We made it to fall break...

All three kids were deposited at their various institutions of higher learning in August, trips to Walmart, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Costco and the grocery stores all completed with relative ease. Technically the oldest didn't come home this summer, so she was simply moved from an apartment to a townhouse in July.

Side Note: Bed Bath & Beyond has an awesome program for those who are going to a school far from home (ahem, and that is in a city large enough to have a BB&B) - you can shop at your local store, and then, just as if you were registering for a wedding, they will scan all your products, look up the store closest to your university/college, and send the list to them. You drive your darling, his/her clothes, books, etc. to the new town, empty the car into the dorm room, then rock on over to BB&B and pick up the rest of the stuff at the local store!

The precious darlings were all of course asserting their adulthood and independence, the part you know you should be proud and happy about but that cuts to the core because they don't think they need you anymore. Let me just reiterate they don't THINK they need you anymore.

It didn't take long for the oldest to have a reason to come home, a very short time later the youngest needed things shipped to her (we have shipped 4 boxes to her as of this writing!), and only a couple weeks into the school year the boy messed up his elbow again -- Ulner Nerve Subluxation if you are really interested in the nitty gritty details, go google it, and maybe include the term 'post Tommy John surgery'. The boy needed to come home for his previous elbow surgeon to fix his elbow, he was home about a week. The oldest got a pretty bad strep infection that also infected her partially erupted wisdom teeth and begged Mommy to come and care for her, then a visit to the ER, then she came home to have us care for her, then she came home again to get the teeth extracted. Somewhere in the mix of the two older kiddos having their medical crises, the youngest began to finally feel homesick, thankfully this past weekend her brother had a fall break and a teammate from Flagstaff took him down to visit his sister. Oh we also lost the cat for a few days, thankfully we found it. Actually hoping for them to be independent for the next few weeks so that things are uneventful until Thanksgiving!

So the question we keep hearing "How does it feel to have your next empty" -- we haven't noticed it too much yet.