If you wanted all the area under "Describe Specific/Notable Events" to be one continuous text, simply merge those cells together by highlighting them and hitting Merge Cells in the Layout portion of the ribbon.

Also, there should be no need to amend your footer with the total number of pages. Word has the ability to automatically update that (page 2 of 4, etc.) Check under your footer options when you're clicked into it. Under Page Number, I see under 'Current Position" the ability to add several different styles of page number, including page x of y. One less thing to manually do!