Ransacking Game

I choose a picture from one of my random memory cards.
Then I tell something I remember about that day/picture/experience.

Dont be bored out of your mind.....
Embrace it :)

Ps I have 5 2 gb memory cards...meaning I have alottttttaaaaa life in there :)

Most of them are full or nearly full...

Before I clean off my cards onto the hard drive....
I'll share this with you.

Try to imagine my high school really quick. Its small. 100 students. Its in a town called Malta, Idaho. Nope, you know you haven't heard of it. Unless you know me...really well, then you have heard of it, but most likely you have never been there.

Well keep imagining it.

In May I traveled to my sister Sally's graduation there. As you probably deducted from the picture above. From this picture I remember a few things...I was engaged to Brad and I rode with my dad and Sally in a different car, because we were late.....whats new...its sometimes difficult to herd the 9 children that remain at home and the 3 or 4 that came home for the graduation...into the 15 passenger van...Soooo I heard my sister Sally say, "Shoot, I gotta be there in exactly 30 minutes." This would be fine if we were in the car right then..but we weren't I was curling her hair. So she ran downstairs and told my dad, well obviously the only solution was to take a different car. I knew from past experience with my mom and her children. Getting somewhere is a task beyond anyone's control. Nobody really wants to be late to that event. It just becomes a feat that no person can conquer. No matter how many times my dad says, "Loadem up and Headem out" Nobody can get the group under 5, or even 10 to move fast enough. So that group usually takes a toll on the rest of the group, meaning they are hurrying and not ready either. By knowing all of this in my head I decided I was going to go in the car with Sally and my Dad, gut feeling. We sped. Sped on dirt roads. Really Really fast. We got there so Sally had a couple of seconds to jump into her gown, ha, that would look funny, imagine Sally leaping into this White gown that used to be mine and probably every girl sister older than me too owned it, while I hold it open for her. She got ready. I helped. We were seated in the back of the parents designated seating with a terrible view. Not sure why Sally didn't work harder on reserving more visual seats for us. She probably had more important things on her mind Im sure. They welcomed everyone. I looked around for Mom and her posse of offspring. Nothing.

OH shoot face. Dad is getting antsy. "Where are they?" he keeps mouthing to me. He then does the phone signal, meaning I should call and find out. I call the cell phones. Nothing. I call the HOUSE PHONE. Nothing. I try again. Oh, Ill try Landon. Landon picks up. "WHERE ARE YOU GUYS!"- I yell in my softest whisper yell. "We lost Ammon"- Landon.

Sidenote. Ammon is my brother. Ammon is autistic. Ammon is 9. Ammon runs away. Usually he runs away naked. When we lose him, we look for him. Usually he is at the JW house down about a mile, with no shoes on, and sporting only his white hanes.

Me- "Did you find him!?!?! Where are you?!!!" "Yes, he ran to Florence's naked. (JW) We are on our way, Grush's Dairy"-Landon (Me thinking and imagining Ammon escaping running naked as fast as he can before someone notices he is gone, and wow, he managed to get out of the house naked, wonder where he left his hanes)

Sidenote: Our graduation lasts maybe an hour. Maybe. I was freaking out. They were going to miss Sally's speech. Her Valedictorian speech. Her Medal AWARDs!!!! Why do you even go to graduation if you miss the speech by the V-dictorian? Especially if the V-dictorian is your daughter.

Story:
They announce the Salute and Valedicts. Sally and Marli, best friends. They walk up. I look at Dad. I say, "they are just at Grush's Dairy." (translation, Grush's dairy is a good ten minutes away, and Landon said the person who was driving...we will leave her anonymous.. was driving slow.) Oh perfect! Put some more time on there. Dad shrugs his shoulders and I say, "Ammon ran away, they found him." Dad smiles as he stands up to conquer the parental support role to the Valdict in the medal ceremony. I rush to the front to take a picture of my Dad with Sally and the medal. I know what the audience is thinking. "Where is Darla? Where is Sally's mother? Where is she?" Oh, probably Ammon. No, the audience is not thinking that because the audience does not have a autistic child.

My dad walked up alone and whispered to Sally the problem. He then walked down alone and shrugged to a few concerned parents.

Sally's speech started. I recorded it. Still no sign of mom and posse. After speech I felt bad for Sally. My mom, the one who needed most to hear the speech, didn't.

I looked over and saw my mom and her posse, all with the common interest of surviving in our family (seeing how a posse has to have a common interest to actually be consider a posse), were standing in the doorway.

Come to find out they only missed the first part of her speech.

Not as bad as missing the whole thing.

My mom's thought was, "Well at least I didn't have to get up in front of everyone."

Notes about this story:
Lighting in our gym is horrid and next to tragic.
Ammon was okay, and at times it is difficult to stare at him 24/7 to make sure he isn't taking screens out of the 3rd story windows and standing in them looking down, or running away in this case. So on that note, every story has a happy ending.

And...Sally is now attending UVU on a full tuition, books, and living Track and Academic Scholarship. Ya, she's a superhero.

Tune in again for the Ransacking Game.