaming) and more, watched World of Color, and just had a blast. Thanks Les! 

This banana salted carmel Ghirardelli shake is haunting me. 

On Saturday morning we went to brunch with Giuseppe’s friend Brendon and his wife Amanda and their adorable one-year-old baby Macy. Amanda works as a head waitress at a yummy diner, so we ate for free! Maybe I’ll be cool like her one day and be a head waitress. Unfortunately she had to work, but the four of us headed to Newport Beach! For the first time in my life I tried boogie boarding and it was so fun! I wasn’t very good at it at first, but Giuseppe taught me how to do it and I followed his lead. I caught one wave (haha) and you better believe I talked about my “sick wave” for weeks afterwards. 

After the beach we headed over to the Simco’s (Giuseppe’s older sister and her husband. They have four kids) production of The Little Mermaid. It was so cute! I also got to meet Addison and Michael too, Vinny’s (another of Giuseppe’s brothers) kids. They were so cute. All of the Hess kids turn out stunning. The play was cute, Baily played the lobster, John was the prince, Autumn was the seagull, and baby Liam wasn’t in the play and wanted nothing to do with me haha. After the play we went to a park and met some more of Sarah’s family. We stayed over at their home that night where Baily made a delicious dessert and we played games and chatted. I wish we could have stayed longer, it’s weird to me that I have a brother-in-law and sister-in-law and nieces and nephews in California that I hardly know. On Sunday morning we met up with some more of Giuseppe’s friends, went to church, and then had dinner with the Madsen’s, a good family of Giuseppe’s. I got to meet Brigham, one of Giuseppe’s friends whom he hasn’t seen in years and get to know their really cool family. Then we headed home, arriving back in Salt Lake around 3 am. Such a fun trip!

Something weird happened on the first day of school for me, which also happened to be the same day as the eclipse. My class started at 11:50, about 15 minutes after the eclipse reached its peak in Salt Lake. I walked into class just 10 minutes late and nobody was there! I thought that was weird, especially because none of my other classes that day were cancelled. I checked online and there was no announcement or email that class was cancelled. I sat around for a bit, assuming people would trickle in later and that we would all be late because of the eclipse. As I sat in the classroom, I realized a lone word was written on the chalk board: l’ombre. This means shadow. I got even more confused. Did that mean class was cancelled because of the shadow of the eclipse? Haha I’ll never know. I eventually left. When I went to class on Wednesday, everyone jumped right into a discussion of a book they had all started reading. Still, nothing was posted online. I caught up after that, but it was a really weird way to start that class. The mystery of the shadow. 

We started working out again, it’s been almost a year since we gave this any team effort. I am kind of disgusted by how long I went without exercising. My body felt so weak and tired for so long but ever since starting up again I feel amazing! Exercise is not a natural habit for either of us, which is a shame, but I am dedicated to making it a habit. So far we’ve just been doing at-home Beachbody workout videos which are so fun! I’m sure we’ll branch out later, but for right now we are really enjoying the Beachbody videos. I prefer strength training over cardio. Although occasionally I’ll go on a little “run” if I discover an upbeat song that I really like. I usually only like slow, sad songs though haha. The other night I was really wanting to do an upper body workout because my arms are PATHETIC, but we don’t have any weights. I knew the upper body video had at least a few moves that required weights, so I gathered our two bluetooth speakers which are roughly the same weight for Giuseppe, and a hand held mirror and candle that were roughly the same weight for me. Giuseppe thought this was the most ridiculous idea and refused to do it :( So my limp noodle arms are his fault. We will be buying weights later this week for sure though.

We went to a cute outdoor market one evening and bought local snacks and treats. We found a cool booth selling ties and we made friends with the creators. They are a young married couple and we just thought they were the coolest! You can look up their company on instagram @kasnkels. Giuseppe bought this tie as well as a leather key clip that is waaaaay better looking than the ratty lanyard he used when we were dating haha. He wore his cool bolo tie to church the next day.

I convinced Giuseppe to buy us a marked down Harry Potter puzzle we found at Barnes and Noble. I LOVE doing puzzles, and Giuseppe was nice enough to agree to do one with me. It was so fun! We talked, watched/listened to our latest Netflix obsession “Paranormal Survivor”, and ate delicious snacks. Now we’re on our second puzzle: a panorama of Times Square!

I should probably mention that we moved into a new apartment when I came home from France. We live in family student housing next to the U campus, and it’s pretty good. It’s cheap, so that’s nice. But the linoleum floor and lack of A/C is killing me! I’m really looking forward to being a homeowner one day. Student life is a sacrifice.

I spent one evening with my friends Jodie and Alissa in Midway. We drove Jodie’s jeep up to one of my favorite places in the world, Guardsman Pass, and had a little picnic. Jodie just got engaged to a really great guy and Alissa just headed off to spend the semester in Jerusalem! I have such cool friends.

My bff Mailm (Brooke, long story) came back from her mission in the Philippines while I was in France, but her family moved to Texas while she was gone so I didn’t get to see her until a couple weeks ago! We sat at Cubby’s for like five hours and did the usual Mailm & Mose: eating fries and desserts while talking about everything under the sun. Haha it was so great!

On Memorial Day G and I were have a lazy morning, cuddling and snacking and shirking responsibility. Then Giuseppe started to get ready for work and his mom called to announce she was on her way to Salt Lake! We met her at the train station, she bought Giuseppe some lunch, and then she and I headed on the train to Provo to meet up with my family. We went to Vivian park with my dad’s side of the family for a picnic. Laura is so funny! An ice cream truck drove by and she yelled, “kids! kids! who wants some ice cream?!” and then she ran towards the truck waving a ten-dollar bill in the air. The little cousins followed her and they came back with a bag full of popsicles. It was such a fun day! I love spending time with my mother-in-law, she is a ray of sunshine, full of funny stories and life lessons.

Last week we got the opportunity to watch Vin and it was SO fun! I was so excited to see him. I was wondering if he would remember me after our almost three month break. He was so funny when he saw me, he acted totally nonchalant, like he didn’t even see me. I tried saying hi but he would just look away, and then I’d catch him glancing at me. He allowed me to hold him and he warmed up to me really fast. We had such a fun night together singing and throwing balls around! I love that little boy.

I got together with my roommates again and it was perfect! I predict we'll be having these girls nights until we all die. Stephanie is pregnant with a baby boy! So maybe this isn't technically a girls night?? Chew on that.

Also, the sun was super rad the night we got together because of all the fires in Utah. 

I am realizing I have titled this blog:

NOTHING LIKE US
Giuseppe & Katrina

yet all of the posts are all pretty much about my life. I mean I write about G’s life to the best of my ability, but I can’t just project his opinions and feelings for him, can I? Maybe I’ll see if I can get him to write a blog post. I don’t think he even reads this thing though.

And to finish this post up, here's a selfie because after all this blog is all about me ;)

Au revoir!

Throwback: Life in the 307

Last night I spent time with some of my FAVORITE people...

My old roommates!

In celebration a our eighteen month anniversary (ish) of us being friends, let's take a look back on some of our memories:

This is the note we left on the door for the pizza guy just a couple days after we all moved in.

Bridal Veil Falls adventure!

Driving to the ward campout!

Madi turns 19

A trip to our favorite Gelato place, Amelia's

Dinner at my parent's:

Photoshoot with Kylie:

Kylie studying with Shane

Kylie's yoga mat made her look like Katniss, we so had a little photoshoot before school:

I'm including this picture because a. I am wearing Kylie's clothes (I miss her closet!!!) and b. This was taken MOMENTS before G came to pick me up for our first date! I don't know who I sent this to and what I was talking about but whoooo cares.

Megabed! This lasted for a week

Ally sent me this creeper pic of AL, the interesting man I tutored.

Stephanie and Daniel studying!

Kylie's late night photography project

Featuring these babes:

Shopping & Dinner

Kylie found a container of what USED TO BE plain cream cheese in our fridge

Cleaning the church!

Sacrament meeting!

Right before move out :(

I was so blessed to have been put randomly with these ladies! We will be friends forever.