Children. They grow up so fast. This weekend I will have three of my children up to my home here in Grand Junction (they live with their Mom in Meeker).

We will be celebrating two of my sons birthdays. One turns 13 on the 13th, and the other turns 15 on the 20th of July. It’s almost hard to believe that my youngest child is about to be a teenager. When I reflect back to 2007…we were getting ready to make the biggest move of our lives.

I had received a promotion at work from being one of the top sales people in the nation to being a branch manager at the company I was working for and we were packing everything up and moving a mile away from the Atlantic Ocean in Wilmington, North Carolina. We had our youngest just two weeks before we DROVE 1,300 miles to the Tarheel State to start a new life for our family.

Fast forward 13 years later, and my youngest son is about to be a teenager in the 8th grade. I talked to my son about how he felt about becoming a teenager. He made it sound like it was no big deal. To me, it’s a big deal because now, despite being the Dad of 6 children, I am just 5 short years away from being an empty nester. And that is a very strange thing to me. And it makes me fully understand that family really is everything. And having everyone over during holidays as grown ups…will be really, really strange. But cool.