Always Moving...

I have moved a lot. From State to state. Across the country. Literally, I moved 12 times, during all twelve years of school. I am not counting before school age or after. It took some serious thinking to figure it out, sitting down with my mom. It seems so unreal, that it had been so many and not due to my parents being in the military but because my dad was like a Jack of All Trades, and I think he had ADD.

I have fond memories of moving and some not so great. The earliest I can recall was when my dad was a trucker. It was the summer between kindergarten and 1 st grade when we moved from S.L.C. to a trailer town in the middle of nowhere called Wamcenter, Wy. The trip was a bad one because I remember having my kitten, Snowball (the one I stole) in the back of the sleeper in my dad's truck with me. It was night and as he was driving, that stupid kitten got her nails stuck in my thigh. I screamed and screamed until he stopped and he had to unlatch her from my leg. Then she got kicked out, she had to ride with my mom, who was driving a pick-up, and I guess, that kitten went crazy on her too.

I can recall just about all of my trips, but the ones that stood out, were times like when my father had the bright and brilliant idea of hooking a full sized semi-hay trailer to our pick-up and it ended up almost making us go off a cliff. It made us fish tail from guard rail to guard rail, and when the guard rail ran out, God saved us, because the trailer turned on it's side before we went off the edge. It was just me, my baby brother,my mom, and a cat with kittens, sitting in the front seat. Later that night, we stayed at a motel, and people in the town helped set up a huge bon fire where they burned all of our broken stuff. Including my doll house, that had a elevator.

We had good moments too, on all of our moves, we manged to take in any sites that were near by. I think my favorite time moving was when we came from Juneau to Utah, because we got to ride the ferry for three days during Halloween. The kids and I, literally ran from one end to another, and we found kids are board who would play tag with us, but the Purser sure did not like it! So we did get into trouble.

I could talk and talk about all of our moves, as an adult, I too tried to incorporate some sites for our kids. On the way here, we stopped at the Glen Dam in AZ, and we had plans to stop other places too, but it was a week before Christmas and we were sort of in a hurry. In Texas, we ran into some heavy fog going across the pan handle. And in Oklahoma we had snow and ice. The bad thing was, right before our trip we bought a duo DVD players and one of the kids stepped on the cord and broke it. Our heat went in our van, so then we were freezing. That made things miserable. I also tried a energy pill that I got from a gas station, and I remember thinking I was going to die because my heart was having some serious misbeats. I don't think Jason knew it was a bad as it could have been. The kids were great though, even Clark and Viv got along.

There was one other trip, I have to include, was the move from Ohio to St. George. We were on a deadline because Jason had a job to go to. And before the trip, I was sure to save plenty of money to go. But the days before we left, we had to clean our house. I had to pay my sister and her boyfriend to help because I was in such a rush. We gave them a old car, we gave them money, but it wasn't enough. She begged and begged, and we ended up giving her a total of $300, thinking maybe this would be the last time I would see her. When we left, Jason drove a huge U-Haul ,my brother in his car, which had two of my kids behind us, and I drove a old pick-up loaded with a 3 wheeler and stuff. On our move, we got a flat tire in Indiana, and then I lost a tire in Missouri going 72 miles per hour, late at night. Should have seen the sparks fly! It actually caused our back axle to break. So then we ended up getting a car hauler from the U-Haul, so we carried on. By the time we were in Colorado, we were just about out of cash. It was a big mistake to go through the mountains in the fall. We stopped in a small ski town and a nice lodge owner next to a gas station we were at, took us in for just $15.00. The next day, we did run out of money, and the kids ate pop tarts all day. When we arrived through the Utah border, we ran out of gas. So we had to wait for my parents to drive 6 hours to meet us. Talk about a trial and a blessing. Who knows what adventure awaits us in our next move, whether it be small or large. I miss the fun of having the CB radios, making a big deal out of seeing the state signs that greeted us at the borders, and all of the new places to see.