Updates

Some updating news...FIL is still at HH. We all think he is ready to come home and hospital food just taste nasty to him. We bring in a little treat for him every night and it makes him happy. We enjoy doing that for him. I would bring him a Bible or any type of reading material but he says that he has no interest in it. That's the sad part. Most people in the hospital sometimes makes the most of it by watching TV or reading. But not my FIL. So visitors during the day are important. Some of the nurses are really nice he says and others just rush in and out. Face it some nurses work well with elderly patients and others not so much. While sitting and visiting with FIL, a group of elderly patients came strolling by with their walkers. They waved at us and we waved back at them. They were a friendly bunch! We are hoping that FIL will be released within a week. He wanted to go home two or three days ago! Please keep my inlaws in your prayers. They are both in their nineties!
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The kids and I were discussing about our summer plans. We know S has driver's education (oh, boy!) in the early summer. Since S doesn't have much by the way of jobs we were thinking this would be the year we drive out to Oregon to visit with relatives. I figured that gas would be around $3.30 a gallon. Yeah, right. I had sticker shock yesterday when I saw the price of the pump at Domino...it was a whopping $3.55 and rising!! I'm afraid that gas prices will rise to $4.00 a gallon for the summer. We just don't know if we should go or not. If we wait another year, will gas prices be even higher than the projected $4.00??!! We thought about flying but I heard the airlines are planning to rise their fares too. It's getting harder and harder to plan any type of vacation. There's only so much you can see in KS! Wish my brother and family would move back to KS...yeah, that'll be the day.
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While cleaning downstairs at church yesterday I checked each of the rooms. I can remember when our church had every one of those classrooms filled with kids in Sunday school. Now we have a small pre-school class; a first through 4th grade class; a JYF and a MYF class. That's it. Then we have several adult classes, at least 6 different classes. We have more adult classes than children classes. I wonder why our church population is down? Is it this way at all churches in our town or just our church? We have a fine JYF and MYF youth group meeting on Wednesday nights. I've heard upwards of 80 kids plus sponsors at one time. We offer a meal, music, and a meeting. We, as a church, are overjoyed by those numbers, but it just seems that we can't get many of these youth and their parents to come to church on Sunday. When our church had the pre-school still running I can remember some of the pre-school parents attending at our church. But since it's demise, the numbers at church remain down.

I wonder if the town of Harper just need to attract business of some kind to get people to move here. It would not only help the local school, the local economy, but also the church population as well. I recall when I first moved here from Wichita there was something that I recall while driving around. It was the small town friendliness. I drove by our little park and saw this family I had known through L's contacts. Upon seeing my car they waved at me. I was touched by this friendliness. Why can't we get more people to live in a small town? It is a great place to raise kids without the violence of the big town. Kids can still ride their bikes around town or have a game of tennis in the park. How can we attract people to come live out here? Do we need more services such as doctors, restaurants, shopping to be in our area?

We do need to keep our schools "local" and not move them out to the HS. This is the hot topic going on in our city currently. Because the decrease of school population the board believes that moving the junior highs out to the high school would be good. They could offer exploratory classes, they say. I think that small classes are the best and that they shouldn't move the junior high out to the high school. Mixing junior high youth with the likes of senior high is not a great combination, in my opinion. Keeping everything nearby and not 5 miles out of the city is another way of attracting people to come to Harper. But moving our junior high out 5 miles could spell the death of our small town. (IMHO!!)