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