It has been way too long!  I regret that because the kids do hilarious things every day!  I am going to forget if I don't write it down.  Just take today for example...I woke up way early and came downstairs.  Usually Saggers beats me up and that is it because she has early morning seminary.  So, I come down the stairs to Jerusha up and baking cookies???  Does she think I was born yesterday?  I suspect there is a boy behind all of this early morning baking.  I am so on to her.
     So, court began for the Portland and Nevada trials earlier this month.  So far I have only been able to attend court one day in Nevada, and I have plans to attend court in Portland three days next week.  I am hoping to catch Ammon's testimony.  Anyhow, life has been crazy, more corruption is being exposed each day that these trials resume, and yet today's post I want to largely focus on the kids.
     So, we have drill team season winding down.  Jerusha had her last performance last night for games, and Jamie is slowing down too.  Drill team review is in a few weeks, and so far, all of the older girls really want to attend.  This causes problems because I decided that taking Mo and Dill is a complete waste of time, not to mention energy.  All I do is chase them around, and when Mo went running out of the gym to the outside world, and I tried to chase him, knocking a trash can full of trash onto the court, I vowed that he would never get to come again.  So, we will be having a knock-down-drag-out fight as to who has to babysit I am sure.
     I made the huge mistake of buying a few bouncy balls at Christmas.  The large, bouncy kind.  I am really tired of those things getting binged all over the house.  Not to mention the fact that we are in someone else's home still, and as I pull Ryan's assets together to buy a home of our own, I would really like to be as quiet and unannoying ( I am sure this probably isn't even a word) as possible.  Those dumb things are bouncing and flying and banging into pictures and causing crashes nonstop.  I was kinda delighted when one of them popped, and I noticed the other day (after being delighted that the noise level went down a bazillion decibels) that the last one had been thrown outside kinda close to a stickery cactus.  I figured that I would just let it stay there for a few centuries and let it rot, but no, Oak found it and brought it back in the house.  Inspite of it's flatness, it is now being binged all over the place again.  NOTE TO SELF-no dumb bouncy balls next year, unless I have plans of banging my head on a wall.
     Dill and Mo have been on a raiding the cupboards mode.  I try to have supplies for school lunches every day, and yet, this seems to be the stuff that Mo and Dill want and cry for.  I have very little patience and energy to deal with their fits, and so I usually let them just have whatever it is, because there are things that I will put my foot down on.  Energy must be saved to fight those fights.  Anyhow, they are constantly raiding my chip stashes.  They get one of those cute little bags of chips, and in order to open it, they jump with all of their might on it to pop the bag and open it.  Mo usually does this with one quick jump, but Dill usually cannot get the job done with one jump.  She usually jumps and jumps, smashing all chips to smithereens until I finally insist on opening the bag for her.  Then of course, the chips are scattered more than usual because of the smallness of the pieces. 
     Dill has also gotten into a show called "Peppa Pig."  I know I am sounding like a Negative Nelly in this post, but I believe that Peppa Pig is hands down, the most annoying kid show that I have ever encountered.  Dill loves it though, and she cannot wait until evening  when I allow the kids some TV time.  Peppa Pig is a female pig that lives with her family.  They go on family adventures, but the biggest problem is just all of the odd noises.  They of course have plenty of pig snorting sounds, but then they are English pigs with English accents.  So, pig snorts, and English humor, and yeah...I miss Bugs Bunny.  They are constantly "splashing in muddy puddles" and playing with "spotty balls."  The worst is when Peppa annoys her little brother "George" and he bawls.  It is the most annoying squeals known to man. Because of this, Dill is always eager to "splash in muddy puddles."  Shockingly, we have gotten some nice storms here in the last few months, which inevitably leads to Dill jumping in a puddle whole heartedly.  This is fun for her for a few seconds, but then she is wet, muddy and sad.  On the way into shrsh it is kind of an inconvenience.  Chlo even went and pulled on Ryan's muck boots the other night, and jumped in the bathtub to "splash in muddy puddles" like Peppa and George.  It did clean Ryan's boots up nicely, so that was good of little Chlo.
     Speaking of little Chlo, she still doesn't dare sleep in her room with her Daddy away.  I finally just put her mattress on my floor, and she always sleeps in my room now.  For a long time, she slept in my bed at my feet, but she hit a growth spurt and it just became too uncomfortable.  Anyhow, I have been watching her.  Each night she carefully selects certain stuffed animals to bed down with her, along with a flashlight that she likes to sleep with.  She keeps the flashlight on, and I usually try to switch it off after she falls asleep.  I notice, though that when she wakes up, she flips it back on, and I leave it.  It is heartbreaking that she feels so scared with her Daddy away.  I just cannot provide the feeling of protection that he did.  She also breaks down and starts crying at odd times, and just expresses how much she misses her Daddy, and how badly she wants him to come home.  I wish I knew how to fix it.  Nothing can replace a man like her Dad.  I do my best, but there is definitely a lack of security with him gone.
     Another source of frustration is our fair animals.  The fair animals have been overall a great thing to do.  But, Sage's steer has been giving her fits along with Jerusha's.  Those big steer's figure out pretty fast that they can jerk those little girls around, and once they figure it out, they do it a lot.  The fix for that is, to get a man (Ryan) to manhandle them a bit and show them who is in charge.  Well, he isn't here, and a lot of days the steers take advantage of that.  Sage has been coming home with bruises from working hers, and I know that Clance will have to tie them up behind the horse and walk them for a few days.  But, it just means their little hearts get broken daily because Ryan was so good to instruct and help them with their animals.  The hole in our household is real.  It breaks our hearts daily.  Time isn't fixing it.  Time isn't healing it.  We just need him back, and the case down here is so completely ridiculous that it is frustrating.
     With Spring hitting the desert, Dill and Mo have been spending many of their hours outside.  Their latest projects consisted of them building a nice pond for the worms that they caught.  Mo was very thoughtful and precise in the construction of his worm pond.  He is so much like his dad.  Oh, how I miss Ryan.  I am so grateful that I have so many happy memories to tap into!  I love that guy so much!
    

     New post, new year, and I have a ton of ground to cover.  I have got to get better about recording what is going on.  I know that this chapter of my life is tough, but extremely significant.  I have grown a lot and learned a ton even though its been difficult.
     I am so grateful to be past the holidays!! I must be honest in saying that I dreaded them. It seemed to be this difficult hurdle to jump, and I am grateful to be past it.  I would like to record what happened during Christmas though.  It was actually a great Christmas in spite of the difficult circumstances. 
     First of all, I must admit that December was just a huge blur.  It involved a ton of activities, recitals, concerts etc.  I was so busy that most nights I would just crawl in bed with intention of laying by Dill and getting her down, with all kinds of plans to accomplish further tasks when I had her asleep.  I would wake up all bleary eyed around midnight or so and stumble around turning off lights and counting little sleeping children to make sure that they had all found some place soft to crash.  I was run literally ragged.  On top of all of the holiday stuff, Ryan still had stuff he wanted filed...I ran to Cedar to file some stuff on one day, and he had a hearing on the 23rd that required some phone calls and leg work.  I was an emotional mess at the thoughts of begging the court to let him out before Christmas.  In my heart, I knew that they did not care, and that they would show no mercy.  And yet, I knew that I had to keep a small glimmer of hope and try for a Christmas miracle.  So, I tried to round up potential character witnesses, and also witnesses to refute all of the ridiculous lies that the prosecutors have told.
     Somewhere between all of the chaos of the holidays, enough of the dishes that Ryan had bought me for Christmas a few years back, became lost or broken.  Tile floors are hard on dishes, and I will admit that in my frustration in January...when I could not get in touch with Ryan during all of the refuge hoopla, I threw a few of them...only three, but hey.  It felt good.  Anyhow, I noticed at dinner time that there was nothing to eat on.  I would have to feed a kid, and then hurry and wash the plate to feed another if I wasn't lucky enough to be able to scrounge up a paper one somewhere.  So, Christmas came early and I bought myself a set of dishes.  The Walmart version of the ones that they use on Chopped, which must have entered my subconscious on many of those nights when I went to get Dill to sleep.  I would put on a Chopped, and would not even see who won the appetizer round.  Some of this would get the kids acting like critics with the food.  It was kinda funny.  We have watched way too many cooking shows.
     We have also had some serious mishaps with Dill and Mo.  Mo is good and potty trained at this point.  In fact, he was really easy to potty train and caught on really fast, but one day, he was in his usual underwear attire.  He was dancing around the kitchen acting like he needed to go to the bathroom, while fumbling through some drawers.  I could tell that he should go to the bathroom and I told him so.  Well, in his frustration, he left a puddle of pee on the floor and he was furious with me.  I was kinda baffled at this because he has been potty trained for almost two years now...how in the world was it my fault?  He yelled that if I had helped him find a pair of scissors then the accident never would have happened.  How in the world does that even make any sense at all?  I take the blame for everything with that kid.
     Dill is growing up all too fast.  She is hilarious.  She and Mo have gotten to where they play pretty good together, and we had Chlo all throughout the holidays to keep some good imaginative games going.  I noticed that they were puppies a lot.  Chlo was a very kind and giving dog owner who loved and doted on her pups.  She would put out pillows for them to nap on, and I even saw a leash or two from time to time.  They made huts, and at one point had taken over my bathroom with a huge "little people" game going.  On one of the nights that I mentioned above, when I was all bleary eyed and stumbling around, I crashed right into the little people world, and had to clear them all off of the floor and toilet lid.  I knew at that point that it was time to clean their bedrooms.  They were getting desperate for clean places to play.  I guess my bathroom was the last frontier.  Mo and Dill have been making huts lately and eating hot Cheetos in them or playing house.  I warned Mo the other day not to use my hand weights as a means of holding blankets down in his blanket forts, and sure enough a three pounder came crashing down on Dill at some point.  It was good that it wasn't one of the heavier ones.  She still loves to eat anything hot and spicy.  She loves hot chips and hot salsa.  Most mornings she begs for an "egg and sauce".  This usually means that she wants a fried egg with some salsa and chips.  She will sit and eat the salsa off of the chips and ignore everything else.  If I fry Mo or someone else an egg too, she will try to eat theirs, but ignore hers for sure.  Sometimes the food will get to her and she will be sweating and red.  She will also get a runny nose, but she wants to keep eating the hot stuff.  It is at that point that I will have to remove the food from her amid many disappointed shrieks. 
     Ok...so back to Christmas and the hearing.  I had a few packages and gifts filter in from many places around the United States.  We truly have so many wonderful people praying for us, and supporting us, it is unreal.  I also had checks and cash donations with the specific instructions to spend it on the kids for Christmas.  So, I took a few trips to Vegas and bought first and foremost, clothes for the teenagers.  I also purchased a few fun gifts of toys for the little ones.  Nothing too elaborate, but I knew that it would all be a good distraction on Christmas morning.  I was so busy with all of the other activities, that I didn't really take note of all that was in the packages.  Ryan's Aunt Margaret also called wanting to help for Christmas.  I gave her some ideas of some inexpensive gifts that the kids would like and appreciate.  Inexpensive so as not to overburden her financially, and it was stuff like matchbox cars and bouncy balls.  Well, in the few days leading up to Christmas, we were showered with all kinds of gifts.  Someone in the ward had bought each of the kids something, along with movie tickets and had sent it over with the Bishop.  They wanted to remain anonymous, but we did take a movie day and we went to Moana...the new Disney movie.  It was a great distraction.  We all left wishing that we were Polynesian and that we lived by the ocean instead of blonde people in the desert.  Tyson Houston and his wife Kelly showed up a few days before Christmas, and had bought the kids a ton of gifts.  At this point, I knew that we had way more than we needed.  There was just one thing that was missing that I was wishing to give Jazz.  I mentioned it to my brother Barry that she had wanted a ukulele.  Why?? I don't know, and it wasn't like I could just find a ukulele easily.  But, Jazz watches the kids all the time.  She helps me with the kids without complaint, and it was all she had asked for.  Well...Barry found her a pink one, and drove it down to my house along with a bunch of gifts for all of the kids from he and Doug.  I was blown away by it all.  But, I was still distracted by the hearing
     Ok....so, I need to explain the hearing for a bit.  Ryan has really never had a true detention hearing.  He is basically sitting in jail on a bunch of lies.  Lies that have been fabricated by the Government or the Prosecutor or both.  He would like a true hearing with witnesses and evidence to refute the lies.  During the whole month of December, I was under the impression that this hearing was going to take place on December 23rd and so I was trying to gather witnesses to refute their nonsense.  Until, a few days in advance when I learned that the Government was not necessarily allowing us to have a hearing, but we were going to have a hearing to see if he deserved a hearing.  This is all such BS it is unreal.  So, I had witnesses all lined out to be on the stand with the understanding that they would probably not be allowed to even say anything.  We prayed for a miracle, but my faith in their mercy is non-existent anymore.  They are evil, and throughout this paragraph, I would like to explain why I feel that way.
     I am always torn between taking the kids or sheltering them from the nonsense and evil that takes place in the courtroom.  I honestly wanted the kids to be able to see their dad and wave at him, but sometimes that is not even allowed.  The shuffle him into the courtroom in chains with 6-8 US Marshal's all around him, giving the distinct impression that he is majorly dangerous, and a serious threat.  This is the same man that hugged, kissed, and loved these children for their whole childhood.  What a horrible scene for children to have to witness.  But, the stupid skype system that the jail system has adopted these days is hardly a visit with their Dad.  Being in the same room as a family is something.  I also wanted the judge and the prosecutor to see that Ryan has a wife and a large family who love him, need him, and depend on him.  They have to know that these men are innocent of any violence or wrong doing.  There has to be a conscience in there somewhere. We arrived at the courthouse on a Friday morning.  The 23rd of December.  I could not seem to get Dill's boots on her, and it was quite cold.  Shem and Cheryl Teerlink arrived, and Shem was willing to testify in Ryan's behalf if it was allowed.  Luckily, Shem was able to get Dill's boots on her as well.  We got inside, and immediately Oak makes all kinds of attempts to climb the walls.  I took him aside and politely explained to him, that he had better not even think of climbing anything in the courtroom.  I told the kids what to expect, that Dad would say a few words, and then the Prosecutor would tell a bunch of lies, and then we would go get a treat.  Mo would only agree to be good and quiet if I promised him that I would buy him some gummy worms after the hearing, to which I readily agreed.  After all, it was Vegas...there had to be some gummy worms for sale somewhere in the sprawling city. 
     We all went and said a prayer before entering the courtroom.  Duane Schrock, who testified in the Portland hearing, and who gave his cowboy hat to Ammon, was there.  Roger Roots, Shawna, Eric Farnsworth, and a few I did not recognize were there as well.  We all prayed together, and then the Marshal's showed us where we could sit.  Of course it was as far away from Ryan as possible.  At some point, I would like to ask these people why they enforce all of these nonsense safety measures all the time.  I hear people say all the time that these men are "just doing their job" but so were the Nazi's in Germany.  At some point people have to do what is right, even if it goes against "doing their job".  I would also like to ask them what in the heck they think that the kids and I are going to do if we actually get to sit in the same vicinity as Ryan....are we going to stage a war right there in the court room or what?  It is all so very ridiculous.  They shuffled Ryan in, and we waved with his hands shackled and gave us his smile.  It about makes me cry to just see him like that.  The kids were excited to see him though, and waved back.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but his blue prison suit even looks good on him.  It brings out the blue in his eyes.  Dill was so excited to see her dad, that she just could not stop yelling.
     Ryan led us in prayer and he explained to the judge that all he would like to do, was bring in the truth.  He had been sitting in prison over a pack of lies, and he would like the opportunity to refute the lies.  He also reminded the judge that at his original hearing, the judge had told him that they could reopen his detention hearing at any time.  The judge said that he would consider it and let him know.  Of course, this is not what we wanted to hear.  We wanted a Christmas miracle.  We wanted our daddy home for Christmas.
     So, we stopped at Costco and bought a huge pack of gummy worms, along with a few other things that we would need for the lonely holiday and headed home.  We were sad...actually little Jasmine had a full on come apart.  How can these men, the Prosecutor and the judge feel ok about what they are doing?  I noticed that Shakespeare....aka Prosecutor Myhre was a little less theatrical about painting a horrible picture of Ryan that morning, but he told more lies nonetheless.  This while, a baby called out to her daddy repeatedly right before Christmas....I am sorry, but that is evil.  Especially when you consider that all of the things holding Ryan in the indictment are fabrications.
 Made up stuff...literally.  That is why he is still in jail.  They are the ones conspiring...not us.  Never us.
     So, we had a little Christmas Eve party, and we had some of the family over.  Carol, Stetsy and Clance, Bailey and Josh, Duane and Ivona, and the Lee family.  It was fun, but I was lonely for my companion.  I knew he was sad and missing us too.  On Christmas Eve, it also came to my attention that we had been given way too many gifts.  We actually took some of the gifts that I had purchased to a family in the ward...I should have given them a lot more.  Anyhow, after a brief discussion with the kids, we decided we wanted to spend our Christmas morning with our daddy.  We got up really early, and headed to Pahrump so we wouldn't have to wait behind the masses that would surely be wanting to visit inmates on Christmas.  We got up at four, and left all of the gifts behind.  When we arrived, we were first...this had me really excited.  We were also able to get Cliven on another monitor, and that worked really well.  It kept the other kids talking to Grandpa, while some got to talk to Dad.  We cried, and planned future Christmases and sang Silent Night.  That beautiful spirit of the Savior filled that lonely prison and even the prison secretary noticed and thanked us.  We decided next year...no gifts, just the family on a beach somewhere.  Maybe where we honeymooned in Hawaii.
     Anyhow, we got home and the kids had a delightful time opening their gifts.  The toys were a beautiful distraction.  There were so many who served us for Christmas that I can honestly say that it was not a sad day like I expected.  We were spoiled rotten, worn out from our early morning, and had the spirit that day.  Many must have been praying for us because I felt it.  We went to the ranch and visited with the family...I missed speaking to Arden by a few minutes, but it was a good visit.  We also traveled to Utah for a few days and visited my parents.  That also was a good break.  Gary and Kristiann and Julia were there and they are always so much fun.  I am so grateful that my brothers keep me laughing and keep me going.
     Ok...then we had New Years...Obama, in a last ditch effort to be a dictator, tried to take Gold Butte from us, and so we held a rally on New Years Eve.  I had some of Briana's kids over, and I fell asleep early.  Pretty typical me.
     In January, the judge actually granted Ryan a hearing.  This was great news!  It gave us some hope, but made me nervous all over again.  The courts haven't exactly been fair.  And how many times do I have to get my hopes up before they are dashed all over again?