Just Real Quick.

Dan and I have had many talks lately about priorities and what we need to let go of and what we need to spend more time on. We are both very busy with church callings, and our Sundays are very full. Sundays are my usual blogging day, but lately they have been full of so many meetings for the both of us that I have let my weekly blogging slip. Dan told me not to be too hard on myself and change my weekly goal to monthly. But I just want to do it more than that! So here's my attempt to do a shorter blog post.

Sometimes I feel like my kids are not very independent. I think about all of the chores I want to teach them to do, but then they don't happen because having a kid do a chore takes 39284723 times the number of minutes and the amount of energy than just doing it myself. But June asked to make lunch for everyone this week, and I said yes. I was nervous because June LOVES messes. We clean her room almost every day because it's so messy and hard to navigate.

She and Gwen have been poring over Cooking with Clifford, which the kids convinced me to buy from a garage sale or library discard pile or something awhile back, and now it has come back to haunt me. Because the recipes are not good. But all by herself, June made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, rolled them out with my rolling pin, and then cut into shapes with our cookie cutters and served them to Gwen and Harris. Gwen was delighted to eat a butterfly-shaped smooshed sandwich. This week we are doing jello because Cooking with Clifford even makes jello seem exciting.

Also, Dan had the chance to take the kids out on the loop one day, and being Dan the Fun Parent, as opposed to Mom the Enforcer, he came up with this genius idea:

That is Harris on his big wheel pulling Gwen on her rollerblades. There has only been a little crying.

We continue to work on the human body for science. We are taking it really slowly because June actually likes to learn about each and every little thing. I had checked out a book about digestion, but June had read it before I had the chance to read it to her. She has loved explaining over and over how poop is made.

I constantly play classical music at my house. We study artists and musicians. We read tons of literature. But learning how poop is made will always win when it comes to subject matter.

And church today:

The kids were pretty good at church today. Beck is always hard, but the others did fine. As hard as he is, I find myself getting sad that he's leaving baby stage. 

The End.

Getting It Done.

My goal for 2021 is organization. That is my only goal. I have a good workout routine (not great, but good), I'm reading some books (not a ton, but a few). My desire to strengthen my piano playing skills and re-learn Romanian have been moved to the backburner. I'm 36 and finally accepting that I cannot have multiple goals while also raising young kids. Raising young kids IS the main goal and whatever goal I pick has to feed into that. Especially while we homeschool. I have so many mixed feelings on homeschooling but that is a post for another day. (Short version: It's the best and worst. It's working but I'm tired. I burn out easily, but I'm learning how to better avoid that.)

Not only can I only work on a very few things at a time, I have also learned that I was often setting up competing goals. Dan often tells of a story he read about NASA. One year, NASA had goals to be more efficient, more frugal, and stronger that ever (I'm butchering this story but stay with me). But of course if they wanted to be more stronger, they would need to spend more money. This hurt their goal to be frugal. If they wanted to be efficient, they needed get rid of some of the programs that were making them stronger, but taking up more time. And so on. 

That's me. I am NASA. Every year, it's like "I'm going to be so healthy and only cook meals with real foods and also we are going to save so much money while also spending more time outside." And then I remember how it costs more and takes more time to eat those supposed whole foods and that robs us of our outside time. And the vicious cycle continues, and I can't keep it up.

So this year. Organization. That's a broad topic, but it's my focus. I want to pick one facet in my life and organize it a little. No overhaul. Just a little bit. And not move on until I'm ready to.

So many of you have been unable to sleep, tossing and turning and wondering, "WHAT IS HEATHER'S GOAL FOR THIS YEAR?" And now you know. Aren't you glad I took the time to be longwinded and tell you every single thought that has ever occurred in my head?

School is back in full swing for us. 

Gwen has become proficient at labeling the Eastern United States, but I discovered this week that she doesn't always know what the abbreviations stand for.

Rollerblading continues. Dan set up an obstacle course to help June learn to turn better.

We didn't have church last week because of a snow storm. It felt great to go back this week, especially since I am no longer playing the organ at church. I actually love playing the organ, but our kids need two adults to sit with them. Beck is usually screaming, so Dan takes him out and the other kids are left to their own devices.

And their devices are juvenile delinquency. 

Beck couldn't decide if he wanted to be in or out of the photo this morning, so we have both for your viewing pleasure.

And then the girls asked me to take pictures of their bums jumping up and down. This is a weekly ritual.

The End.

Jolley Christmas Letter 2020

 

November 26, 2020

Dear Friends, Family, and Foes (Now you’ll wonder which you are!),

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year from the Jolleys! I have half-dreaded writing the newsletter this year because of the Covid pandemic. I’ll keep it simple and say this. I’m grateful for the gift of being alive in the year 2020. Truly we have learned a lot this year. And one of those things is that Jesus Christ is the only constant in our lives.

We moved to Pennsylvania in January and bought our first home. We have a wonderful community here. The pandemic has slowed down our ability to make deep relationships with many people, which means people don’t know us well yet. Thus, we may actually be able to stay here awhile. We have been homeschooling this year, and while we have had some of our highest highs, there have been some hard days with plenty of tears shed. And a couple of times the kids cried too.

Dan loves his new life with the Hershey Chocolate Company. He is living his best middle-aged, father-of-four dad life, complete with showing up to any and all family functions in a polo with a work logo on it.  He has met the challenges of working from our loud and chaotic home with ingenuity. The biggest challenge was our resident creepy crawler (baby Beck) covertly entering the office and climbing underneath the desk to pull out Dad’s leg hairs during Zoom meetings. Dan corrected this by building an extensive barricade in the entryway of our home. It looked like the set of Les Miserables for a while until we could get some doors installed there. To top off the “dadness” of it all, he gives me a weekly report on the patches of dry grass he’s worried about on our lawn. I didn’t know exactly when we would become our parents, but this year was definitely it. 

June turned 8 this year and was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dan enjoyed listening in on her interview with our pastor, which conversation veered from the promises we make when we are baptized to the number of survivors on the Titanic. Because June loves a good Titanic conversation. June also became a full-on, no-training-wheels-bike-rider this year and often loves to go ride “the loop” our house sits on when things at home are just too chaotic. She also reads more than anyone I know, which has been a good problem except for the one morning I woke up and realized that June had never gone to bed.

Gwen turned 6 this year and is just like her mama. She tells you more than you would ever need to know and she laughs harder and yells louder than anyone in the room. She loves playing the piano, listening to books, and doing crafts (okay, the similarities stop there). Gwen never likes to be alone and will join me in the early hours for a workout, where she will offer such helpful comments as “You’re not doing it right.” She keeps us laughing, and we need that.

Harris turned 3 this year and loves saying no to just about anything you could ask him. He insists on wearing the same t-shirt and shorts almost all of the time. He loves to help me cook and has even been learning to flip pancakes. Like any 3-year-old, his independent streak is a bit stressful. It’s so great that he wants to learn things; it’s not so great that he insists on carrying the cookie pie to the new neighbor’s house (which ended up face down on their porch).

Beck turned 1 this year and is a good sleeper but crazy when he’s awake. He’s the reason I have asked to leave the tree undecorated this year. I’m wondering if we should go even farther and turn the tree on its side all December. He still doesn’t talk a ton, but has mastered the one word worth yelling at all times-- “MOM!”

I want to make a joke here about how there is no room left for me, but when I go back and read what I wrote about everyone else, I see that I subconsciously inserted myself throughout. Now you know how things really go around here. It’s the Heather show, and I’m grateful to my family for loving me anyway.  Our family is blessed because of Jesus Christ and also our associations with all of you.

Love, The Jolleys