You know, when our youngest two went away to college, all I could think about was the empty nest. I prepared for it like a nut caase.

What a didn't think about, was all of them returning. HA! My third boomerang will be home in a few weeks.

While it's all temporary, we will still have five adults living here. I'm looking forward to it because it will be the last month that all three will ever be here again.

However, I'm also thinking about all the coming and going at all hours of the night and day. My daughter and her friend hung out here last night and I smelled chocolate around 1:30. Was I dreaming? I woke up to a batch of brownies that they must have bake in the middle of the night.

Anyway, I'd like to make this month a time of celebration. I may even be hokey and mention at dinner that this is the last time all five of us will live together and ask them for ways to celebrate. Do you have any suggestions?

The oldest will move to the city in the fall. Our daughter will go back to school in the fall. And our youngest will be moving to the Big Apple in August.

So I believe that by October, we'll be empty nesters again.

The good old scrap book...with additions.Ask each person to write their thoughts.Maybe the young ones see things very differently.Wheras we know life changes cause cracks in our hearts.
My family have gone come back gone..returned between flatshares.Things that were the same for years seemed at the time stable.Now I seize the moments we have.Last Friday my son came home for two hours..long enought to bath collect her suit and white shirt for his first ever funeral.He started early Saturday to travel..made the event...returned and then phoned.To "let me know he was back" but really to tell me..he loved us.
Famiily life is wonderful.
enjoy
Mountain ask.

Playing games together is probably the most fun and most memorable thing to do with the family. Looking at some old family movies together and cooking together, could make an evening especially special.
Believe me, Dotsie,....they will be back more often then you think.

Dotsie you are the kind of mom whose children adore her and no matter where they go or who they will be with you will always be a part of their life. You and Ross have made their home a happy, safe place to be and believe me Edelweiss speaks the truth, they will come home often...!

What my oldest sister did was have a family portrait done. She said it was the last time to do so..and it was.

Both her kids are gone now so the picture IS worth a thousand....batches of brownies!!

Lots of photos...and play "Spoons". My sons had never played it before but this past Christmas there were the kids and me and Larry and my sister and we all laughed until we cried. It was an absolute blast...everyone still talks about it to this day and we have photos and digital movies of the game...it's nice to replay and resee those moments.
Also, Dotsie, I'm sure you've kept things of theirs through the years. What might be nice is to give each one of them a momento from their childhood to take with them...I give my sons a surprise from their youth every-so-often at Christmas time or birthday or for no reason at all...they LOVE to find something they colored or made as a child wrapped up as a gift to them.
Just a thought.
Good luck and hang in there.

At dinner one night, have a clean sheet of paper and a pen on each of their plates. Have them write one memory of their childhood on the paper. You can collect them and have the three of them framed and placed over the dinner table. That way, a piece of them will always surround you whenever you sit down to dinner. Missing them? Just look up to the framed memory. Let it carry you back in time. Nothing sweeter.

And if you think they won't do that, then have a sheet of paper and get each one to write down ONE thing they love most about being at HOME. Then take THAT and frame THAT.

Maybe they will even look at you like, "are you nuts?" But let me tell you, whenever I find a box of drawings, pictures, whatever...my grown boys, MEN NOW, will sit down with me and go back in time. We laugh, I cry, and they hug. Memories need to be preserved! Everyone will thank you. Maybe not now...but trust me on this...they WILL later.

JJ, that's an awesome idea...I'm going to steal that idea from you about framing what they love about being home...I keep our score cards from board games we play when the boys are here...I'm so sentimental.