~as we live in semi-organized chaos~

Semi-organized chaos is about as good a way as I can come up with to describe the current state of the inside of our house here along the Western Slopes.  Boxes for moving, boxes for selling and boxes to give away can be found in every single room of this old farmhouse that we have called home for some time now.  By my best speculation, we are a little over half done.  The more that we uncover that needs to be dealt with, the more I realize that minimalist living is the way to go.  We who live here in this great country absolutely do not realize how well off we really are.  

As the days go by and our moving date comes closer, I have come to realize just how much I will miss the good people who have become our friends.  I am storing up a wealth of memories to take with me to the plains of Texas and I have come to appreciate and to be thankful for the "elasticity" of my most human of hearts.  When we were kids growing up, the places around the supper table were always full yet if another person were to drop by and need a meal, our mom would just skoosh us all a little closer and make room for someone else to join us.  My heart is very much the same way.  It will never be so full that there is no room for yet another loving memory to be added.  The memories of about a gazillion people and places are stored up in there now and before my time is through on this good earth, I pray to have placed many more within.

I have done much reflecting in the course of the past 6 weeks as we have readied ourselves to move away from here and head over the big mountain and to the south towards the plains of Texas.  I've taken many walks down that proverbial "memory lane" and some of it has been done by going through pictures that I have taken.  One in particular made me pause to remember just how fast time flies especially this school year, my last one in Colorado.  It was a photo I took about 3 weeks before school began this past August after I'd come up with an idea for using a special treasure chest in my classroom to reinforce the idea of good behavior.  I'd just come from a garage sale at the home of my wonderful friend Toni and it was there that I found all kinds of really great stuff that 6 year olds would like.  

Over the course of the last 9 months, that treasure box has been emptied and refilled about a dozen times or more.  There's been so much that I can't even rightly recall all of the things I put in there but it was fun and surely worth all of the time, money and effort that went into keeping it stocked and ready.  I think that the kids had fun with it and that was my intention all along.  Things worked out well.

16.5 days remain for those little people to call me "teacher".  It seems like only last month that the photo shown above was taken and as I look at my face now, nearly 9 months later, I can tell how happy I was at that moment in time.  What a great year this has been and even though I didn't know at the time this image was captured that this special year would be my last one here, perhaps I had a feeling all along that things might work out the way they did and one thing is for certain.

Life is most "OK".

August of 2014, two weeks before school began and the only time my desk has been this clean.