"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine!" Jesse Swanson sang loudly and with perfect pitch, as he marched into his eldest son's bedroom. Tugging the blinds open and ripping the blankets off his son's sleeping form, he got louder. "You make me happy, when skies are grey!"

"Go away", eight year old Ben mumbled, shoving his head under his pillow.

"Come on, up and at 'em! It's a beautiful day outside! Dean and Brody are already up!"

Morning was Jesse's favourite part of the day- and he shared that with his younger sons, six year old Dean and four year old Brody. But eight year old Ben didn't seem to understand the greatness that was mornings.

(At least all three boys loved movies as much as he did. he was pretty sure that if one of his children told him they didn't like movies, a part of him would shrivel up and die inside.)

"What are we doing?" Ben moaned, waiting for the incentive to crawl out of his bed and face the day.

"I don't know! That's the beauty of it!" and Jesse grabbed him around the waist, carrying him out of his bedroom upside down, ready to face the day.

"You'll never know dear, how much I love you!" Beca Mitchell sang at the top of her lungs, as she moved down the hallway into her seven year old daughter's room. "So please don't take my sunshine away! Rosie, get up".

"No".

Beca knew where her eldest was coming from, she really did. Beca hated the mornings. She would love to sleep in until noon, but then she had given birth to Rosie, who, for the first two years of her life, had woken up before five a.m. this did not make Beca a morning person, but after bringing Natalie and Courtney into the world, she felt she had no choice but to get up at a stupid hour that God should never have invented.

"Come on, Aunt Chloe and Uncle Michael are coming", Beca said temptingly. "And Aunt Chloe promised we'd go and meet Fat Amy at the ice cream parlour".

"Which one?"

"The only one we go to". Beca tugged her blankets away, chuckling at the way that Rosie pawed the air, looking for her stolen covers (so reminiscent of her younger days. Her college days, actually, where her father would barge into her dorm and demand to know why she wasn't in her intro to philosophy class). "Get up. Natalie and Courtney are already up".

"Of course they are". Rosie buried her head in her pillow.

Five year old Natalie and three year old Courtney had unfortunately never grown out of their 'up before the rooster' habits, as their beloved godmother Chloe had pointed out. Beca had glared at the redhead, before sighing and admitting how true it was. Finding her sweet three year old's face inches away from her own before the sun was up was not the way Beca liked to wake up.

"Up!" and Beca grabbed Rosie around the waist, hauling the seven year off the bed, as she hollered in protest.

Jesse glanced around the kitchen table, as his boys packed away the chocolate chip pancakes like they had never eaten before.

"Dean!" he said suddenly. "Dude, you've gotta chew".

"I am!" Dean protested with his mouth full, and Jesse shook his head in amusement.

He had never pictured his life to turn out the way it had. He was all about the American dream- the wife, the kids, the white picket fence, scoring the soundtrack for award winning movies. He had the kids and he had the job, but the wife and white picket fence?

No.

He had met Katherine on his twentieth birthday, and had fallen head over heels in love. They had gotten engaged six short months later (because she had fallen just as hard as he had), and a year later, Benjamin was born. Two and four years later, respectively, they welcomed Dean and Brody into the world, settling into life as a five person family.

But that was all taken away from them when Brody was four month old, when Katherine was killed in a head on collision. Jesse's heart had shattered- he had lost his wife and his best friend, and his boys had lost their mother.

Jesse had fallen hard and fast in love with Katherine, channelling his inner romantic that would rival a John Hughes eighties movie (and Jesse knew them all). But all that had been ripped from him in a matter of seconds.

Jesse Swanson was a romantic. He had spent his high school life wooing the girls with his killer pipes and romantic gestures (because he had seen the films and knew what girls liked), but after Katherine, Jesse didn't know what to do. He wanted to be able to share his life with someone else, but was scared. Because not only would he be sharing his life, he'd be sharing his boys' lives.

And he didn't want his boys to get hurt.

Beca glanced around the kitchen table, as Courtney stirred her cereal around in her bowl.

"Courtney, just eat it, please", she said gently, taking a bite out of her toast.

Beca Mitchell had never imagined herself as a mother. If she was completely honest, she had never seen herself settling down, because of the childhood she had had. Her parents had fought and fought and fought, before her father walked out on her and her mother, remarrying and settling into what he saw as the perfect life. So when Beca met Luke when she was in college, she tried her hardest to downplay and ignore her feelings.

But it was too much, and she eventually caved, giving into the feelings she had been repressing.

They had gotten engaged, but in Beca's first year out of college, when she found herself pregnant. She was downright terrified, but once Rose was in the world, she knew that everything was right. Two years after Rosie, Beca and Luke welcomed Natalie into their little family and two years after that Courtney made their family one of five.

But it wasn't smooth sailing- Beca had caught Luke cheating on her, when Courtney was three months old. And as the couple screamed well into the night, it came to light that it wasn't the first time, and Luke had been sleeping with the other woman regularly since before Natalie was born.

So Beca threw her engagement ring at his head and demanded that he get the hell out of her house, never wanting to see him again. And she hadn't.

She was adamant that she wasn't going to let herself get hurt again- she had truly thought she could trust Luke, but she was under the impression that all men were the same. Perhaps she was scared (although Beca Mitchell would never admit to being scared), but she didn't want to get hurt again.

And she definitely didn't want her girls to get hurt.