Slumber Party

My sweet friend Tracy had her tonsils removed before Christmas. To help her out one night, her son Troy, which is one of my boys' best friends, spent the night with us and I took them all to school the next day. Well, you can imagine what a chore it was to get 3 little boys to go to sleep at the same time. I let them veg-out in the living room and watch a movie thinking they would get sleepy. Well, they did, so I turned off the lights and left the room. Then I hear Troy calling me to tell me that he is afraid of the dark. After turning on several lights in the house to find one that was not too bright, I finally settled on turning back on the t.v. I turned it to a music channel that was playing some really boring Christmas music, which put them right to sleep. As you see in the picture, Kaden slept on the couch, Troy slept on the chair and ottoman, and Rylan got his pallet just as close to Troy as he could while sleeping on the floor. This was a fun night! Boys are great!!

CANcer

The week before Christmas my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. She has been having pain in her stomach for about 2 years, but never had a colonoscopy. Well, she finally had one and it revealed a mass that had to be removed. So, yesterday, Monday Jan. 5th, she went in for surgery. They removed the mass from her colon and the tissue surrounding the colon. Previous tests had indicated a spot on the liver, but the doctor did not find one on further inspection. So, now she's in the hospital waiting to recover from surgery, go home, and wait for tubes to be put in for chemotherapy, probably at the end of the month. I am hopeful that she will come through this with flying colors and I am relying on God to pull her through.

Scaredy-Cat

or Chicken Little! whatever you want to call me! The shoe fits, trust me!!!

Robert, Rylan, Kaden and PaPaw (Robert's dad) left Saturday morning going to North Carolina to visit Robert's grandfather. My first thought of course was Woohoo!! I'm gonna get some rest....Eat when I want to....Sleep as long as I want to....Do whatever I want, when I want!! Yea, that lasted until about 11:00 PM Saturday night. I then realized that I was petrified to stay alone!!! I had already watched one movie and another movie came on TV so I stayed up and watched it too. Finally, around 2:00 AM I decided that I had to go to sleep. So, I pushed chairs up against all 3 of my exterior doors. Then I went in my boys' room, pushed their desk against the door with a chair in front of the desk, and slept in Rylan's bed with a can of mace beside me.

Well, I woke up Sunday morning and of course, I was still alive and no one had tried to break in, so I was stoked. Then, I went back to sleep. Why can I sleep in the daytime at home alone and not at night? That night I went to dinner with Tracy H, Melissa, and Trey. Afterwards, I decided to spend the night with my granny. So, Melissa and Trey went with me to my house to get some clothes and my puppy, Bear. Bear and I proceeded to go to granny's to try to get a good night's sleep. That didn't happen. Granny lives on a busy highway and all I could hear were the cars passing by, and the occassional whine from Bear who had to sleep in the master bathroom so he wouldn't potty on granny's floor. I woke up, drove home, exhausted, and went to work!

Monday night (last night) I was in desperate need of a good night's sleep, and I mean DESPERATE! I went to Melissa's and had dinner with her and her family, watched a movie, and headed home. When I got there, I was scared to death! I put chairs in front of the doors again, locked myself in my bedroom and pushed my chest of drawers up against the door. OK, if someone wanted to break in that bad, I should just let them get me, right?! I finally called my granny at about 10:30. I was almost in tears. She said to put Bear in the bed with me and he'd bark if he heard anything. Well, this frightened me b/c all I could think of was him barking in the middle of the night and me panicking, locking myself in my closet, trying feverishly to call 911. But, I took her advice and put him in the bed with me. We talked for a few minutes, then I heard a noise, I looked for my fearless companion to see if he was going to protect me. There he laid, on the foot of my bed, flat on his back with his paws in the air, snoozing! Great! Then granny made a mistake. She offered to come stay with me and I told her to come ONLY if she felt like it! Inside I just wanted to scream, "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!" When she got to the house I was thrilled. Now, what did I think a 79 year old woman could do if a burglar broke in? Doesn't matter. I slept like a baby!!

Tis the Season to be JOLLEY

This Christmas has come and gone, and I am so thankful! I am thankful for our Lord and Savior; let's don't forget the reason for the season. I am thankful for my wonderful family. I am also thankful that I didn't get that awful virus like Jen and Melody got. I was so afraid I was going to wake up Christmas morning with that yucky stuff. But, I didn't, I woke up happy and healthy and ready to watch my boys open all of their gifts. They had a blast and each gift they opened they would say, "This is what I always wanted!!"

We had Robert's side of the family over for lunch. His mom brought a ham and turkey and I was responsible for all of the side dishes. I did pretty good, if I do say so myself. Afterwards we opened gifts and had a blast playing a boxing video game Mike and Wendy got for the boys. Rylan beat everyone in the house! At one point he even closed his eyes and was still beating us! Kaden has had the most fun with his Nintendo DS and his spy kit. He has booby trapped the entire house! I can't leave my room without a motion detector going off!

Granny came over later in the afternoon and we were all so happy to see her. She felt pretty good that day so she decided to venture out!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and I hope you all have a Happy New Year!!

Last Will and Testament

Many of you may not know, but my Granny found out last week that she has colon cancer. She also has some spots on her lungs, liver, and possibly on one of her kidneys. The first step is going to be to remove the diseased part of the colon, and then she will begin chemotherapy on the rest of the cancer. Well, thinking the worst, she decides that it's time to update her will. So, I have had the unpleasant experience of preparing my granny's will and trying to help her decide what she is going to do with all of her belongings at the time of her death. There are so many emotions that go along with this. It's painful to have to think about losing a loved one. She is my mother's mother, and you know February 5th, 2009 will mark the 3rd anniversary of my mother's passing. It is also painful to talk to someone about all of their worldly possessions, and their funeral arrangements, etc. More power to those people that do this for a living b/c I would just have to crawl under a rock somewhere. This is not fun at all!

Don't Spend It All In One PLace!!

This may not interest anyone, but I've been getting a statement from Chase for a few months that states that I have a balance of <$-.01>. Yea, that's right, they owe me a penny. Well, after getting statement after statement I thought, "You know, it's very wasteful to print a statement and then put postage on it and then send our mail carrier out to my house just to let me know that you owe me a penny. And you do this month after month". So today I called. Well, the lady informed me that I am not "primary" on this account (woohoo! big deal) so she couldn't tell me anything, but if there was a balance owed to us on this account I could have Mr. Jolley call and they could send us a check! I said, "Oh! That sounds good!! So I could take that to the bank, right?!" To which she calmly replied, "Yes ma'am!!" Can you imagine that laughter at the bank when I try to put THAT in my checking account and the clerk saying, "Thank you Mrs. Jolley, you have a nice day, and try not to spend all that money in one place!!"

Kaden had his K-4 Christmas Program last night (this is a pic of Kaden and his BFF Matt). It was very interesting to say the least. Like Mrs. Shirley (the director) said at the end of the night, "You never know what to expect when you get a bunch of kids this age together, but you're sure to be entertained!"

Kaden learned his songs very well. I was surprised because I would ask him almost daily if he had learned his songs for the program, and he would start to sing and forget the words. So, I thought he would get up on stage and just freeze. But no, he did just the opposite. He sang VERY LOUD! As you can tell by the following picture.



I always enjoy these programs. It's fun to see what the teachers have been able to get these children to do. It's hard for me to get the two of my boys to do the same thing; I can't imagine getting the entire group of K-3, K-4, and K-5 children to do the same thing. Oh, and the kids with speaking parts amaze me. There was one little boy in K-3 that had a speaking part and he did awesome. He was so loud and not shy a bit. But his little face turned so red before he was done. I don't think he took a breath until he was completely finished with his part.

Rylan got bored, to say the least, but I just reminded him how many of these programs that I have sat through for him. So, he sat there, reading the church song book, patiently waiting to go eat! You know, at this age, little boys are always starving. So, afterwards me and the boys and granny all went to Bojangle's. Robert was at the program, but he had a basketball game afterwards so he couldn't join us for supper. But, we enjoyed our time with granny.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!