We be big trippin', spendin' cheese...

Um, soooo... I'm writing this while we're on the road. Specifically, while Ben is filling the car up and we're baking in the car and smelling noxious fumes.  ROAD TRIP! Dang; road trips used to be a lot more fun before we had kids. Haha!  It's hard for me to commit to road trips nowadays. A three-year-old spilling his entire SoBe on our bag of treats? And then crying bitter, inconsolable tears for the next twenty minutes?

Priceless.

Who doesn't want to pull over THREE TIMES in the first two hours of travel time to go potty??? Who doesn't want to hear her 11-year-old son crying because her 3-year old son started ripping and scraping at him because he wanted Oldest Son's cookies? And then move Oldest Son to the backseat so the poor dog has to now sit in the Seat of Violence?

Yep, Dylan, an 11-year-old purple belt in Taekwondo, got beat up by a 3-year old.

If I had been Dylan's age and in the same situation, I probably would have slapped Gage across the face. My youngest sister will attest to this fact. I was much less patient before I had kids. It's been a lifelong process for me, gaining patience. But I will say I'm better than I used to be. Having one kid with ADHD and another with developmental delays and another who I swear might have some kind of emotional disorder kind of forces one to learn patience. As do two spousal layoffs within 5 years.

Which brings me to why we're on a road trip in the first place - Ben has an interview for a job in Bend, Oregon. Which is six hours away from his Ma's house in Washington. The kids looooove Ben's mom and all the fun to be had there, so after much consideration - my aversion to road trips with children were addressed at length - we decided to make it a family trip instead of a solo trip. We'll stop in Bend for the night, Ben will have his interview in the morning, and then we'll head on up to Chelan.

The Bend guy interested in Ben is offering, well, not enough money for a family of six to survive on, but we're quickly learning that nobody is going to offer much more, no matter where we go. I will most certainly have to also work. We figured that if I teach dance there, we'll be okay. Or I can teach school there and we'll be okay. Also, he'll be freelancing for his old company (they just can't afford a full-time-with-benefits in-house architect but do want to send occasional work his way) in the evenings and on weekends.

So, if the interview goes well, the most likely scenario is that Ben will start working in Bend and I'll stay in Idaho with the niños and try to sell our house. Which could take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a year or more. I don't relish being apart from Ben - been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt - but we most certainly can't afford two mortgages, or one rental and one mortgage, so this is just...reality.  So he'll probably rent a room or whatever somewhere until we can join him.

Again, we don't want to leave I.F., but it's really important to me that Ben works doing something he loves. And there is nothing in architecture in I.F. And this firm in Oregon really, really excites him. And it uses the same software as he uses. And I've heard rave reviews about Bend. All forested. Cute. Clean. Artsy. Honestly, it sounds perfect for us.

I don't relish ripping the kids out of school AGAIN, nor do I relish moving. Nor do I relish leaving my friends. Nor do I relish trying to keep the house clean for showing. Nor do I relish leaving my two new jobs teaching dance locally. (Yep, I started at a second studio, as well. I taught ballet for FOUR HOURS yesterday. I'm DYING. But happy.)

But life rarely goes as planned. We have to go where Heavenly Father takes us. Maybe it's Bend. Maybe it's somewhere else. We'll see. Maybe Bend needs our crazy family. Maybe our crazy family needs Bend. I know that Heavenly Father will take care of us. He always has. Life has rarely been carefree, but honestly, everyone has something going on. And when that thing ends, another takes its place. That's the biz of life, dude. It's not always pleasant. It's not meant to be pleasant.

Hey, here's another plus to moving to Bend: We could have all kinds of fun with Ben's name and the name of the city. Hey, here comes Bendy Ben! Hey, B.B., do you want a diet coke? Ooh, that's Ben From Bend! Best architect this side of the Pecos! He was Bad (Bad!), Bad (Bad!) Bendy Ben, baddest hen in the whole darned pen... No, that doesn't make sense, but it's all I can come up with while being distracted by Gage, who is crying because he dropped the bug he had captured in the Chick-Fil-A parking lot, and by that creepy movie, 9, that the kids are watching. Not the biggest fan of that movie...

Kay, I'm signing off now. Have to deal with a screaming three-year-old.