~really it was all I ever needed in the first place~

Good morning dear friends from here in the great state of Kansas where I've had the privilege to stay for the past 3 days as I visit family and friends.  Getting to my hometown of Haven from our new home in Burkburnett was a very quick 5 1/2 hour drive.  That's pretty fast considering it used to take me nearly 12 hours to drive here from our old home in Colorado.  I didn't have to worry about crossing over the big mountain to get down to the other side of the great Continental Divide.  My biggest concerns were the toll roads and Oklahoma City traffic, neither of which are very fun.  With my GPS to guide me, I did just fine.  You just have to be ever vigilant and watching.  I intend to come home to the "Sunflower State" many more times in life and with practice I will only get better. 

It has been wonderful to stay here in Haven and to remember the life that I used to have here as a young girl growing up in this part of the state.  Much has changed here but so much is just like it always was.  When I arrived in the late afternoon on Friday the very first thing I did was to take a picture of the elevator.  When I was a little kid, I can remember thinking how very tall it seemed to be.  It was almost a skyscraper to the tiny 10-year old girl that I used to be.  Now that I am nearly 50 years older, the strange thing is this.

It still looks like a skyscraper to me.

I've had the chance to go into Hutchinson three times now and will be heading in there this afternoon after lunch to attend funeral services for a former colleague from my early days of teaching here at Haven Grade School.  Tom was a good friend and a good teacher who will surely be missed by many.  His death is sadly a reminder to me that all of us are getting older and that we should live each day to its very fullest.

Yesterday I got the chance to go to Halstead and visit the cemetery there.  I always promised my mom that I would continue on with the tradition of decorating our family's graves each year.  I didn't get the chance to be here on Memorial Day because of our move from the mountains of Colorado down onto the plains of Texas.  But I knew that before the summer was over that I could carry on that tradition of remembering the dead.  My family is buried in the city cemetery just north of town on the other side of the Little Arkansas River.  I'm the person I am because of the ones that lie in eternal sleep there.  They are where I come from.

My parents~

My grandparents~

My great grandparents~

And even great-great grandparents too~

I must return home to Texas the day after tomorrow but I'm so thankful to have had the chance to see the place that I came from once again.  When I was at the Halstead cemetery yesterday, I stood for a moment and just listened to the sounds around me.  The city graveyard was its usual quiet self of course but for some reason I was more aware than ever of the sound of the Kansas prairie.  It's a calming sound, a peaceful one for sure.  Last week when I was in San Antonio for the teacher's conference there, I came to a realization about myself rather quickly.  The realization is this.

I am a small town girl.  I'm a farmer's daughter kind of small town girl.  I would never be happy living a life in a place filled with the hustle and bustle of of thousands of people and cars all around me.  To those who love that kind of experience I say that I am happy for them but as for me, just give me a life on the plains.  

That's all I really needed in the first place.

The very best part of the journey~