~as we wait and see~

It's still a far piece from this place in Texas to where home used to be back in south central Kansas.  Although we did shave off over 300 miles in traveling distance from our old house in south western Colorado by moving here, we are still 330 miles or about 5 hours of driving time away from my old home on 14th Street in Hutchinson.  To get back to Montrose from here in Burkburnett we would have a journey of nearly 800 miles, roughly 12 hours or more behind the wheel.  All things considered, it could have been much worse.  

At least we didn't live in Rhode Island.

I left behind lots of friends in Colorado and they were folks who meant the world to me.  They are the ones who stepped in and took up the slack for a lonely and homesick school teacher who was missing her old life in Kansas.  For two years they were there for me and for Mike as well and as those weeks and months went on they became a second family to me.  Just like the good people I left behind in south central Kansas, those dear Coloradans will forever remain in my heart.  It will be some time ahead in the future, perhaps more years than I want to think about, but I know that I will see them again some day.

Since 2013, I've done a lot of driving back and forth all over this country.  While on the road, I have taken lots of photos, ones that have special meaning to me.  Many of them have been of road signs that I have encountered along the way, signs that tell me how far I must travel to get to where I am going as well as those that remind me of just how far I have already come.  

I used to see this sign while riding my bike every morning when I lived back in Hutch.  It was a 10-mile round trip from my front porch to this sign and back again.  Later on, it would mark the beginning point of countless journeys between Kansas and Colorado.  50 highway took me all the way from my house in Reno County to Montrose.  

I was always glad to see this sign when heading back home to Montrose whenever I'd go back to Kansas.  130 miles doesn't seem like much when you consider a journey of over 600 miles but it was sometimes the longest 130 miles there ever was.  I remember when Mike and I went back to Colorado after getting married in May of 2013, that it was at this point when tears welled up in my eyes and I began to cry.  I realized just how far away from Kansas I was and the homesickness began to kick in.  It got better.  Really, it did get better.

My dear and sweet Kansas~
This sign is at the state line near Coolidge, Kansas.  What a beautiful sight it always was to see, especially during those first months of being married and far away from home.  Now that we are living in Texas, we won't have much occasion to venture into far western Kansas any longer but during any given time in the past two years I could probably have driven that route with my eyes closed.  I shudder to think that sometimes I might have done just that.

There are 105 counties in Kansas.  This one is mine.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to travel a bit into northern Oklahoma to visit my family there.  It seemed so strange after being in Colorado for two years to see a sign like this along the way.  All that I would have needed to do was to keep on going north for just a bit more and I would have seen the sign that announced the state of my birth.  I can't even remember all of the times that I've encountered this mile marker in my life.  It made me smile to see it once again this past Saturday.

And now life is different and as always it feels like a puzzle that is being put together, one piece at a time.  Little by little things are coming together here at our new home in Burkburnett.  Although we still are not 100% sure of what our immediate future will hold for us, each day it becomes a bit more clear.  Until that time we do the one thing that we are starting to get a lot of practice at.

We wait and see.