My extended family

I'm finding myself in a bit of a contemplative mood tonight which may make this entry a good or bad thing. I do appreciate having this medium to help process my thoughts tonight but I sometimes wonder if in the morning I'll look at this and think "what was I thinking?" Contemplative probably tends to be my keyword for slight feelings of depression which I know everybody must feel at certain times and with me typically will last an evening and be gone with the morning.I have realized over the past few weeks how much of a family I have developed here in Loveland. I don't have any real family left here in town save for my stepsister, but my extended family consisting of friends from school, work and church seems to be bigger then ever. I laugh because it's not unusual for me to go somewhere with one group of friends and run into another group while we are out. I like that I can go to the grocery store or the bank and run into people I know and can chat with.Today was a fun day; I stopped by KFC for lunch today not sure if a friend from high school I used to work with was working. She was and happened to be going on break just as I got there. She sat down with me as I had my lunch and we chatted for about 15 minutes. I promised that I would help her husband, another good friend of mine, install a garage door opener at their house. Not thirty seconds after she had to go back to work a couple friends of mine from church walked into the restaurant to have lunch. They sat down with me and we had a great time for the remainder of my lunch. (They also reminded me I was getting older as one was a jr. high school youth leader when I was that age, and the other was the father of two of our current high school youth members, but that is a different story.) After work today I met two very good friends of mine from Group Publishing for a couple of drinks at a local bar. Again as I sat there with them, the advertising director from the paper I currently work at walked in with his family for dinner. I have always said that I will judge the success of my life by the people whose lives I can touch while I walk this planet. I'm not somebody who cares a great deal for material wealth or status (that's not to say I don't appreciate some comforts though), but it is encouraging to realize that I know so many people, and I can count most of them friends. I took this photo last summer at a baseball game with some of the best friends I have ever had. We were celebrating the fact that one of my friends had recently graduated law school and we wanted to show him a good time. We sat in the cheapest seats in the stadium, but had a blast. These are the memories that I know I will carry with me through this life, and that's what makes me a little sad tonight. I look forward to moving to Iowa with an excitement I have not felt in a long time. I know it is what I'm being called to do, and I look forward greatly to the new experiences. I am burned out with a lot of my life here in Colorado and ready for new challenges. I do feel a twinge of pain though whenever I realize that I do this leaving a lot of people I care about deeply behind. It’s tough telling the members of the youth group that I won't be able to hang out with them at overnighters in the fall or realizing that on Monday night next year I won't be able to watch the games with my friends each week. I know that for many of these people it will never be a permanent goodbye, but I also realize for many it will be. I value my friendships deeply, and while I know I will make many more friends throughout my life, and leave many more as well, it never makes goodbye easy. I guess what I want to say tonight to everybody who reads this little piece of my life is Thank You. Thank you for being a part of my life and letting me be a piece of yours. I love you all.