~it's a long ways from here to there"

A good Saturday morning to you friends from snow covered Kansas~the 14.5" or so dumping of snow that we received on Wednesday through Thursday of this past week still lies on the ground.  But with today's forecast of above freezing temperatures and sunshine, little by little it will melt away...yet never fear, the weather guys are predicting yet another snow to come our way on Monday with the latest reports being an 80% chance of something liquid falling from the skies.  

It was a big mess to get around yesterday and to return to school for the teacher inservice day that USD 308 had planned for us.  From scraping snow and ice off the car to precariously driving down city streets still filled with mounds of the "white stuff", I'm afraid I have to admit that I wasn't too happy with the weather conditions.  The grand finale happened right outside of school as I parked my car along the side street to try to get into the building.  It was not a pretty sight and also one of those that you hope no one else had the misfortune to witness being done..... I lost my footing and I landed "face first" in the biggest snowdrift imaginable with "old lefty" taking a bit of a hit in the snow.  For a brief moment in time, ok really it wasn't all THAT brief more like the  next 4 hours, I renewed my "I hate you winter" relationship.  But after I thawed out, dried off and took a look at some photos I took last summer, it got better.  One photo in particular stood out to me yesterday and helped me to remember what a gift, a blessing this much snow is for us all.  Shown below~

It was a photo that I took last summer that "snapped" me back into a spirit of thankfulness for the snow yesterday. This picture was taken in July of 2012 after days and days and even MORE days of no precipitation in the Great Plains area in which I live.  The Hutch News was filled with stories each day of what the drought conditions were doing to area farmers, wildlife, plants and vegetation.  It was about as bleak as one could imagine and quite honestly, we all have known that it could get even worse as the seasons go by with little moisture.  With inspiration from one of my favourite books of all time, Sarah Plain and Tall, I decided to put this empty glass atop the fence in the back yard and continue to hope that somehow or another, the heavens would open up and send us the life giving gift of rain.    It took a few days after this picture was taken for much moisture to come, but it did. 

In the book, Caleb and his family are living in early 1900's drought-stricken Kansas and the situation is getting worse as the days go by.  When things seem to be at the most desperate of parts, Caleb gets an old glass and secures it to the top of a fence post, telling his father the rains will come.  Though not at first, the rains DO come and they arrive in just the nick of time.  Now friends, this wasn't a "magic, magic" moment whereby the glass sets atop the fence and immediately fills up with rain.  The empty glass represented an 8-year old little boy's faith and unrelenting belief that sooner or later the rains would come.  And they did!  So yesterday I remembered that and when I went out to my car at noontime for lunch, I was more careful.  All I would have had to do in the first place earlier in the morning, would have been to walk around the big snow drift.  Instead, because I am a life-long very slow learner, I tried to walk through it.  Is it any wonder that I once attempted to jump a curb on my bike?  For crying out loud :)

The snow day on Thursday allowed me some time to go through a lot of stuff in preparation for moving to Colorado at the end of school this year.  One of the things I did was to go through an old box of photos and if you have ever done that, you know that you can figure to spend most of the day just looking at them.  What wonderful memories they provide of family and friends, good times had.  Especially precious are the ones, for me, of my family members that have already gone on before me...my parents, grandparents, brother Mike, sister Janice, and niece Kimberly.  I also found the photos of a trip made to Colorado in August of 2006 as Grahame and I took my oldest son, Ricky to the most northern part of the state to ride his bike alongside the Continental Divide for one month.  Shown below~

Of all the photos that I have ever seen of these two boys together, this one will probably always be my favourite one.  They are actually 8 years apart in age but by the time this picture was taken, they really had grown into brothers that were much closer in age than that.  We took this photo right before pulling out to head back to Kansas that day and let me tell you what, this "mom" shed a few tears as we left him behind to make his way south during the course of the next 30 days.  I know, "once a mom, always a mom".

We stayed the night at a place called Strawberry Springs~a beautiful place in a beautiful state.  The boys will tell you, and probably REALLY embelish the story, that their mom decided to do some exploring and couldn't manage to read the signs that said "Keep Off!"  They have a photo showing the same~I had no idea what I was walking on and would rather not admit to it publicly but will, if you wish, tell you in person some day.  :)

Those photos, now taken nearly 7 years ago, mean a lot to me.  Little did I realize at the time that in 2013 I would be leaving the "flatlands" of Kansas to make my home in far western Colorado.  It didn't even occur to me at the time what wonderful things would lie in store for me there.  As the age-old adage says, "good things come to those who wait".  

You know I always loved the music of John Denver and many of his songs tell of his life in the Rocky Mountains.  I listen to his music today with a different kind of spirit and although I don't have the "connection" to it that he did, I am starting to see bits and pieces of the life he always wrote and sung about.  In one of his songs "Starwood in Aspen", he writes the line "It's a long ways from this place to Denver, a long time to hang in the sky."  I'm beginning to see what he meant by it and to paraphrase his line, "It's a long ways from THIS place to Montrose"....611 miles of a long ways from the doorway of Mike Renfro to the doorway of Peggy Miller.  In the days that lie ahead, I anxiously await life there but I know also how important it is to use the days that remain here to the fullest.  I am busy getting things ready, tying up loose ends, riding my bike like crazy (except when it's blizzarding), finishing the last 3 months of the school year and making "reconnections" with every friend that I can.  There is no doubt that I will miss this place, this wonderful state where my parents made the decision to raise me and my 6 siblings.  It's inevitable~The future is waiting for me and from where I stand, the future looks like a wonderful place to be.

Ok, last words are for you all who are reading this.  This is my plea to you this day, my question for you.  What are you going to do today that is just for you?  How will you be good to yourself?  I'm going to make a wild guess that each of you spends plenty of time each day helping out others and I know it to be true because you are just like that.  You put others at the front of the line and you don't do it for any other reason than that you know it is the right thing to do.  That's what I like about you guys!  But for a brief bit of time today, please choose something that you want to do and then do it.  You are so worth it, so deserving of it.  Don't ever let yourself believe that you are not!  And if you doubt it, then just ask me to repeat it again because I most surely will :)  Love you guys, ALL.

We're going to call this Satuday, the 23rd of February in the year 2013...a great day to be alive in!  Don't let the bad stuff get to you today~this world is filled with WAY more good than bad could ever be!  

A view I won't see much of in Colorado, but one that I have seen many times in Kansas and will forever have stored up in my heart.  My father's combines cutting a field of wheat in Thomas County Kansas near Colby in 1977.  

"Gold is just a windy Kansas wheat field and blue is just a Kansas summer sky." The late John Denver in his song, "Matthew".