It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

I made the most of this beautiful day by heading to a field of wildflowers for some spring-y pics. And even though it was 80 degrees, I wore a sweater to pay homage to Mr. Rogers’ birthday (which was actually yesterday) and to participate in Stacy Julian’s blog party. It’s not exactly a Mr. Rogers-style sweater…but like I said, it was 80 degrees, so allowances were made.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, Mr. Rogers is one of my heroes. His wisdom and commitment to children was and continues to be a huge inspiration to me. I actually had the amazing opportunity to meet him briefly in 1994, at a personal appearance.

Kendra was 4 years old and watched him on TV every day, so the two of us stood in line for hours waiting to meet him. The line wrapped all the way around the building and the longer we waited, the more doubtful it became that we would get a chance to see him before his time was up. Sure enough, it was announced that he had a plane to catch. But as he walked past us to leave, Kendra held out her blankie for him to see. I don’t know why she did that, other than she somehow knew he would understand its significance. He stopped and asked if she wanted him to see her blankie. She nodded yes, and he looked it over and said, “I think that blankie is very lucky to have YOU.” Holy cow, talk about a goosebump moment! He didn’t have time to sign my book, but told me to send it to his publisher with a note and he would take care of it. Sure enough, it came back looking like this:

I don’t have a single photo from that day, but I am all fired up to get that memory into my scrapbook this weekend.

I’ll leave you with just a couple more flower field pics from today. Try not to hate me if you have snow that hasn’t melted yet! I promise you can gloat when you're wearing your cute fall clothes and I'm in shorts having heatstroke in October.

Comments

[April P.]

beautiful flowers and beautiful sweater . . . the one thing we don't seem to have in Florida is wide open spaces filled with wildflowers! I loved watching Mr. Rogers too - how lucky you are to have those memories! ~april

[TamiV]

Love the flower fields so beautiful and what a touching story about Kendra and Mr. Rogers. I spent many hours watching him myself.

[bonnierose]

your pics are beautiful! We have snow here in MN... sighs

[bonnierose]

your pics are beautiful! We have snow here in MN... sighs