Having realized that it was about time.....

Good evening friends and family from along the Western Slopes of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado where those of us here are waiting for some significant winter snow to make it's way towards us this week.  It was bound to happen sooner or later and thankfully we don't have to make any journey over the pass this week.  The folks in the high country, all the way from the San Juan Mountains to the Grand Mesa, are expecting to see plenty of the white stuff for the next 3 days.  Mike mentioned to me earlier this evening not to be surprised to see 3 or 4 inches of our share of the white bounty by morning time.  Welcome to Colorado and winter!

Hard to imagine that it's been six months tomorrow, November 21st, that Mike and I were married back in Hutchinson, Kansas on the very last day of school in front of all of our friends, family and students in the gymnasium of Lincoln Elementary.  Two days later we headed out towards a new life together here in Montrose, Colorado.  The day before we left, I stopped in at school to pack up the last of my belongings there and enjoy a breakfast brunch with the staff there who had become just like members of my family.  Right before finishing up and walking out the door for the very last time, I was presented with a beautiful gift from my dear friends and comrades, one that I would be sure to treasure for the rest of my days.  A few weeks before our wedding, I was asked what Mike and I could use/need/or want as a gift upon our marriage.  I could think of only one thing to tell them and it sure enough, there it was wrapped up for us to take back to Colorado on the journey to our new home.  The picture is shown below...

The gift we received on that final day of being together there on East Bigger Street was a scrapbook that all of the classes and various staff members  had put together for us.  It was filled with page after page of memories enough to last a lonely and homesick, newly married and second time around retired schoolteacher for days to come. When we packed it into the car for the return trip home, I was sure that I'd sit down and look through it in the evenings that would soon be at hand.  I was wrong.

The first days and weeks of being out here were so rough for me as I longed for the familiarity of the place that had always been my home.  I was perpetually lonely, feeling most lost with life and rather than making me feel better, it made me feel worse to open up that scrapbook and remember the dear people of Kansas who had loved me.  For days it sat unopened on the coffee table of the living room of our 100-year old home here and then when I got tired of seeing it there, I had Mike place it high on the shelf of the bedroom closet.  Out of sight and out of mind and that's where it has stayed since the late May day when we arrived.  For some strange reason, tonight seemed like the night to get it out and finally look at it and so I did.  I must be getting better because rather than shed a tear for the people I no longer see each day at school, my heart is filled with joy that I had the blessing to know them in the first place.  Even though I had peeked at a few of the pages the day that it was gifted to us, I had forgotten all of the things that were included in it.  Tonight it was as if I had opened the gift for the very first time and man, I'm so glad that at long last I can look at it and enjoy it.

The staff members who put the book together for us are a creative bunch of folks and they included so many sweet and special memories of the 3 years that we all spent together.  They knew just what I would enjoy, the precise things that would make my heart sing each time I saw them.  Things like~

 Carla, our librarian, who remembered my love for books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and the timeless classic for young children, "Sarah, Plain and Tall".

 Brenda, Diana and Pam from the front office~people who bailed me out of trouble time and time again.

 My co-workers in the Title I department~Janice (who now is teaching in my old position), Alicia and Deanne.  I miss them and the fun that we used to share in together.

 The 4H page that my dear friend Jessica helped to put together.  When Alicia, Jessica and I stood for that photo during a January monthly meeting, I had no idea that I would not be returning to school in the fall.  Life turns out in surprising ways sometimes.  Would you agree?

A message from my good friend Kristy Farley, included on her page of the book.  When I read that note this evening, it brought a tear to my eye.  I will miss Mrs. Farley's "Poetry Cafe" moments that her children provided in the last days of school each year.  I'd never realized how much fun poetry could be until I met her.

It's been fun tonight to sit down and enjoy something that had been hidden in the closet for much too long.  You know, I don't feel homesick as I look at it now and my heart is not breaking like I felt it doing in the early days here.  Weird as it might sound, it's kind of like inviting the entire school over for Sunday dinner or something.  Good thing we're just imagining it to be that way because with one bathroom and over 200 people, well you get the picture.  I received so much pleasure by looking at it this evening that I think I'll take it over to Olathe tomorrow and share it with my students at school there.  I doubt it will ever be banished to the dark side of the closet again.  I kind of like having it out.

I've been blessed my friends in so many ways in my life.  When God closed the door for me as an educator in Hutchinson, Kansas back 6 months ago now, He opened up another door for me here as a 4th grade teacher in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  I wouldn't pretend for one minute to understand it, but I most certainly do know that someone so much wiser than I will ever profess to be has got the "plan" covered.  Knowing that, who would I ever be to question why?  Just like it was back in Hutch, I have found my niche in Montrose County, Colorado.  18 young people need me to be there each day and I pretty much feel the same way about them.  I am alive and well, living 611 miles away and even though it seems like it sometimes, south western Colorado is not at the end of the earth. 

Have a great night's rest my friends and family!  Kansas we shall see you once again in 6 sleeps more.  Be at peace with your life everyone~Love you guys all.......

I'm an Olathe "pirate" now and I am slowly but surely doing so much better here in Colorado.  Kansas will always have a special place in my heart and its people will always be among the very finest of folks on earth.  Lincoln Elementary School and USD 308, Hutchinson, Kansas I will always wish you only the very best in your endeavours to educate the youth of Reno County.  You guys are always going to be #1 in my books.