~here is where God sent me~

Good morning everyone from a place that seems far away sometimes, the Western Slopes of the Rocky Mountains in the great state of Colorado.  It's the early morning here and darkness is surrounding us and with the inching ever closer each day to autumn, the sun comes up later and later each day that goes by.  Out along Highway 50, only a few cars are passing by because most of the sane people are still in bed asleep :)  Not me.  Hardly ever.  Someone asked me the other day why it was that I got up so early every morning.  Why was it that 4 a.m. seemed like a reasonable time to get up?  I'm afraid that I don't even have an answer for that one.  I guess I just do.

It now makes nearly 16 months' time that I have lived here in Colorado and as each week of those months has passed by, things have become so very much easier for me.  Although I don't miss Kansas every day now, I still have a longing to return there to visit from time to time.  My family and lifelong friends are there.  The places that have always been familiar and welcoming to me remain back over the big mountain.  Clear over there.  On the other side.  611 miles to the east.

Folks back there have been checking in on me from time to time, making sure that I'm doing "ok".  I always assure them that I am.  It was fun just about this time last year to find that my little sister Cindy had mailed me a package to help me to remember all of those familiar places back in Reno County.  I read these special magazines through and through, more times than I can remember to count.  It was just like Christmas time in September for me that day!

And for the record, it still stands.

I am doing "ok"~in fact, I am doing better than that :)

I still take the Hutchinson News, a decision that I made about this time last year as well.  Even though by the time the paper reaches me the news is already "history", it is still fun to go to the mailbox and pull out the paper and read what is happening back there.  Old news to some, brand new to me.  Reading the paper used to be a morning ritual back in my old house on 14th Street.  I'd get up at the usual 4 a.m. each morning and wait with old Oblio the Roundhead, my faithful cat.  Obie was always good about hearing the paper guy toss the newspaper against the outside porch.  That was the "signal" for me to open up the door and bring it in.  I'd read the obits, scan through the news and then head straight to the crossword puzzle section.  After a couple of cups of coffee (or three), I'd be ready to get the day going.  Just like that.  Just like clockwork.  Just like always.

This is me and old Obie trying to take a "selfie" during one of my trips back home to Hutchinson this past spring.  I miss that old cat and the joy that she brought me always.

So, what is life like here 16 months down the road?

I can answer that question in one word with a smile on my face.  Different.

This is not Kansas nor was it ever meant to be.  If I want to see the "plains" here, then I need to travel east towards places that have become all too familiar to me in my recent journeys back and forth.  Places like Lamar and LaJunta, Rocky Ford or Holly.  No one has taken me up on one of my original requests to bulldoze a hole between the mountains so I can look back and see my old home in the flatlands.  People laugh to hear me even mention that but in my first 3 or 4 months here, that was the only thing that would have made me happy :)

I have changed and I have grown in so many ways.  I wish that back in the summer of 2013 that I could have seen how much better things were going to become but unfortunately sometimes we have to go through a few trials in life before we know that when they say "in the end it all turns out ok", well they really mean it.  I have said before and will continue to say until the end, being laid out upon God's anvil and being refined into the person you are to become is not always the most pleasant of experiences.  Actually it kind of hurts from time to time.  But you make it.  You survive.  You even end up thriving from the whole ordeal.  What a gift.

Here is where God sent me.  A wife now to this "boy" from the "land of long ago and far, far away".  40 years is a long time to wait to find someone but that we did.  Oblio the roundhead no longer lives with me here but there is a new companion that waits every evening for her "person" to get home.  These two are here to greet me every evening when the day is done.

Mike and Sally the dog, up on Cerro Summit last year in late September.  I am a firm believer in the fact that our pets help to keep us healthy and sane in this crazy world of ours.

Well, it's time to get this computer shut down and head up the road a ways because not only did God send me to Montrose, He sent me to the community of Olathe, Colorado as well.  To a place they call Olathe Elementary School.  A place where I spend my days, at least in the Monday-Friday world (and a Saturday or Sunday once in a while as well).  "The 22" will be looking for me and I shall be for them as well.  It's interesting, you know?  All last summer when I was just SURE that I wouldn't make very many friends here, an entire building  full of them, the staff at OES,  was just waiting for me to open my eyes.  I did just that and when I finally saw what was there all along, it surely seemed good.  As my spirit soared, I saw for the first time that I wasn't out here all alone after all.  It had only seemed like I was.

The Rocky Mountains of Colorado~my new home along the Western Slopes.

22 "little pirates" call me their teacher this year.  What a wonderful job to have.  I love it, and them too!