Test driving the "vacated" nest....

This past week, we have had a taste of life without our "big" boys at home and just our two "little" ones around. i guess you could say a partially vacated (not even "empty) nest experience! i must admit it's a ton quieter and quite a bit less rushed. In many ways it's a bit of a preview to life with a couple of older kids out on their own and a couple of younger ones waiting in the queue for their day to "launch".

This has caused me to think about my older boys quite a bit... they have both been for the most part "lab rats"... sorry there really is no other way to describe them! We have tried a bunch of stuff out on them just to see how they would react or how it would work and i'm happy to report that after all these years and multiple mis-steps, they are still alive!

We think (and i stress think) for the most part they are fairly well adjusted kids... of course, every parent thinks that of their kids right? You know the old... He-seemed-like-such-a normal kid-until.... Our guys love their parents, their grand-parents, their siblings, their church and of course and most importantly their God. They look out for one another (sometimes to a fault), they back one another up and they will blow the whistle on one another (to trustworthy adults) if need be. All this is good, i think... however, i am still amazed that fairly normal children would result from my input (their mother is normal, i on the other hand... well, talk to my wife).

Still, i look forward to their coming home late this week, they will no doubt have very funny and very serious stories to tell about their time away and it will get sort of "nutty" around here all over again but that's okay, not having everyday be "nutty" seemed so far away all those years ago...