Hey! This is my second cheaper by the dozen fic and I hope you like it! The ages of the kids in this are : Nora – 25, Charlie – 20,

Lorraine – 18, Henry – 15, Sarah – 14, Jake – 13, Mark – 12, Jess/Kim – 10, Mike – 8 and Nigel/Kyle – 6.

Chapter 1 : How Things Used To Be

Jakes Pov :

It's eight in the morning, and our whole wacky family is squashed into the car. We're going to the graveyard, cuz two years ago today, our Dad died. I don't really like to think about it, but sometimes you just can't help but think about things.

I remember it was me, Mark, Jessica, Kim, Mike, Nigel and Kyle in the car. I was severely pissed off, cuz we were going to Jessica and Kim's spelling bee. Sarah, Charlie, Lorraine, Henry and Nora all got out of going. I was a little relieved though, because Mike was going too, and he's my favourite out of all my brothers and sisters. Well anyway, we were in the car and me and Mike were having fun threatening to throw Jessica and Kim's dictionary's out of the window (they carry dictionary's around with them. Weird, I know.) and suddenly, like, out of no where, a car smashes into the side of ours. The worst part of it was that I wasn't knocked unconscious. I saw everything. I couldn't see Nigel and Kyle; they were sitting right in the back of the car. Luckily, they were fine. Mike was awake, like me, and didn't have a cut on him. Kim, Mark and Mom were all unconscious. Jessica was awake, and she was screaming, I remember when I looked at her I started screaming too. She had a huge wound on her head, some glass had cut her. She started to drift out of consciousness and I was petrified. I was only eleven years old, I thought she was dying. But she wasn't the one who died. The vehicle smashed into Dad's side, he died straight away. I was glad when the doctor told us that, it meant he felt little pain. Jessica was in hospital for a while, but she was fine. Everyone except for Dad was.

Mom was depressed for a few months after that. Most days she wouldn't get out of bed. But then she met Matthew. She met him through Nora – her new boyfriend TJ (who's great) used to work with him. At first he was alright, he'd read with Jessica and Kim, play hockey outside with Mike and talk about animals with Mark. I always felt a little weird around him though, I just felt that his jokes were rehearsed (not to mention completely not funny) and I'd see a little twitch on his face every time Mike would repel from the roof, or Nigel and Kyle would break something. Well his true personality really has started to come out.

Well, enough of that, I don't like talking about Matthew much. I wanna talk about Dad some more. I miss him. Everyone took it really hard when he died. I didn't skateboard for weeks. Henry would play really depressing songs on his clarinet. Lorraine didn't go shopping for a while. Mike's dyslexia got a lot worse, when just before Dad died it was starting to improve. Kim and Jessica threw themselves into their grades, even more than they did before. Mark called his new frog Tom. Sarah didn't have as many devious thoughts. Me and Sarah started to argue a lot too, even though we used to be close. We're okay with each other now, but things aren't the same. I prefer quite a few of my siblings to her now. Mike of course, but Nigel, Kyle, Jessica and Kim also.

I miss how things used to be. Not with me and Sarah, but with our lifestyle. We used to be that mad, chaotic family who didn't care what anyone thought. Now we're just the Baker family, who's poor dad died. We still are chaotic, and everything's sort of back to normal. It would be fine if it wasn't for Matthew…

Okay, I hope you liked that. Please review, but please be nice! Love, Kaylee xxx