Confessions of a Daughterless Mother

Last night I sat at the 100 Days Away Football Kick Off meeting and heard my son referred to for the first time as a "Senior". I had helped prepare the meeting - so I drifted off when it began ... When the boys were little Eric and I put miles and miles on both our car and our feet. In the late evening, trying to get them to sleep - in an effort to have a few minutes to talk to each other - we walked.  We drove.  One night - before Jackson was even born - we pulled into the Wacousta Elementary School drive. Eric pulled around and up close to the Dream Depot. This was the elementary school he went to, he still knew many of the teachers there, he'd helped build the Dream Depot (the playground on the west side - the envy of the district) as a high schooler.  He has so many good memories in the building. He smiled and looked at a sleeping Cooper in the back seat - all tucked into his car seat (I swear he might not have slept if we didn't drive for hours.  Kids been

"I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean." LeAnn Womack, "I Hope You Dance" The first time we took Cooper out of the country he was just shy of four months old. We traveled to St. Lucia in the Caribbean and put his baby toes in the sand and held him in the ocean. As he grew and the number of boys in our household also grew we continued to travel, we camped, and hiked, stayed with grandma, packed food and drove - anything we could to get them on the road. Anything to experience new places and people.  My boys have been lucky enough to surf in Costa Rica, snorkel in Jamaica, ride Jeeps in Cozumel, jump off a deck into the crystal clear water off the coast of Roatan, hike the hills of Tennesee and the Smokey Mountains, jump in a crystal clear pool in the jungle in the Dominican Republic, touch the walls of Fort Sumter, pull Walleye from the ice cold waters of Caribou Lake in Canada, tube down a river that cut through a mountain in Beliz