Friends and Family

I've been sick. I haven't had a voice in 6 days. Daniel has seemed a bit perkier as a result, but I'm so over it by now. I trudged along in sickness for the first several days because I had commitments with YW and other things, but yesterday vomit was added to the mix from both June and me. Vomit is the next level, right? Dan came home from work yesterday to find me lying on the bathroom floor, begging for mercy from the stomach gods. I had also been cleaning up June's mess in between my own issues, and I couldn't take another minute of it. I have tried so much to be the strong, independent wife a husband who works and goes to school full-time needs, but when Dan talked about getting off early the next day to come help me, I broke. "Please," I pleaded. "Please do not leave me alone with them!" I said, my eyes darting between Gwen, who was taking each dvd out of its case and throwing it on the floor and June, who wasn't sure if she should let herself throw up or try to swallow it back down. I must have looked pretty frightened because Dan immediately emailed his boss and explained the situation and was able to stay home with us today. I took two glorious naps in the middle of the day and finally feel a little better.

Dan is a great nurse. He pampers. He goes to the store and gets your favorite movies. He buys multiple types of medicine to "see which one works best." He cooks, he cleans.

I am a terrible nurse. I don't like being around sick people. I'm documenting this scene of Dan taking care of me today so that I can remind myself for the next time he's sick. Because whenever anyone in my family is sick, it really throws off my schedule and I get annoyed. Incredulous statements such as,  "Well maybe just go to school/work, and see if you feel better" and then "you're still feeling sick? but it's been THREE hours!!" have been known to fly out of my mouth.

In the midst of my sickness, however, I was able to keep some priorities straight, i.e. discuss a fave home reno blog with my sister.

The sign of true friendship is the ability to carry on multiple conversations, ranging from serious to trivial, at any given time.

Speaking of friends, my friend Cherilee and her friend Danielle came to Jacksonville last week. We watched conference together and were able to hit up the beach with Gwen while June was at school.

We were doing some calculating and realized that Cher and I have known each other for thirteen years. I moved into her apartment, hardly knowing anyone when I was a mere 18 year old baby at BYU. Now we are both old crotchety ladies who like to go to bed early. It's nice to have someone who understands that about you.

My sister also visited us this week. I have ONE picture from the visit. And here it is: four cousins in the bathtub after 5 hours of beaching it up together. We had a great time, and my kids like nothing more than to be with their cousins. End of story.

Gwen is the cutest and crankiest baby. This pic sums it all up.

June started two activities up this week: swimming lessons and gymnastics. We're hoping these activities will help her in the physical coordination and development department. She still can't jump with two feet off the ground and land on her feet. She has a lot of other issues in that department too, and we're trying to figure it out.

Her swim teacher is a dream. June's first week she was the only kid in her class, and I loved the one-on-one aspect (without paying for the one-on-one aspect). The teacher quickly saw how hard it is to carry on a conversation with June and asked me for some thoughts along the way. She summed up June with the following sentence. "This girl is a character, but I bet she wins over a lot of hearts wherever she goes." Yep. Yep.

And from her primary teacher this week, "Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of June?? Really hard!!" Yep. Yep. So while I admit to taking horrible photos, June gets to share a little in the blame of the constant blurriness.

Other miscellany:

Working for a grocery store has its perks. Dan brings home sample items vendors bring into the headquarters quite often, which has only been increased by the fact that his company is moving to a different office across town. They are trying to get rid of everything, and we've had multiple dinners where we just have taste testings.

This is how June prefers to ride a cart at the store, and you know what I say--no problem!! Gwen is in jammies because we have all been sick.

Spring pictures. Too many comments. Another piece of evidence that June might be the hardest kid to photograph in the entire world.

That is a grape on her eye. The whole thing has a "Clarice" feel to it, don't ya think?

Happy Tuesday! And don't you forget it.

I'm going to stop writing now because I'm obviously sick and totally unfunny but wanted to keep the ol' blog updated.

Supplement.

As if my last post wasn't long enough, I forgot to add some things to it.

First off, June received amazing presents from her grandparents for her birthday. I don't really buy my kids any presents for their birthdays (yet). They are little, and the presents they receive from their grandparents are more than enough. Plus, I want to set the bar low for number of presents so that I can easily match it every year.

My kids really lucked out in the grandparents department. My mom always finds the cutest dresses and sends them my way.

She also sent June a hoodie and a couple of interactive books. June and Gwen both have been carrying the books around everywhere we go.

My mother-in-law Kristi is crafty. You might call me the Anti-Craft. So I feel super fortunate to have her in my life. This year, she made June some puppets.

And June loves to cook with me every night, and so Kristi made her her very own apron.

SO cute.

And some Easter thoughts:

My Easter was super chaotic. At church, I was running June to sit on the potty (for no reason) every few minutes. I missed half of the musical numbers and the one musical number I played, my nerves were shot because it was from Handel's Messiah with four sharps and rather difficult.

After church, the glaze burning/smoke detector/Gwen hitting her head/egg hunt downpour happened, and while everything turned out great, I didn't feel like I got to really think about Easter the way I wanted.

Monday morning, I sat at my piano and played and sang Easter songs to myself. Easter is my favorite holiday, and it shows in my piano music. I think I have one Christmas song in my collection and about 5 Easter songs. I would love to be in charge of an Easter program one day (but not until my kids are all potty trained, so 50 years). Anyway, I spent a lot of time singing the words of one in particular, called "Did You See Him in the Garden?"

The lyrics are as follows:

Did you see him in the garden when he bled from every pore?

Did you feel his lonely anguish when he asked to drink no more?

Did you see his three disciples as they slept through his great pain?

Did you hear his footsteps coming, taking up the cross for men?

Did you watch him through the courtyards, did you hear their angry lies?

Did you feel the lash upon you, did you follow by his side?

Were you there when they condemned him, and they nailed him to a cross?

Did you hear him then forgive them as his loved one mourned their loss?

Then the last verse, with a key change:

Did you see him in his glory when the stone was rolled away?

Did you feel the hope of all men when his ransomed life was paid?

Will you know him when you see him once again on heavenly throne?

Will he say to you in pure love: Come to me, thou art mine own?"

"Come to me, thou art mine own!

Tears were flowing down my cheeks in a steady stream, my voice cracking and choking as I sang the lyrics. I sobbed afterward for awhile on the piano bench and then turned around to where June and Gwen had stopped playing with blocks and were just silently watching me. You could tell they thought their mother had really lost her mind.

I was grateful for that Easter moment I was able to have, even if it wasn't on Easter Sunday. I felt like it was a tender mercy from a Father who knew I needed that moment. I am grateful for my knowledge that Christ is Risen. He gave the gift of his life so that we can be forgiven and be more than we are. He was resurrected, and He still lives!

Prison Break, aka Spring Break

We are quickly discovering that Duval County is a "go big or go home" sort of place. It is made up of one city, Jacksonville. Did you know that Jacksonville is the biggest city by area in the contiguous United States? 'Tis true!! There are about a million trillion kids at June's elementary school, and I think the only way they can convince people to work there is by offering generous breaks. June had 11 days off for Spring Break.

The first day, I let the girls chill, which is right up June's alley. She will make a great senior citizen traveling through Europe someday.

On day 2, we went to Tampa for a couple of days so I could retrieve the infamous package I sent to my neighbor when we first moved here. It was so fun to see our favorite Tampons. I dreaded coming back because I knew what I had to do with the remaining several days of Spring Break.

Potty.

Training.

Oof. Two seemingly innocent words that cut me to the very core. June is quite the Stubborn Sally and has shown 00000 interest in using the potty. She has done it a few times, but just doesn't want to. Before you leave your comment with your suggestions of a sticker chart, toy bribe, skittles-every-time-you-sit-down method, please know that all theories have been attempted. It doesn't matter much when your child does not care one bit about any of those things.

Anyway, at my last IEP meeting with her teacher, Mrs. Spann said it was time. You know, since June turned 4 on Saturday, and all of her friends were potty trained when they were 2.

So I let June run around nekked and free as a jail bird, bribing her with the ipad every time she would sit on the potty. And on the potty she sat. And held it.

She held it all day until Dan came home and I went to mutual. When I got home, I found out that his night had been horrendous, with June both peeing and throwing up everywhere. Poor girl. But really, poor Dan.

The next day started out great. June went on the potty twice. That was around 10:30 a.m. Then she proceeded to hold it until after lunch the next day. It pained me to watch her. I begged her to use the potty. I was shocked when her bed wasn't wet when she woke up. She cried. I cried. She put a piece of tape "down there" as a band-aid because "i hurt". She threw up again.

Finally she went. In the potty. Sweet victory.

She has made it through the night dry ever since. But has pretty much stopped caring about being wet and gross. I have her sit on the potty first thing every morning and she refuses to go. Then I put on her panties, and one minute later she is wet. Luckily, I've been super patient and loving during this whole process. Notttttttt.

Honestly, Gwen shows more interest in using the potty than June.

We stayed at home a ton over Spring Break, which is not my favorite. But we needed to be close to the potty so that June could choose not to use it. I was going a bit stir crazy, but one day we had fun painting.

June paints two things: 1. blobs of color until they turn brown and 2. the sun.

"Brown: A Color Study."

2. "The Sun. I Once Put A Band-Aid Where The Sun Don't Shine."

June's 4th birthday was also over Spring Break, and it was a nice reprieve from the potty training. I had not left the house in three days and decided to brave it by taking June out to brunch with my visiting teachers. Let's just say that June really left her mark at Panera. Later that day, she went to see her first movie in a theater, "Zootopia."

The endless sugary baked goods for her birthday proved all too much just before dinnertime.

Have you read the Berenstain Bears book, Too Much Birthday? There was a bit of that going on around here. Turns out you can still be put in time out on your birthday.

By the time we were ready to serve June's birthday dinner of choice, hamburgers, I found her like this.

Happy Birthday, June. You are my match in stubbornness and also the funnest girl in the room at any given moment (except for maybe this one).

Easter was the next day, and I wanted to celebrate it with our closest friends here in Jacksonville, the Spragues. They have a large family (9 of the coolest kids you'll meet) and so we decided to take dinner to our neighborhood park.

About an hour before, I was warming the ham and making the glaze, when June had an accident and needed help. I changed her pants when the smoke alarms went off, and smoke filled the entire house. The glaze was burned to where it was just ashes. The whole house stank so badly. The commotion freaked Gwen out, who ran into the garage and slipped and fell on some oil and hit her head. After which, June had another accident in her pants. Needless to say, I was feeling very relaxed when it was meal time. Dan left a few minutes before I did with all of the eggs for the hunt. He had them hidden just in time when the Spragues and the girls and I showed up. We set out all of the food and the kids started their hunt, just as it started to POUR rain. We collected as many eggs as we could, plus the food, plus 11 kids and headed to my smoke-smelling house and ate on the floor like the drowned rats that we were. And my ham was really dry.

You know you have found the right kind of friends when they don't blink an eye at something like that.

More Tires.

The day we picked up our moving truck to move to Jacksonville, another one of the tires blew out on Daniel's car. It was actually on the way to pick up the moving truck, and we ended up driving the last mile of the journey with a car that was shaking like crazy. We are nothing if not adventurous. Or perhaps just unprepared.

At any rate, we replaced all of the tires on Dan's car. We originally just wanted to replace three since we had recently replaced one of the set, But the Tire Kingdom worker informed us that he had looked up the barcode on the tire we had recently just purchased, and it was actually nine years old. Yikes Bikes. So we replaced all of them.

It wasn't long before I started worrying about the tires on my own car. I had an oil change when we first moved here, and the mechanic told me that I needed new tires and fast. So I called around and found that Sam's Club had the best deal. The guy on the phone told me I could come down as early as 7 am the next day. I dropped June off at school at 8 and then headed over to Sam's Club, where I was then informed that since I was just a regular card member, they couldn't take my car until 10. So I drove back home.

After school, I drove my crew down there, and the girls had a blast in the tire department. 

And then the SC employee told me that he had been misinformed and that they actually did not have my tires in stock. Drat. We shopped around for other things and then as we were heading out, I realized that the SC employee had never given me back my keys. So I went to go get them. That's when June became unglued about the fact that we were leaving her favorite store.

She lay on the floor for a good 20 minutes, bawling her face off. I know how June operates, and I know to just wait until she's done. I do not coax her out of her fits because then she thinks it's okay to keep doing it. So I was waiting for her when an older lady walked up to her and told her, "If you do not get up off the floor and listen your mom right now, I'm going to paddle your butt!" The lady then proceeded to tell me what I was doing wrong with my child.

June started bawling harder, and I was shocked at this stranger's interference. I am not good at confrontation AT ALL, but I finally got the nerve to just say to the lady, "THANK YOU! HAVE A NICE DAY!" and she finally left.

June finished up her tantrum, and we headed out the door when I couldn't find my receipt that I had to show upon exiting the store. June and Gwen both started wailing, and I began to search for the receipt. Some angel lady ran up to me, saying that she had found a receipt and was it mine? It was, and I was reminded that there are always great people out there along with the ones that drive you nuts.

The next day, Gwen and I headed to Wal-Mart to get the tires there. While they were working on my car, we did a little shopping (because I seem to need something from the store every single day).

Suddenly, a Wal-Mart employee's voice announced over the intercom that everyone was to evacuate the building due to an emergency. All of the employees booked it out of there, and we customers just looked at each other in confusion. The lady on the intercom came back on and said, "EVERYONE, AND I MEAN EVERYONE, MUST EVACUATE NOW!!!" So we ran out of the store.

(I almost want to apologize for my bad photos, but really . . . you know me by now.)

All of the other customers got into their cars and left. But I couldn't. My car was being worked on, and they said it would be a long time before we could go back in.

So Gwen and I walked across the street to Marshall's where I actually found some knee-length shorts that fit me.

So the day wasn't a total loss.

After about an hour, the lady from the auto center called me and said that they had actually not started on my car when the evacuation started, so I could come to the side of the building and pick it up. 

We found out later that a Wal-Mart employee had been trying to get one of those huge pallets in the back down and had hit a gas line. Yikes.

I finally did get tires on my car a couple of days later. Fourth time is a charm!!! The Jolley cars both have brand new tires on--let's see how long they last with our good luck.

What We Do.

We've been in Jacksonville for 6 weeks now and have established some sort of routine. But just when you think you've got a hang of things, things change. For example. I enjoyed 2 beautiful weeks as primary pianist (my dream calling) before being called as YW 2nd counselor once again. This is my third time in that calling!! Even though the time commitment is way more than primary pianist, I am actually glad because I always miss working with the youth after a few months away from them.

But here are a few things we do routinely in Jacksonville:

1. We Take Insanely Bad Sunday Photos.

Move aside all you perfect Instagrammers with your perfect family Sunday photos! There's a new sheriff in town and her name is Heather Jolley. Her weapon of choice? A really bad phone camera. Her subjects? Two children who are allergic to the words, "Stay Still!"

"I have an owie on my finger! I need a band-aid!" Whoever invented band-aids must make a fortune, but mostly from sucker parents who buy them for their children who don't need them.

  

2. We Play Outside.

"I'm Sailing!!!!!" Name the movie.

Literally the only tire that has treated us well in the past 6 years. Except that right after this shot, Gwen ran in front of June's path and hit the ground. Hard. And then we went home! Fun!

You're probably thinking, "But how do Heather's children ever get hurt when she's so careful and never lets them do anything scary?"

Gwen's constant sidekick: A stick. All day, every day.

 "I was runninnggggggg!!" (Again, name the movie. Huge prize at the end of this post.)

3. We Make Food That Looks Bad and Tastes Good. It's how we fool people into letting us eat their share.

We call this one the Jabba the Hut crust. "It's not a tumah!" (Yet a THIRD chance to win the "Name that Movie" game!)

These are definitely supposed to look like cute little birds' nest for Easter and definitely resemble an oil spill in a swamp instead. (But were seriously good. So good.)

4. We Celebrate Miscellany!

June still goes to school and is loving it!!! I just had a meeting with her teacher, and Mrs. Spann said that June is right on track with her progress.

This is down the street from me. It's spooky fun running by it at 5 a.m.

My wedding ring broke. But our love still remains strong.

We fed these elders a kind of horrible meal, only to find out that it was Elder Bore's birthday AFTER we had finished eating. So we gave him some terrible gifts from our pantry.

Usually quiet in this house equals trouble. But sometimes it means that June is "reading" her books. Which makes this mama very happy because I'm banking on our kids for our retirement plan.

Oh yeah. And we still fight. This pic was originally taken to show Gwen's cute little backpack she wears everywhere. But right before the shot, June knocked her over. So cute.

And now I'm concluding one of my most obnoxious posts so far.

Tires.

Many of you (all three of you) may know that Dan and I met over a flat tire he was fixing for me. I have blogged about this before (here and here), but that sweet beginning was also a sort of an ominous one in the way of our general bad luck with tires. My mom has told me several times that I need to write a book about my family adventures with the common thread of each of our tire mishaps, and I'm even working on some sort of horribly punny name for the book. Perhaps Our Tireless Love or Eternal Love Never Loses Traction or 'Tire'd But Still Hanging On By a Thread, which would probably be the most accurate. Please feel free to post your own submission in the comments section. We have never kept count, but I would say most years, we've had at least 3 flat tires if not more. And I really should learn to change one now.

We celebrated Christmas in Atlanta with Heidi's fam, and on our drive up, we felt our car start to shaaaaaaaake like crazy. On the freeway. It was exhilarating! All of you people with your newer and safer cars (each of ours is 15 years old) just don't know what you are missing. Live on the edge with us! Specifically the edge of the freeway where you must frequently stop to check on your car.

Anyway, it was Christmas Eve and we were in the middle of Nowhere, Georgia and were barely successful in pulling into a gas station just off the freeway exit. The door to the gas station was made out of poster board. Out of probably 15 shelves inside the gas station, only one had items for sale. Dan told the cashier about our mishap, and he told us that we were in luck because his friends had just opened a garage a few weeks before and would be happy to come down to the gas station to look at our car.

The men showed up, looking a bit rough. (I realize this makes me judgmental. You got me,) The first thing one of them said to us was, pointing to our girls, "Hey! I've got kids too!" This common ground gave us the bond we were hoping for. The men couldn't find anything wrong with our car and said that we needed to take it to their garage so that they could put it on the jack.

We followed them (shaaaaaaaking like crazy the whole way) into a neighborhood of abandoned houses. I joked with Dan, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if they pulled into one of these houses and said it was their shop?" And then they did. At which point, I sent this picture to my sister with the message, "In case I die, send police here."

I'm sure she didn't find that alarming at all.

We pulled into this abandoned house, which sure enough had also been a garage in a previous life, and the men explained how, even though it didn't look like much, they were trying to revive this garage. They they asked Dan if he had any tools, because they didn't have any. And luckily we did.

They jacked up the car, and sure enough, one of our tires was shredding on the inside. With how fast we were going on the freeway, we were lucky our car didn't flip over.

The girls and I spent the time the men worked on the car at another gas station which was next door to the garage. The gas station owner was VERY nice and gave the girls free treats, which I appreciated.

Poor things were still in their pajamas because we had left at 5 that morning. June was wearing her plastic Elsa heels, a practical choice while traveling.

This sign was in the window of the gas station, and I may embroider it on a pillow because I found it so wise.

At the conclusion of the new tire being put on, Dan asked the men how much we owed them. They said, "Let's see. That will be $70 for the tire and $50 for the labor. So $175." Dan started to argue, but I wanted to GET OUT OF THERE. Yes, we were overcharged big time. Yes, you can call me a chump. But I was a chump ready to get on with Christmas.

The rest of Christmas was perfect. I love the South. I love the weather here, the people here, and I love having Heidi's family close by. Apparently the coveted job of the week was taking care of Herschel.

And don't worry. I have two more tire stories to post since that last incident.