New Appreciation of the Empty Nest

There was a time, not long ago, when I cried daily over this home void of children, who grew up too fast and moved out to new dwellings and far away college places....but after this past weekend....well...

 A few weeks back, I.T. told his sister, who lives out of town, that she and her family, which includes two young swimmers, could stay at our house over the weekend of the "away" swim meet that was to take place at our local high school pool. If you've ever been involved in a USA weekend swim meet for grade school kids, you know that they go on and on for hours and hours over a period of two days- Sat. and Sun. I.T.'s sister also has two younger sons who are not yet old enough to be on the swim team. So, mother and daughter arrived on Friday night and father and three sons arrived on Saturday morning. Our house served as Grand Central Station for the family swimmers and their parents, who traveled back and forth, to and from the pool to compete and cheer, have lunch, compete and cheer, rest up, compete and cheer....repeat.

And the two little guys hung out with Aunt Heidi, who prepared meals and snacks and tried to keep the kitchen and bathrooms clean and Uncle I.T., who built a fort that covered the entire family room, took the boys sledding- twice and played corn hole and other games in the living room- several rounds.

At 7:15 pm on Sunday night, we were serving up the final meal- south of the border dinner. All the kids were dead dog tired, staring into space, while chomping down their tacos. I.T. and I were past dead dog tired. We were just dead.

After the good-bys, we love you guys, thanks for comings and one more cleaning up of dishes and vacuuming of ten million crumbs- I.T. and I just looked at each other, smiled and said,

"Gosh, we love this empty nest!"