When our three kids were much younger, I got through the hard days by asking myself, “In twenty years what will it matter?”  Well, Hubby and I have passed that 20-year mark on the life-long journey of parenting.  Our two girls are in college and the little baby boy is 16 years old and 12 inches taller than me.  We have passed through diapers, tantrums, and spilled milk at the dinner table.  We are completely done with the heavy duty parenting of babies, toddlers, tweens… and almost done with teenage years.  It is a great spot to look back and see how far we have come.

Obviously, the kids don’t know about the sleepless nights I spent feeding a newborn every 2 hours; the worry over fevers and finances; the loop in my fatigued brain saying, “Am I doing this right?”  They remember an inflatable pool on our cement patio; donuts on Saturday mornings and wrestling with daddy before bedtime.

Now we look back at twenty years worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and realize there are no more bath nights and bedtime stories. The training wheels are done, tiny black tap shoes were sold at a garage sale and the tooth fairy will not visit anymore. They are having adventures on their own, but we still have a little more family time to treasure on our journey with our three young adults walking tall beside us.