We live somewhere else now.

We moved to Kansas City a month ago. I have very mixed feelings about this. My childhood causes me to have major Kansas City pride, and yet I also have a lot of pride that I left home and never came back.

Except now I am back. The good--fun visiting my old haunts and pointing out nostalgic places to my kids. Seeing old friends and picking up where we left off.  We live in the most convenient corner of KC in the world--right next to Target, Walmart, Aldi, Sam's, AND the temple. I live 10 minutes from the temple!  Me!!

The bad--it is 938247293 degrees with 2893423984 percent humidity every day. So much has changed that I really don't know as many people as I thought I would. I really miss Pennsylvania a lot. We had a great setup there with wonderful friends.

Shortly after we arrived here, June went to FSY knowing ZERO people and being one of the only teenagers left on the planet without a phone. But she had a marvelous time and grew her testimony.

Right after she got back, we left for a family reunion in Colorado. We left at 5:30 AM with the goal of arriving at 3, but then our car broke down TWICE, and we needed to get a new alternator. So we didn't roll in until after 8 PM. We were supposed to take our big family pictures that night, but our family ruined that. Side note: Heidi's flight also was canceled the day before and Steve's car broke down 20 miles outside of Granby. It looked as though the reunion would be cursed, but we all made it eventually (our family was the last).

If you haven't stopped for gas in Wilson, Kansas, you haven't really lived.

One of the places we broke down was right outside this farm supply company. It was actually kinda perfect because the owner is a huge hunter and while Dan and the guys looked at the car, the kids and I looked at his stuffed animals. I mean taxidermized animals. You know, the animals he KILLED.

And the office had a dog. So there's that.

At the reunion, we had fun whitewater rafting, swimming, bowling, eating, and hiking. Okay, not so much fun hiking because it was hot. 

My brother Mark and his wife Shayla went to town making up a Jeopardy game about our Beck family childhood. I don't want to brag, but I did very well.

And we finally did have time for a family photo session. What can I say--Becks really take good care of themselves.

Since coming back, we have gone to the neighborhood pool A LOT. One day, Harris passed out there from heat exhaustion, and it was a day that we decided to walk so some nice random lady had to take us home. We also go to the neighborhood library a bunch. It is an excellent library!

We received free tickets to the zoo. The Kansas City Zoo was a PIT when I was a kid, but it's very nice now.

You might detect from this photo that Harris was unhappy, and you would be correct. I ended up dragging his tantrummy body out of the zoo right after this was taken.

Our amazing stake also had a huge Pioneer Day celebration, complete with crafts, butter churning, prairie diamond rings, costumes and photos, and square dancing. I ended up dancing with my new stake president for half a second, and I was extremely awkward and just stared at the ground the whole time. In some ways, I am still a beehive.

The only pic I have of the occasion is this pic of me with my bff Linz's co-worker, who I have been trying to run into ever since moving back.

 

Do I look like I was melting? Because that would be accurate. It was in the 90s, outside, and as muggy as could be. 

The End.

Let's Do This.

I am currently sitting at June's play practice and golldarnit, I am going to write something on this blog. I won't attempt to update you on all of the things from the past 18 months. But here are some things.

1. We still homeschool, and thus we go on lots of field trips. 

We went to the Fishwrapper printing press in January. If you don't know what the Fishwrapper is, have you been living under a rock? Or maybe you just don't live in Amish Country. It's a free paper at all of the grocery stores in Central PA, and it's full of super clean Christian "dad" jokes and advertisements. 

After absolutely tonzzz of complaining about not wanting to go to a "boring printing press", Harris saw some machines at work and was so happy. I know this boy will be an engineer, even if I do not know what being an engineer means.

The only person in our family to get in trouble at the printing press was me, shockingly. Normally I have to get after the boys a whole bunch but this time, I started to dancing to the beat of various printing and folding machines, and a nice Mennonite asked me to stop. I am going to tell myself that's because they don't believe in dancing, not that my actual talent was lacking.

Grandma Sandy was in town so we took her on our annual field trip to the farm show. We just barely missed a calf being born this year, but we did get to see the afterbirth. And then we ate milkshakes. Yum!

We also went to the car museum, which Harris needed NO convincing to attend but then did, in fact, end up being very boring. The irony.

2. Personal Events.

Beck wrestled at his first tournament and took 3rd place. I was beyond thrilled. Wrestling is the weirdest sport in the world. Every tournament I enter, I start out judging all of the crazy, screaming parents. And then my own kid is in there, and it's personal, and I'm screaming more than anyone. Beck enjoyed it. He is our kid that enjoys pain. Our newest game at home is he attacks me from behind with a pillow, I snatch the pillow and give him a five second head start before I throw the pillow at him as hard as I can. If I aim well, it takes him down to the ground. And then he laughs and asks me to do it again. He was definitely born to wrestle.

Gwen was a Star-Bellied Sneetch AND Thing #2 in a Jr. adaptation of Seussical.

Grandma Sandy was in town for both of these events, and it was so special. 

Beck refused to be in this picture, and Gwen was crying about something. Sounds like just another Sunday.

Miscellany:

We have been taking a lot of trips to the Lancaster Science Factory while June has been in play practice for Peter Pan.

We had fondue, which should really be called FUNdo! for Valentine's Day.

Gwen went to the temple for the first time in January. We have two girls in Young Women's!

Our three violinists played in a special Colonial Ball for a nursing home in January. There was much fighting about the outfits from the boys. I would love to say that after all was said and done, they were glad they dressed up and went and served the nursing home residents. But they weren't.

The girls made baskets in one of their 4-H classes. 

Which was just a day after we had gone on this field trip to a mansion made in a Medieval design.

It was this week, in the midst of field trips to castles and basket weaving that Dan asked me if we ever learn anything useful in our homeschool. And I had to say no.

The End.

Christmas Letter 2025

 

To All of the People Who Still Appreciate Heather Intelligence over Artificial Intelligence--

Greetings from the Commonwealth, more specifically the Jolley household (where wealth is somewhat less common). We’ve survived another year, but more importantly, our neighborhood has survived another year of us.

While I am happy to report that no bike-riding kids were hit by moving vehicles this year, I am less pleased to announce that both of our boys—Harris (8) and Beck (6) hit the same across-the-street neighbor’s parked car while riding their bikes this year. It’s probably time to move. Our boys are rough-housers to the max, and I’ve been both amazed and horrified to see how any innocent object can be turned into a weapon. They can start out playing a violin duet, and three minutes later violins have turned to violence as the boys duel with their bows or chase each other and break a violin into two pieces. Yes, this actually happened.

In other news, Harris chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was a wonderful day. Beck chose to bite a kid (on the BUM!) at wrestling practice and was dismissed for the day. Let me tell you—you haven’t lived until you have represented the accused (and frankly, guilty) bum biter in a discussion with the parent of the bum bitee.  Time to move far, far away.

Harris passed the “Worst Accident of the Year” baton to Gwen (11), who fell off a seesaw at a playground a few weeks ago, resulting in a bone poking out the back of her arm. I verified on Web MD, and bones aren’t supposed to do that. She has been sporting a cast bigger than you’ve ever seen and can only wear her dad’s shirts every day. Poor Gwen has missed out on many of her favorite things these past few weeks, especially playing her instruments, dancing, and going to the bathroom independently.

Speaking of independence, June (13) would move out tonight if she could. She continues to read most of the time and agrees with her parents none of the time. She likes all of us okay and is a huge help around the house, but we all know where we rank with her—far, far below our dog, Gilbert. She has sewn Gilbert his own clothes, and she produces a Christmas card from him to our neighborhood dogs every year. She is kindly biding her time with us until she can become a marine biologist and say goodbye to our landlocked situation forever.

Dan has been traveling a lot for work, and then he comes home to tell me how exhausting it is to stay in hotels and get taken to nice dinners and drive in non-goldfish crackery cars. He misses the crunch sound I guess. He works a lot, but he still somehow manages to do a lot of the cooking and cleaning and provide almost alllll of the fun that happens at our house because he possesses the talent of being able to stay awake during an entire movie, something I have yet to do. Dan’s handyman skills continue to grow around the house, except for the one time he was convinced that the oven was broken beyond repair and replaced it, only to find out the breaker just needed to be flipped. Dan and I have devolved into the kind of parents that we always swore we would never become. But those promises were fraudulent because we were young and shiny new parents, whereas now we have been beaten by the children. If you happen by our house, you may hear Dan respond to fights with such thoughtful wisdom as “well, kick him back!” I have even been known to say, “He called you a jerk? Well, were you being a jerk?” I’ll keep you posted on when you can pre-order our parenting book.

And then there’s me. Apparently, I am embarrassing. My jokes are bad, and my dancing is even worse. If I so much as sway a hip toward a kid in a hallway, they gawk in horror and exclaim how terribly unfunny I am. Fortunately, I had many years of sporting a bowl cut in middle school to prepare me for this amount of rejection, so I am unmoved. You can only imagine how the kids felt about my hitting a pole in an otherwise totally empty parking lot before a recital (The sun was in my eyes AND kids were talking to me! My brain does not multi-task!), only to show up at the next recital with my price tag hanging out of my brand-new pants. In other achievements, I have a new pair of pants! Also, I have been doing CrossFit for two years and can now do . . . a muscle up? No. A pull-up? Heck no. Oh that’s right, a pushup. One good, on-my-toes pushup. I have gained more friends than muscles there but I’m trying.

Thank you for being our friends. May you have a wonderful Christmas remembering the birth of our Savior.

The Jolleys