the nest is empty. . .

it was 1996 and i was standing in my kitchen washing dishes, contemplating life and how lovely it was raising four creatively different children. praying for each kid as i washed up his/her plate from lunch. . .

yeah, right. while i was grateful for our brood of delightfully imaginative and very individualistically wired progeny, who came into our lives brilliantly disguised and packaged as small, cute, harmless newborns - i was also aware of the difficulty and exhaustion factors of allowing the number of said progeny to now hold house majority status. dave and i were outnumbered every day and outsmarted most days.

so, there i was, standing in front of the sink, doing the dishes, fuming that the dishwasher was on strike - again, wondering how an intelligent couple like us could have let this shift of power happen, when he walked in and asked "kar, do you realize we could be empty nesters in like 11 years?"

you would think i would laughed, hugged him, and then quickly did the math to figure out the approximate number of days left in this adventure into madness. but i did what for me was surprising. . . i started crying. . . hard and loud. . . because i realized that 11 years wasn't nearly enough time for those wonderful, God-given little blessings to finish raising dave and i. it wasn't nearly enough time for them to discover how much we loved them and were grateful that we were family. it wasn't nearly enough time.

over the years, dave and i have looked back and laughed over that incident. and i admit - i have done the math a couple of times. . . really. but it has actually been 13 years between that day and E-day. and i can tell you honestly, 13 years was both not nearly enough and just about right.

dave and i are better people, parents, and Christ-followers because of our kids and the wonderful job they did in teaching us how to major on the majors and minor on the minors. so i want to publicly thank you children for that.

thanks, kids!

oh and just one more thing. . . could you all return any and all housekeys you might still have in your possession back to your father and i asap?