It’s hard enough sending one child out into the world but we sent both of ours out within 10 days of each other. Yikes!! How did that happen, you ask? Our son stayed home for a gap year before moving to Chicago to pursue his dream and study comedy. Our daughter surprised us by not taking a gap year and going to college a year early.
As you may already know, we home schooled our children. Our son finished a year early because he zipped through Kindergarten and first grade at the same time. Our daughter finished early because she started school a year early. You can do this kind of stuff when you call the shots, lol.
All along I thought I was ready to let them fly. We bought 4 airline tickets to Chicago. Four of us got on a plane to get our son settled into his new apartment. Did I mention we rented his apartment without ever stepping foot in it? Thankfully we knew exactly where it was and the renting director did a live video tour with us. It helps that it is a brand new building and he would be the first tenant in it. Anyways, we get him settled in and hang around the city for a few days to make sure has everything he needs to stay. Then comes the day we have to leave. We said our goodbyes and took our family pics and then we grab an Uber to the airport. We get to the airport and we start the check in process and it hit me, there are only 3 of us flying back. Let’s just say the flight back was “challenging” for me.
By the time we get home it’s time to start packing up our daughters things for college. Whose idea was this anyways? We spend the next few days running errands and making sure we have packed up and purchased all of the items our girl will need for her first year in college. Friday rolls around and we head to Cleveland, TN. Since it’s only a 2 hour drive we decided not to get a hotel, we were going to drive home after we got her all settled in. She will be busy with activities and ceremonies and then starting class. My younger sister and her husband joined us to help her get set up and to soften the blow of leaving our youngest child behind.
I won’t lie and say it was all roses. We stayed much longer than we originally intended to stay but we shed some tears and said our goodbyes and drove away. It was HARD!! After the initial pain of not getting to see our children everyday, we started our journey to the “new normal”. We started to realize that we were back to Marmion Party of 2 again. A year and a half has gone by and here we are traveling the world for a living. Our kids are thriving and we could not be happier.
No Comments