I went to Jail last night.

 

*I'm still not good at figuring how to get the pictures and words where I want them, oh well*

Last night my mom and I watched Jared and Nikki's kids for a couple hours. Giving Nikki a little break to get over some sickness. I hope she got some good rest. We took the kids to my place and had cookies and ice cream. They lucked out that today was the first day I decided to try out my oven and make cookies to give away. And I still had a little ice cream left over from when I friend brought some over. Thankfully the kids pounded that all down like there was no tomorrow. Then I learned quicklike that my house is NOT in the least bit child proofed. I did have some blocks for them to play with though. I left them to wonder when I was holding the baby and sure enough two of them came out of my room chewing gum. dang it kids! you better not spit it out anywhere. I will find out later I guess if stickiness and problems are to be found anywhere else. I'm sure a few pieces of trash made it to the baby's mouth. They begged to write on my chalkboard wall and to take a bath at my house. Grandma was awesome enough to bring pj's. Bath time happened. Jennifer decided she was going to sing to me while the other kids took a bath. I have no clue what she was singing, but she was all about song. I let her listen to my new favorite "Everybody" by Ingrid Michaelson. I think by the time they got home she knew it by heart. She loves music. I should've posted the picture of Jennifers creations on my book shelf and posted them. I have a little wood set of a man, woman, and a temple. She was posing them and telling me to take pictures. One time they were kissing. That's right Jennifer, you have the idea. haha Hilarious. I still can't believe I've had that since I was 12 or something. Then after the kids were cleaned we loaded up to go home. It had to have been 930 at this point. Feeling like 1130 with four kids. All buckled up and don't you know it, the car won't start. I had to take a step back and breathe....I said maybe we should pray. My mom said a prayer, and we tried a couple more times. The car started. Jennifer Gasped ! Heavenly Father started the car! It was the cutest thing. After getting back to Xenia I dropped my mom off at the grocery store to pick up some things for Nikki. I then asked the kids if they wanted to go see where Jordan was living. They wanted to go see him. Jordan has been at the adult detention center in xenia since mid june. I guess it's always easier to say jail. I told them we could see where he was living, but he was in trouble so he couldn't come out and see them yet. We drove by ADC and Angela said, "hmm its nice" haha I love kids. We had some good conversation about how he has been away for awhile and we can't see him yet, but we can write him. They also likened it to their daddy being away and they can't see him right now either. Then they started asking me what its like there. They asked if he was in a cage. I tried to explain what he is doing there. Reading books, playing cards, watching TV. He lives in a big room with lots of bunk beds, but since he is in trouble he can't come out and play. I think it must've been Angela at this point that said, OH ITS LIKE TANGLED! haha yes, he is in a tower and his mom wont let him come out. But the tower is that concrete room in a big bldg and the mom are the police. I don't suppose that maybe you think they sing and dance in there huh? :) Just my thoughts. I think it would make it a way better place to live. I guess Jordan has been visiting with the missionaries twice a week and his branch president has seen him a few times as well. His friends came with me to go to his court hearing last Friday. I guess as soon as one more thing is settled in the juvenile court system he will be going to a halfway house for around 3 months I think. Its hard to keep up with whats going on. I am just trying to be better about writing letters. Me and Jordan have been playing tic tac toe in our letters. I sent him some pictures to catch him up on my life a little bit. Yes, back to the kids. I told them we can write him a letter if they wanted. They were so cute! I can write my name, Jennifer shouted. I said we can trace your hands and then you can write your names in them. Then they said, yeah and we can draw a heart so he knows how much we love him. Then more ideas of things they could draw started flow. Pigs, chickens, butterflies. wow, this letter was going to be awesome :) We got home after picking grandma back up and mom was sleeping  in her room where the paper was so we stuck to just drawing on paper towels. I have now got the cutest little letters to send Jordan. Guess I don't know what kind of envelope to put them in. I hope he appreciates how much these kids love him. I hardly see the kids lately, but the stories are great every time. Best imaginations ever. I have been asked to give massages at the princess bday party coming up in october. haha what 4 and 5 yr olds do you know that ask for massage at their party!? haha awesome. I'm there. Speaking of kid imaginations, all this jail talk reminded me of when I was younger. I believe I was around 8 yrs old. Still young enough to have a wild imagination, but old enough to worry. Bad combination. We all went to the doctor to be tested for TB. I have no idea to this day why everyone in my family BUT me tested negative. I could've sworn I was just bitten by a mosquito in the same place that they poked me. It itched. It itched really bad. I don't know specifically how it all went down. But being that young, you are never talked TO, only ABOUT. I am not deaf. I could hear them talking about all sorts of things. Obviously never getting the full picture. I didn't know what disease I had, I just knew it was bad. I didn't always get along with my family, I wasn't the nicest kid all the time but I didn't think I was ready to be shipped away to some hospital up far away in the mountains (I'm sure if tangled was already made I would've put myself there in my mind) locked up a room that only had a small hole at the bottom of some bars where I could be fed through. I was going to be all alone and no one around. It might be funny to hear about this. But lets just say I don't think I slept well for a long time. I couldn't sleep I was crying so much. I know my dad gave me a blessing one night. I had to be okay with taking medication every morning. It was torture. I got yelled at lots for hating the liquid and crying every time I had to take it. So we switched to pills, yeah, pills?? I thought I was going to choke every time. They were crushed, cut in half and put in orange juice lots of times. Maybe I was overly dramatic about it all, but I hated that I was the only one being forced to take medication for some disease and I didn't feel one bit different or sick. It didn't seem fair. man, that was a rough time. Not to mention thats the year that my cousin that lived with us and was only one year old died. hmm okay that was off topic for sure. Anywayy... kids and their imaginations. They can get outta hand. Hopefully some day I can show the kids pictures of where Jordan is and explain things a little bit better to their little minds. Or maybe Jordan will be able to share when he gets through it all.

Aal Izz Well

 Just thought I would share a few pictures from a couple weeks back. Don't worry. I've got in mostly under control now. It was a decent summer morning in Nebraska. Nebraska hates me :) My gauge went from 0 to Hugh Jackman in like 2 seconds flat! sheesh. It was the beginning of a long long day. I hadn't been on the road more than two hours.

 God Bless America for Christmas gifts that I like to store in my car. And God Bless Holly for giving me a "car repair kit" for christmas that included one roll of duct tape that had gone mostly unused up until this point in the life of this car. I made a quick phone call to my brother to make sure a quick fix would be acceptable to get me to a parts store. Up until this point I'm pretty sure there were only a handful of people that knew I was on my way back to Ohio. I had given up on vacation and was ready to head back to work and some sort of real life that I had left in Ohio. I'm still up to my eye balls in debt, but I needed the time away. I've always said I'd rather be poor and happy than...well I wont even mention the other alternative because I've sort of just always been poor and happy.

 The quick fix (plus a few tears of frustration) got me to the next town over where there was a parts store that had the $8 piece of crap part that was to save the day and get me back on the road. No thanks to the guys in the store my car got fixed. Okay, I lie, they did let me borrow their pliers. I think this little hole set me back a solid 5 hrs on my drive. I had to let the car cool down twice. And then gather my will to drive at the end of it all. I'm sort of done driving this car. She's been mostly good to me, but I'm so done.

 The freaking clamps and hose were "easy" to fix. What wasn't easy was keeping clean words running through my mind every time the pliers lost grip and I would hurt myself, or when I had to reach between two hot parts of an engine to grab the loosened clamp only to land myself an interesting arm burn. I was bound to be burnt, if not by the sun, then by my car I guess. Like I said, I think it was only putting me behind 5 hours by the end of the whole ordeal. At that point though...I think I sent out a few texts of frustration about everything so a few more people knew I was coming. Oh and my brother told my mom. Its not a big deal that I was coming home, but I just wanted to be out of sight and out of mind for a little while longer. (which is working with my parents...still have yet to see them)

In the end I had to sit and think about the good things in the day and remember my blessings. There was someone looking after me I know. I am not usually one to get a hotel room on my long journey from east to west and west to east. BUT for some reason I decided the night before my ordeal would be a good night to just get a cheap hotel room. So I got a really good nights sleep. I also got a shower in the morning. If I had kept going, this would've happened really late at night when it was raining. And the day before I had had some thought that my car might overheat so I needed to have coolant in my car. If I wouldn't have had that coolant to fill my radiator the quick duct tape fix wouldn't have been able to do much anyway. So glad that was in the car. Pretty glad I wasn't on a busy road too. Also, I got to be back on the road during a time when I could see the sunset again in a super beautiful spot. You know sometimes in life there are times when you think you know why it is that you do the things you do. And other times you just obey because it makes sense to obey the thoughts and feelings and impressions you get. Yeah, I do that, and I wonder when or IF I'll ever know all the reasons I do things.  I thought for sure I was done going out to Utah, then I ended up there for a good portion of my summer. I thought I would end up staying there. HA, next thing you know. I'm back in Ohio. I can't always explain it in a way that everyone understands, but its okay. Not every needs to understand me :) Don't get me wrong, that would be nice. But it just won't happen anytime soon.  OH yeah, and I can't forget to say that AFTER I had been in Ohio a week. On a quite awful sunday....My car battery decides to give out on me. Meaning, the cables were almost completely disconnected and I hadn't realized it. Wow, can you believe I made it out to Oregon and back this summer without ever once noticing that my cables on my battery were almost completely disconnected. Thankful I made it out there and back and I'm still alive. Yep, aal izz well.

Before I forget....

 

4 generation photo.

I have been here at my aunt and uncles house for a few weeks. This was the week that Grandpa & Grandma Benson came to visit. Zak and Allysia and their kids also came to visit too. It's been such a busy week. Yesterday most of us went down to Salt Lake City and visited temple square. It was lots of fun walking around seeing things. We got to walk quickly through it all. Saw some bird watchers and some musicians....and as always, lots and lots of missionaries. Just a side note, that night, the wind was unbelievable. Today the grandparents decided to go back down to visit more family in Utah before they headed home. While we sat in the kitchen this morning I thought I would ask a question I wasn't sure of the answer. It started quite a funny conversation/story time. I asked grandma how her and grandpa met. She said it was probably just because she was from Cardington and grandpa was from a town close by (Fulton). Grandma then told me how people used to just walk into this "filling station" and the owner would be busy fixing some car or something so they would just write down an I owe you and then leave. Usually, she said, grandpa would get a dollar in gas and that was all. Then someone mentioned how people used to sit around and talk and watch cars pass. I guess at one point grandpa said he wasn't "going steady" with grandma but he wanted to take her to a movie. She said she would go if he asked her dad. So of course he has to go into the bar and ask her dad. I just found that really funny. He said her dad didn't care what she did. Somehow Grandpa started on about some story of when he was 12 or 13 he had a pack of cigarettes..."you know the cool, long ones" (there was more to that description, but I can't remember...he just got excited about the sort of cigarette it was) So he has this pack of cigarettes and his dad asked him what he was doing with it. He then basically told him, "I'm smokin' them! what are you going to do about it?!"  I think this story was to demonstrate why he wanted to marry my grandma. He said there was no one that really cared about or took care of him when he was that age. He was the only sibling of his family that didn't finish his schooling. I guess that age (12 or 13) was when he decided he was going to hitch hike and go to WV. I guess by the time he got there it was winter. He said it got so cold he was just hitch hiking back and forth in any direction to stay warm. Then someone finally brought him back to Columbus. He said he walked all the way across Columbus because he couldn't hitch hike in town. Then he got a rug from somewhere and made himself a little tent/shelter. He camped all summer and worked for some farmers. Made $3 a day, working 10 hr days. He said he would buy his groceries and fix all the stuff he needed to out where he was camping. He said others would come stay out with him too. I don't know how he ended up back in cardington/fulton area, but I guess when he was 16 is when he started "going steady" with grandma. When he had to ask grandma's dad if they could get married her dad said, I don't care what she does as long as she finishes school. Well I guess they were both 17 when they got married. And I guess it was in April that year. Grandpa said he wanted to get married because he didn't have anyone else looking after him. He made it sound like that was the only way he was going to get a place to live. I guess Grandma found it important to tell us, they got married because they wanted to, not because they HAD to like lots of kids these days. She told me do the math :) Michael was born 10 months after they got married. I guess Grandpa said he almost left her at first. He was too used to roaming and doing whatever he wanted to. She was pregnant though and he felt like he needed to be responsible and take care of them. (thank goodness) Then he told me how whenever he was 27....just after their 4th kid was born...He was having all kinds of coughing fits. The doctor told him the only way he was going to get better was to move to arizona, live in a different climate. He said they doctor was an idiot. He knew how he was going to fix it! He threw away the pack of cigarettes in his pocket and then when home and threw away the other half of a carton of cigarettes he had left there. That worked! haha He sure showed that doctor huh? Apparently the quitting smoking just ruined his love of hunting squirrels though. He also mentioned how he used to just sit and smoke while he waited for them to come along. When he wasn't smoking he couldn't stand the waiting around though. haha We were all (me and ben mostly) kind of grossed out at the thought of eating a squirrel. So these were pretty much the stories I wanted to write down before I forgot about the funny stuff they were telling us this morning. It was a good visit.

Provo ...Friday Night.

 I've always wanted to go to one of these free rooftop concerts. I'm glad I had some cousins come with me. It was a really good show....started off hot as all get out....and way mellow music...

 By the time the lights dimmed and it was cool....the music was way more upbeat and kept us completely entertained the whole time. Good times.

I'll edit with some explanation later.