After Daddy had passed, things were very different indeed. After his death May 2013, we were in shock. We didn't really cry, we didn't really think much about it. One day the reality of it just whacked me in the face like a metal baseball bat and my bottled up emotions burst out.

     All of us later on were always arguing. Mom was always upset or angry. Sarah was always having temper tantrums. I was always sneaking away from the chaos and walked down to the lake we live by. It was the worst year if my life.

     And it only got worse. I went Black Friday shopping with Megan, Morgan, and her grandparent's on their mom's side. It was a LOT of fun, and I got to see my very first cat that we had to give up back in 2010! But, when I got home, I was expecting my cat, Meowmie, who was now 3 years old, to greet me. She was mean, but not that mean. She loved me and searched the house for me every time I was away. But she didn't show up the whole day.

     I was a little worried, but she would go off three days at a time sometimes. She was declawed, and the smallest cat in the neighborhood, but she was the dominant cat in the neighborhood. I remember one day, this big fat cat actually ran away from her. That's why her nickname was The Devil's Cat. That's how mean she could be!

     But weeks went by, and still no sign of her. I asked my sister Chloe if anything strange had happened that Black Friday. She said that that afternoon a gunshot had gone off at our neighbor's house... and they hadn't seen Meowmie since that afternoon.

      In 2014, my friend Hannah's dad was getting a divorce, and I thought it would be neat if him and my mom eventually got together, which they did. He said they were just friends, but he sure didn't act like they were only friends. He never held her hand in public, either. But he seemed like a really nice guy.

      In 2015, we began packing up to move. It was a house right next to Hannah's, and I would get my own room! I was 15 and shared a room with a 5 year old. No. That was just torture. She would get into EVERYTHING and I hated it so much!

      Anyways, the day we finally got to visit the house, I happened to think to myself, 'I sure hope we aren't like those people on reality TV shows that move in only to find out there is a severe bedbug problem'. I couldn't help but feel that we might possibly, however, and when I saw the house, it was pretty messed up. Which is why we had gone to see it. So we could begin cleaning before we moved in.

     In one of the rooms, the one that would be mine, we found a can of flea and bedbug bomber. I doubted it was for the fleas, and I was a bit freaked out because Aubry (Hannah's younger, yet taller, sister) had said a friend of hers said there were bedbugs. Mom didn't think anything of it, however. She said they had a dog, so it was probably fleas. I didn't feel like arguing with her, so I remained silent.

      Then we finally moved in. Me, Mom, Daniel, Samuel, Chloe, Rebekah, Sarah, our dog Jewel, and my cat Thomas Michael O'Malley (I got him after my cat Meowmie had disappeared on Black Friday. He was a stray at our church). He disappeared the next day and asked mom if Clint took him. She didn't answer with yes, but she didn't answer with no, so I assumed he had, but then again I couldn't be sure. I did know one thing, however. Thomas didn't run away. He hated being outside at all.

      A few days later, maybe a week, Hannah and I were in my room listening to music and making faces in my mirror. I happened to be looking closely at it, and I saw a brown bug crawling down it. I quickly ran to tell mom, knowing what it was.

      It was a bedbug.

      Mom tried saying that maybe it was a cockroach nymph. I knew it wasn't, however. She said that maybe it was carpet beetles. No, it didn't look like that. I tried convincing myself that maybe it was a bat bug or something, but I knew it wasn't. Especially after I had seen the bedbug bomber in the trashcan. We had bedbugs.

      Hannah, Aubry and I were the ones freaking out the most. No way did I want some bug sucking my blood while I was sleeping! That night I prayed and asked God to help me. I prayed that the bedbugs wouldn't bite.

     Day after day we started seeing more bedbugs, but not many more. We found out that our pastor from our new church did low cost bedbug exterminations, so we called him. He was such a blessing to us. He did it completely free of charge! First, he came and looked around the pace. There were several nymphs on our couch, and some in the boys' bunk beds. The next day we left (and took the pets with us) while he did the extermination.

     We still saw some, but he had said that would be expected, as the chemicals would be driving them out of their usual hiding places. They were pretty slow, though, so we knew they were dying.

     But, things went worse. More and more bedbugs had come out by now. And, during this whole thing, Aubry and her half sister Brooklynn seemed to hate us, and Clint had been using mom this whole time. He borrowed money from us and never repaid us. I'm not going to say how much it was, but it was a LOT. Hannah and I weren't aloud to talk. But, even though it seemed everyone I loved was being taken away from me, it didn't drive me further away from God, but drew me closer. Every day I prayed that things would get better. That the bedbugs would go away, and that Hannah and I could talk, or at least text, again.

     Every day was the same, pretty much. We'd play outside, being watched by our two annoying neighbors constantly. Whenever they were out we just stayed inside. We watched Disney channels a lot, or Animal Planet (which I preferred). When no one was around, Hannah and I would talk from our window. When I wasn't doing any of that, I was alone in my room, writing down Bible verses, listening to Lecrae and Tobymac, or reading. And a lot of the time I pretended I was in the Lord of the Rings. I talked to my imaginary friends all the time.

     Mom prayed that the next guy God brought into her life would be the one. And, shortly after, she did meet someone else. His name is Will Woods, and we all liked him a lot! I was really shy around him at first though, being the shyest. Also, I was always my daddy's girl, so I probably wouldn't warm up to him that quick. I wouldn't call him Dad, for a while, anyways.

     I had gotten a cute little new kitten by this time. I prayed for a male kitten, a tiny kitten, and that he would be grey and a Maine Coon mix, and that he would be sweet and have a lovable personality. Well, guess what? I got that kitten exactly. Mom helped me name him, since she was the one letting me keep him she said she got to help with his name.

     When I first laid eyes on him, I thought of a lynx, but I didn't think mom would like that name, so it was the last one I suggested. But, we decided his name would be Lyncoln, Lynx for short. I called him Lyncoln Abraham Elishama. Why Elishama? Because it means God hears.

     Anyways, about a month later maybe, Daniel came down and had literally HUNDREDS of bites all up and down his arms! So the boys' bunk-beds were inspected by mom and I. We sprayed rubbing alcohol on the cracks, and at least 10-15 bugs came out of each crack! There were hundreds! So we had the boys move to the youngest three girls' room. Mine was too small, thank goodness. I didn't wanna go back to sharing a room!

     That night, I was up watching M.A.S.H. It was midnight, and I noticed something. I had a sheet I was using as a door, and it had brown specks all over it. I went over there and quickly grabbed the rubbing alcohol. Bedbugs. I counted eleven on them, and I kept finding more and more crawling into my room. I didn't sleep at all that night. From midnight to seven thirty eight (or seven something, I'm sure that was it though), I had found 39 bedbugs, and the majority were female.

     So, we called our exterminator again and they did another treatment. After four chemical treatments, they were still there. We even did a heat treatment in the boys' room. We figured that they were coming from all the holes in the wall and in the baseboards. It was a very old house and had HUGE holes in some walls from the previous people who had lived there.

     After seven chemical treatments, we finally decided to move back. We had a heat treatment done in the living room and had our furniture treated. Right after it was treated, we packed the stuff up in a trailer my grandparents had brought down, or we put it in the garage.

     We spent that whole day packing and moving. This continued for a couple of days. And we would talk to Hannah and Aubry when their dad wasn't around. I was relieved to be moving, but upset at the same time. It had been the best, yet worst summer of my life. Definitely the most memorable, in a bad and good way.

     When we finally got everything back and moved into our shed and unfinished lean to, we slept in a tent outside. Our house was no where near ready. Our renters had completely trashed the place. There was dog poop in every room and it had stained the carpet, and there were thousands of roaches. Yeah. So we went from bedbugs to roaches. Well, roaches may have been more disease filled (so they say), but at least they were afraid of humans and didn't suck your blood.

     The next day our grandparents brought their camper and left it there. It was small, but it was more comfy than the tent. The awful thing was that both dog and kitten weren't allowed in there. Jewel (dachshund) was allowed to run around outside, but poor little Lyncoln had to stay in a cage.

     Eventually we let Lyncoln stay in the house. He actually helped with our roach problem... by eating them. Yuck! Oh well, protein, right? Anyways, our daily life that summer was wake up, go inside to feed Lyncoln and get him new water (well his cat food was in the shed so I brought a scoop inside and put it up every night so roaches would keep dying and not multiply), then we ate breakfast, then did dishes, then try cleaning some more of the house. Then we either played outside or sat in the camper in front of a fan. It was so hot! And cooking in the camper made it worse, as it was a gas stove.

     So when I wasn't outside swinging, I was either coloring in front of a fan, or reading and writing on Wattpad. My absolute favorite app ever! Before it started getting too cold, we moved into the house, with the roaches. The first night was pretty creepy. I found a huge roach on the wall by MY bed! Which was on the floor. USB boards are our floor now. Better then yucky carpet.

     Anyways, we were so scared of the roaches, we actually slept with the door open, with the hallway light on. Knowing me, that is HUGE because I can NOT get to sleep with a light on. One time, last time we had lived here, I had bunk beds and I put blankets up to keep all light out. It was like a cool tent and it was pitch black. I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face!

     Every day we saw at least 20-30 roaches. We kept our toothbrushes in zip-lock bags and everything sealed up. We rinsed off our dishes before using them, just in case. They all eventually died down to the point we only saw a roach a day.

     To this very day, we only occasionally see a roach. And a baby at that. About a week ago I was sitting in front of the heater, reading The Lord of the Rings (the book is WAY better than the movie, by the way. And that's coming from someone who grew up with the movies!), and I set my book down. I came back to it like, five seconds later, and a baby roach was crawling on it! Yikes! But I've not seen one since then.

     We still keep our toothbrushes in zip lock bags, and we still keep the kitchen fairly clean. There are times we leave dirty dishes out and don't see a single roach though, so that's good. My bed isn't on the floor any more. I sleep on a bottom bunk and Chloe sleeps on top. So yeah, I share a room again. Not too thrilled about that, but it is better than bedbugs. The boys' mattresses are still on the floor though. Their bunk beds were left at the 'Monster House', as we call it. Strange thing is, it looks very similar to the house in the movie Monster House. Anyways, things are a lot better now.

     Oh, and mom and Will, whom I now call Daddy, are now engaged! But he has many struggles in his life, so please pray for him.

     Anyways, I don't know why God put us through all of this. From my daddy dying, to bedbugs and roaches. But, I do know one thing. Through this unexpected journey, I've become a lot closer to God. So what God has done for me through all of this is allowing me to see His wonders in my life. It is amazing where I am now. I'll admit though, I'm still not anywhere near being a perfect Christian. Well, no one is, but point being, I'm still not quite where I should be.

     But through all of this, my faith in Him has become a lot stronger. He's helped me through all of this, and I will always put my trust in Him. He truly is a great and amazing God.