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