It is a bittersweet fact that as your kids grow, the time you spend as a family shrinks. If you have done your job well, their lives are full. If you are lucky, yours are as well.
We are four people with very full lives. Not one of us is the type to be idle or feel lonely. We have a great extended family, many friends and rich lives. We work hard and play hard.
Blah. Blah. Blah. Ok, so that is all academic. And though it is true on some level, after 21 years of being a family unit, you crave that time when you can be together. And you learn to appreciate the moments for what they are… fleeting and precious.
This weekend we visited our kids at college. If you don’t follow this blog regularly, my kids are away at school together as a freshman and a senior.
They love it. I love it more.
Parent’s weekend = fly. drive. eat. reverse. repeat.
But for twenty precious minutes, just the four of us sat on the couch in my daughter’s apartment and were simply US.
In all caps.
Nothing special was said. (oh except when my son told us about his human sexuality class and said he now knows more about the vagina than he ever cared to know – now that is something you rarely hear from a 18-year-old boy) There were no real heavy parenting moments. We just WERE. (again in caps)
And to me, there is nothing better on this earth than a little time with just us four…
even if it was only for twenty.
i could cry but i don't have time 
Oh see, and I thought this post was going to be all about smoking weed with your kids.
Being four twenty and all.
So funny. Sorry to disappoint, Jessica!
I think this is lovely – though if you’d smoked weed in your daughter’s apartment while you had that 20 minutes, it would have been poetic – you know with the title of the post and alll 🙂
And speaking of 420 – what’s this about kids putting that on their FB pages as if we adults have no idea what that means. Were we that stupid? Okay, don’t answer that.
omg, you and Jessica. my kids will surely get a kick out of this one.
I don’t make the rules.
It’s sweet, I’m glad you had time with your kids, I’m just a little prickly what with the title being all bait and switch ya know.
No bait and switch my friend. Actually did not even think of 420 in that way till you mentioned it. Remember, I am old(er than you)
sounds like a lovely 20 minutes.