~so if every picture tells a story~

Every once in a while, I get out the old photo albums and take a look through the pages. There's a plenty of them, that's for sure.  Item #18 on my list of "60 things to do before I turn 60" encourages me to "finally get all of my pictures organized and off the computer and my cellphone".  Since by my count there are over 20 albums of pictures to go through and more images on my phone and computer than I'd like to admit to, I think I'd better get a move on and do more than just look at them.

It's a given.
I love to take photographs of the people and places that have meant so much to me.

I've taken photos off and on for all of my life.  Yet, after my mom and brother died in 2007, only 6 weeks apart from one another, I suddenly felt this urgent need to capture every image that I could think of.  Their sudden departure from us here reminded me ever more of life's fragility and the need to enjoy each day for what it was worth.  Even with all of the pictures that I have of them, I have never found myself saying~

"Gee, I wish I wouldn't have taken all of these pictures!"
I only wish that I would have taken more of them.

There is an album, one that contains photos that I didn't take.  It's a little one with about 37 pictures in all.  Those photos are my individual "teacher" ones, taken right along with the students on school picture day.  They are from my days of teaching in south central Kansas as well as my two years here in southwestern Colorado.  I always got them every year and of course the package comes along with more individual ones than a person would know what to do with but I'm thankful that I have them all.

It's always interesting to take a look at those old photos and reflect back on the circumstances of life that accompanied them.  That age old adage "Every picture tells a story," is most certainly true, especially those that tell of my time as an educator.  Just like life itself, some of those stories are happy and some are certainly sad.  But they are what are and I rejoice always that I lived long enough to take this 37th one back in the early autumn of this school year.

I'm happy as well to have a photo of what I looked like in my very first years of teaching.  How times change and the people blessed enough to live through them.  From age 23 to nearly 60, it's been my privilege to be called "teacher".

I've always loved to take photos of the new places that I've seen while going along life's way and since moving here to the mountains, now nearly two years ago, I've had the chance to take a plenty.  But I've also seen some other spectacular views east of the Rockies and inside one of the little albums there are many images that bring back lots of great memories of times gone past.  The ones shown below are only two of them.

The view from the path on the Katy Trail in Missouri as you are nearing the bluffs.  My oldest son and I rode our bikes for 3 days and a grand total of about 150 miles in all back in August of 2007.

The view from atop Coronado Heights near Lindsborg, Kansas on a beautiful Indian summer day.  Anyone who has ever visited there knows how pretty the picture really is.  Surely it seems you could see to forever from the top.  My heart smiles to see that stunning Kansas sky.

Although I have my doubts that I will ever totally have things organized in that great big picture file of mine, I'm pretty sure that I will make a big dent in it by the time that my birthday rolls around come this late autumn of 2015.  My children's photos have all been sorted and grouped in albums for them to have as well as my siblings' pictures.  I'll scan in the ones that I want to keep forever and ever and let the rest of them go.

I have done what my mom always admonished me to by labeling the backs of them as to who it is, where it was taken, as well as the year.  In that way, my children and other family members will always know who it is that they are looking at and how they themselves played a part in the capturing of that special image.

Years ago I never realized how much the pictures that I took would mean to me in the days that would follow and even though I have many to look at, lots of times I wish that I had more.  For the times that I found myself without a camera and wishing that I had one, I took the picture in the only way that I knew how to and there seems to be no end to the storage room in that particular place.

I took them with my heart and there they will stay.
If my memory should fade or go away all together, rest assured those memories will not.

My mom and my brother in one of the last photos I have of them together.  The day this photo was taken I never dreamt that we would lose them both only a few short years into the future.  Mom passed away in late September of 2007 and Mike in mid-November of the same year.  I always thought my mom looked very pretty in this picture and they both were so happy.