~upon nearly reaching the day when the road gets shorter~

Hello my dear friends and family, one and all, with greetings from "home" here in Kansas.  It's my last official weekend of being a resident of this great state of ours and I can't help but to think about that as the hours pass by ever quickly now.  This past week has been a busy one around here but I know I am not alone in that respect. All of us have "plates" that are overflowing and if you are like me, sometimes a person can find it pretty hard to keep their heads above the water line.  But as is usually the case, we all make it one way or another~it only seems as though we won't.

The past few weeks have been ones to make enough memories to last a lifetime with the students at our school, Lincoln Elementary.  Once the kids found out that Mike and I would be married on the last day of school, they quickly wanted to ask me all kinds of questions. I won't divulge all of their concerns here :) but their questions were innocent ones. However, I will say that the number 1 question asked of me these past few days was this~"When you guys get married, are you going to kiss each other?" My response to them has usually been, "Well, probably.  Is that ok with you?"  They all have been asked to be there with us on Tuesday as we are married and many of them have been able to accept our invitation.   It's a blessing, really a special one, that the little people who have meant so much to me over the course of the last 3 years of being a teacher there, will get to see us become husband and wife.

There is one remarkable young man that not only will be in attendance but will also have played an important part in our ceremony.  He's a great kid, a fourth grader in Mrs. Styes' classroom named Ezequiel.  He and I met 5 years ago when he was a kindergartner at my former school, Avenue A Elementary.  I was the ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher at the time and Ezequiel was one of my students there.  His first language is Spanish but he was able to pick up his second one, English, with little trouble.  I always loved that little guy and when he came to our school this past year as a fourth-grade student, I was so happy to see him once again.

In this "sea of kids" from my last year at Avenue A (2010), Ezequiel is on the second row and  from the right hand side of the photo, he would be the fourth one from the right.

Ezequiel's current teacher, my good friend Kris Styes, is not only a superb educator but additionally is one heck of a cake baker.  I asked her if she would be willing to make a small sheet cake for our wedding that our families could enjoy at dinner that evening.  She was happy to do so and began to ask what kind I wanted it to be.  So I gave her some ideas~yellow cake, cream cheese frosting, enough to serve about 30 people.  The last idea I had was to somehow tie my journey of going back and forth from Kansas to Colorado and how wonderful it would be when we were married and that long road would somehow get shorter.  I had left it at that, not even considering what she might be able to do.  Just a few days ago as we were talking about some ideas for the wedding she said she wanted to show me something.  She went over to Ezequiel's desk and pulled out the most remarkable drawing that I had ever seen, one that almost made me burst into tears.  This is what it looked like~

Knowing what a great little artist he is and how much it would mean to me as well, Kris asked Ezequiel to come up with a picture that could become an "edible image" for the top of our wedding cake.  She only gave him a few ideas and he took off with the rest of it on his own. I absolutely could not believe it when I viewed it for the first time.  From the flattened plains and farmland of south central Kansas to the beautiful mountain ranges of south western Colorado, across a now much shortened up version of the 611 mile stretch of US Highway 50, his drawing pretty much said it all.  I loved every bit of it, especially the "Hello Sunshine" part.  He took a lot of pride in doing this and it is yet again another one of those teacher "bonus checks" that I keep trying to tell everyone about.  You CEO's from the mega bazillion $$$$ corporations, heck you guys can keep all of your end of the year bonus checks.  I maybe didn't make a lot of money in a 35-year career in education, but I will always be glad that I was a teacher.  And oh yeah, as every one keeps reminding me, that being a teacher part?  Well I will always be one.

Time to get going and stop trading "daylight for dark".  Have a great weekend everyone and for those of us living in "Tornado Alley" take care this weekend.  Be sure to keep an eye on the skies all of you.  Take care of yourselves and one another because we are absolutely in this thing together, all of us.