Sock-it-to-me-tober

Toward the beginning of October, I started to feel a little bit better. I still have really rough days, but one Sunday, toward the beginning of the month, I was feeling brave and showered and put on nice clothes and make-up and went to church! I received so many compliments from Daniel on how pretty I looked, which I know really meant, "You look much less corpse-like today!"

Dan came to church dressed for the hurricane clean-up taking place after Sacrament Meeting. Lucky!!

This was the first year June really understood Halloween, and it was so fun. We celebrated all month long. My girls LOVE scary things (read: skeletons and witches, NOT Freddy Krueger).

We went to the Jacksonville Fall Festival for kids with special needs one Saturday.

We were lucky to get Gwen in her costume that day. She has worn it several times throughout the year, but decided this October that she was OVER IT and cried a lot about wearing it. She finally put it on for the fair because June wanted her to (note: not mom or dad), but refused to wear it for our ward trunk or treat or for regular trick or treating, thereby ruining our family costume idea (note: never doing that again).

All throughout the festival, I couldn't stop exclaiming such deep thoughts as, "We are hanging out as a family!!" or "We are having fun!" Between Dan's full-time work, school and church and my Pukey McPukerson self, we haven't done anything fun for months. I felt like a lifestyle blogger!!

 To top off the day acting as impostor people who have perfect fall days packed with autumnal-themed activities, I put on a Halloween-themed movie for the girls when we got home, and I did my annual tradition of making pumpkin chocolate chip bread for our friends and neighbors. I made about a dozen loaves this year. If Dan hadn't had to give us a shot of reality by leaving to do a bunch of school and work-related stuff, I would have thought we were all alien-abducted versions of ourselves.

Lifestyle blogger or food blogger? You tell me.

 Gwen is very discreet when she snitches some.

 June also had a very big week at school this last week. It was red ribbon spirit week AND she was named Student of the Month from her class.

I arrived at the school with about ONE second to spare. They called her name as I entered the room. I zipped across the room to where June was sitting and scurried her up to the stage. I understand my own mother a lot more now that I am one.

Meanwhile, Gwen kept running away and we didn't stay for any of the other awards.

I kind of laughed when the teacher told me June was receiving an award. She does get a good behavior report most days, but she bit a kid a week before this ceremony happened. It is not lost on me that there are 8 kids in her class and 8 months or chances to receive this award.

Catching a natural smile on June for pictures is a hilarious attempt at the impossible. For being such a smiley girl, she is stiff as can be about pictures. Or she jumps a lot.

I actually helped June participate in the Spirit Days this year. She loved it.

Tuesday was Career Day. I made her this beautiful chef's hat from a youtube tutorial out of tissue paper. (Craft blogger?)

I made one for Gwen too because I knew she would throw a fit if she didn't get one. Then of course Gwen was insulted that I expected her to wear one and refused to wear it. Which caused June to have a meltdown walking into the school. Moms just can't win.

Thursday was Red Day. June LOVES red and she loves rules, so she loved pointing out all of the people who weren't wearing red and informing them of what a disappointment they were to her. While checking her into the front office, another little girl came up to me and asked me if I knew what Red Day was for. Playing dumb, I told her that I did not and asked her if she would tell me. She told me it was "Congratulations to Drugs Day". Something I can totally get behind.

Friday was the Character Parade, and June's class dressed as pumpkins to go along with some pumpkin book they were reading.

A word about my emotional state while pregnant. I cry. A lot. I cried through this whole parade. No clue why. Let me tell you how many other parents were crying--zero. I also have cried singing along with "We are the Champions" on the radio. Things just get to me these days.

Of course, the highlight of the month was that my best friend, Linz, came to visit me. It's our tradition for her to come for "Heatherween", a combination of Halloween on Oct. 31st and my birthday on November 1st. We had a lot of fun even though I was upchucking on my birthday (woe is me). We shopped, we watched movies, we sang "Jessie's Girl" at the top of our lungs. We are similar in many ways. However, there is a key way that we are opposite. Linz has a science/engineering mind, and my brain pretty much refutes the idea atoms even exist. I don't like figuring things out or really working with my hands. So Linz always offers to do things for me that I am not into, like carving a pumpkin. 

I just enjoyed taking pictures of her face of concentration throughout. The finished product? No pictures. (Photography blogger?)

And no pictures of Halloween! Gwen ended up being a princess instead of a bee, and we went strong for about an hour until Gwen was pretty much comatose in the stroller and June was dragging her bucket of candy and saying things like "It's soooooo dark outside" and "This is sooooo hebby (heavy)." Kids are wimps. I could have gone for hours.

And now we are looking forward to another fun-filled holiday month!!! (Not our yard, but we take lots of pictures in other peoples' yards!)

Do You Remember Dancing in September?

A smattering of recent activity in the Jolley household:

1. I'm pregnant. If you are surprised, that makes three of us! Dan was so surprised that all he could manage to sputter was, "How did this HAPPEN?" He will be attending a local fifth grade classroom presentation to learn about this topic later in the year. Though we are surprised, we are grateful to welcome this baby into our home sometime in April. June never acknowledged that I was pregnant with Gwen, even when I brought Gwen home from the hospital. This time, she's getting it. She told me that the baby shall be called "June" and she has told her teachers several times that her mother is "really big."

I'm sure you're dying to know how I'm feeling. I'll spare you the literally juicy details by saying--I've finally lost the last ten pounds I gained with Gwen!! Luckily, my mom came for a visit and relieved me for a few days. Moms are the best, especially my mom. 

2. June had her first primary presentation. And it was to-die-for awesome. I had to really work to get myself to church that Sunday, but I'm so glad I did. We worked on her parts for four weeks. June is the most visual learner on the planet, so I knew I would have to make her parts into a picture-story in order for her to learn it. I came up with something that actually worked. Revelation is real!

She had four pages like this, and she hit it out of the park. I was a bit nervous going in to the presentation though, because the primary president told me that every time they practiced, June did her part, but always added a little something "extra" and it was always something different. One day, she went off about Wilbur the Pig, another day she would sing, etc. On the big day, June walked up to the microphone with her toy giraffe in hand (she has to have a wiggle toy to help her sit through primary stuff), and yelled into the microphone "TESTING! TESTING! 123! 123!" Dan and I were laughing so hard we cried. I have no idea where she learned to say that. But she delivered her first part perfectly! And then laughed really hard into the microphone at the end.

Though we practiced the songs quite a bit and June is a great singer, she just doesn't get how to sing in a group setting. So instead of singing along with the rest of the primary, she played with her giraffe on her teacher's lap. Fine by me.

Her second part contained several references to the Savior, and when she would get to the part where I had put a picture of Jesus, she would yell, "Hey! It's Jesus Christ! YAY!" and then say the rest of her part. It was a good day. What was the best part was all of my fellow ward members cheering her on. Dozens of people came up to Dan and me afterward and told us how proud they were of June for doing her part. People are good.

3. June had her first homework assignment. AKA I had my first homework assignment to do for June.

4. Gwen has a favorite dress. Understatement of the year. This dress gets worn, clean or dirty, cold or hot, day or night. June used to wear it too, and it's the rattiest, grossest dress ever and is way too small for Gwen. So we just put a pair of pants underneath.

Playing ring around the rosies:

At the end of the song, during "we all fall down!", June helps a sister out and just pushes Gwen to the ground.

Older sisters. Sheesh.

5. My girls have already decided what to be for Halloween this year and it may seem familiar.

 Isn't June just a natural when it comes to smiling for pics?

There's that dress again. 

June has it in her head that Halloween = ladybug for her and bumblebee for Gwen, and I'm not fighting it. I love keeping things easy. This will be her third year in this costume and Gwen's second.

Since I spend most of the day in bed being sick, I appreciate Gwen's ability to make herself her own breakfast, lunch and dinner. She just dumps a whole cereal box in her trick or treat bucket and grazes on it throughout the day.

I should probably rename this post--Parenting isn't my strong suit. Nah, too much work. Back to bed.

Success is Making it to Friday

It's Friday! We are getting this back-to-school routine down.

We are getting through car line by packing a bunch of snacks, as evidenced by my many chins. We also have some landmarks we enjoy seeing everyday. The girls get just as excited as I do.

These huge trucks are about 3 houses down from the school.

June really enjoys school and is doing quite well.

 If that's the way you get a smiley face in pre-k, June will have NOOOOOOO problems.

Gwen is adjusting to being by herself by making new friends. Like with this bottle of honey she gets out of the pantry and plays with. Every day. So sad.

The girls are finally getting what to do when I ask them to take a picture. Still hard for them to stay still, pose AND make eye contact, so each photo is usually one or two of those. Still a vast improvement. And that dinosaur shirt is June's fave.

Dan twisted his ankle at a sports night at the church this week. We are going to make up a heroic story about his game-saving dive across the gym floor to spike the volleyball. But until then, we will stick to the truth of a chest-bump-gone-bad. Poor guy has been hobbling all week.

And I don't know how much you guys know about me or Becks in general. But we don't really buy stuff. We were raised by parents who never bought anything extra when we were out. It was a given that we weren't getting appetizers at the restaurant, we weren't getting popcorn at the movie theater, and you can FORGET IT about the glow stick or other junky toy at an amusement park. I have proudly held on to that tradition with my own family, but found myself buying this CD in a Walmart parking lot this week.

Looks totally like my type of music, right? I don't know what came over me, but the guy selling it had an air of an entrepreneurial spirit about him that I appreciated, so I bought the dang thing. I SHOULD have asked if it contained explicit language BEFORE I bought it, but quickly found that almost all of the names of the songs listed on the actual CD contained words that I don't appreciate. Especially words that degrade females that I have NO patience for.

Still, the first few songs seemed to be clean, and I started listening to some rap music on my way home. Not immediately, of course, because "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner was playing on the radio when I turned the car on. I pretty must have a cardinal rule that you can't change the station on that song. 

As a side note, there are PLENTY of songs I turn off no matter what, even if it means I have to sit in silence because those songs ANNOY me. "Hotel California" comes to mind.

Anyway, I listened to about 1.5 songs until the CD stopped working entirely. Totally worth every penny.

The moral of the story--Don't turn off Foreigner for a bad rap CD. I also think there might be a lesson to be learned about not buying an unknown rap CD from a guy in a Walmart parking lot, but I can't quite piece that one together yet.

June's First Day of Pre-K 2016

This morning was the first day of school. I wrestled a bit with the idea of June going back to school. I truly like having her around. I truly do not like rushing around in the morning arguing about whether or not she's a dog, or a mommy or Junebug and whether or not she has to wear shoes. So while I was kind of sad about the summer being over, there was a faint, yet-ever crescendo-ing Hallelujah chorus playing in my ear.

Summer is so fun, but this Jolley clan does better with a some structure. We started off the summer with several fun activities and daily learning and physical exertion and slowly morphed into wild animals with no schedule, no idea what day it was and no desire to wear non-elastic pants. And by "we", I of course am referring to myself. My work schedule took over with a vengeance a few weeks ago and the girls have been sitting around a lot. So school is a good thing.

June is the only 4-year old I know that is on her third public school experience. She is attending her second year of preschool in an ESE (Exceptional Student Education) classroom for kids with Varying Exceptionalities. 

 

June picked out these shoes and would have no others. Even though there were gold-sparkly tennies available. June pointed to these over and over, and I'd say, "yes! let's get those!" and then i would be sneaky and say, "oh but look at these gold sparklies! they are so much cooler!" and she would tell me no. 3 separate times.

Dan helped me haul June's stuff to the school this morning, and it's a good thing he did. Pre-schoolers have a lot on their supplies list. Even between the both of us, our hands were full of bags containing glue, fat crayons, a box of diapers (don't you be jealous of my diaper-wearing 4 year old!), wipes, extra change of clothes, etc. We even accidentally left her nap blanket and a couple of things behind. I don't remember having to bring this much stuff, but then again, I don't remember anything about being 4.

When you're the mom, you get to post photos where you are the only one looking halfway decent. It's one of the rules.

Every once in awhile, the girls show affection toward each other. The End Is Near.

Not to be outdone, Gwen requested her backpack this morning too. And I luckily found it in a pile in the girls' room. Organization is key!!

We took June to her classroom, where she quickly busied herself with a puzzle. We chatted with the teacher for a bit, and then went to say our goodbyes to June. I said, "June, can you give Mama a kiss? I'm going bye bye." To which she gave me the brick-wall hand, and without looking up from her activity, replied, "BYE."

Parting is such sweet sorrow.