17!!

So, Ethan turned 17 on Saturday and as I just typed that title, it flashed through my head for the first time that this is his last year of childhood. I mean, technically, according to the definitions.

😭😭😭😭

I feel ever more grateful that given his summer birthday/ boy status we opted to hold him back a year when he was little, so he is still just entering junior year instead of senior. Thank goodness we still have 2 more school years left with him at home.

I KNOW it’s such an annoying cliché but it really does go so fast.

I have a distinct memory from about ~2016/2017 or so. I was at the gym one early morning (this was the phase when I always went super early, and I knew all the other “early morning people”) and was chatting with this super nice, quite-a-bit-older-than-me man I saw a lot. He asked how my boys were (they were only 6 or 7 back then!), and started telling me that his youngest son had actually just headed off to college that particular week. He said his wife was struggling a bit with it all, and this is the part I always remember, that “She keeps saying… it all just went by so fast.” (“It” being the whole “child rearing years” of their life). He said she just couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that it was “over”.

I distinctly remember thinking, “Awww” and feeling a little sad for his wife. And I remember thinking, Well, at least that’s a long ways off for us! The boys are so young yet.

And FLASH, here we are, I now have a 17 year old and am down to 3 school years left with a kid in high school. (And I suppose Jim’s youngest son is probably now getting close to 30!! Since my schedule changed I haven’t crossed paths with him in a long time now.)

It’s all good stuff, and I truly enjoy these older kid years. I’m not complaining. (Not that complaining about it would do a single thing to stop the passage of time, anyway.) And besides, the point of raising kids is precisely so that they grow up and become adults and live their own lives eventually. It’s all going according to plan… 🙂 I really do feel excited for these next chapters, and I am grateful that we’ve completed and closed some of the (more annoying) chapters of parenting, too. 😉

That said, it’s hard to not feel a little wistful and a sense of longing for those sweet, younger years, too. 💗

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17!

Ethan is usually our pretty low key guy, and he wanted a pretty low key birthday.

His birthday was Saturday (July 12) and on Friday night he and several friends all slept over at one of his friend’s houses from his old school. It was a bit of a reunion of sorts- Ethan + his 2 close buddies who go to his current high school, and 2 or 3 guys from their old middle school who went on to different high schools. Sounds like it was super fun! At his age they don’t really do the whole “sleepover” thing much anymore, but this particular kid has a great big house in the country (they have 6 kids…) with lots of fun things to do and it sounds like it was great.

On Saturday, Ethan actually had to work (at Panera) from 12-5, because he forgot it was his birthday that day when he submitted his availability. 😅 Oh well, he didn’t mind.

This gave me time to run some errands and get ready for his b -day. We sort of dropped the ball- his birthday really snuck up on me!!

Never too old for some birthday balloons:

After both he and Asher finished working (Asher has been working at the pool a ton and also is sporting WAY too dark of a suntan…), we all went out for dinner.

The last few years, Ethan has requested Texas Roadhouse. He LOVES their grilled salmon there. (It really is good!) Like I said, Ethan is just a super level-headed, low key guy. He’s not the type to request extravagant things, at all. If I offered a fancier, more upscale restaurant, he’d say, “Nah. Why pay so much? The $20 salmon at Texas Roadhouse is perfectly delicious.” 🙂

Ivan’s brother and his girlfriend, plus our nephew + his gf, plus Ivan’s sister all met up with us there.

Me with my 17-year-old:

The server saw the balloon my brother-in-law brought and asked if we were celebrating anything… Ethan was quick to say he did NOT want the “birthday hoopla” where they bring over a horse saddle or something for you to sit in with a cowboy hat. 😅

After dinner we went back to our house for ice cream cake and some presents!

He is such a great kid! I love that he is very much his own person and is not easily influenced by others. He stays true to himself, and he has a certain matter-of-factness or practicality about him that I admire.

We may disagree on how much time should be spent on video games, lol!, but overall, I can’t complain. He’s been crushing high school, I think. Varsity letters in both soccer and tennis, a 4.0 GPA, has worked continuously since he turned 14 (even during the school year), and has already completed 85 of his required 100 community volunteer hours for school!!

His high school requires all students to complete 100 volunteer hours by graduation, but apparently in order to get into National Honor Society at his school you have to complete your 100 volunteer hours by junior year. So he’s been on a mission to finish them up this summer. 100 hours is actually… a lot.

He’s done different volunteer activities, but his 2 recurring gigs have been volunteer soccer coaching at a community soccer club for low income families (weekly in the spring), and this summer, volunteer shifts at a local Senior Day Center ~3x/ week. He does dishes, delivers meals to the senior apartments (I’m sure the seniors love him!), cleans things, mops, chops fruit, sets up for events… whatever the Volunteer Director needs. 🙂 He said yesterday she was out but she had left a list for him! haha. It’s been great. It sounds like he’s basically the only kid there doing this, so she seems impressed with his commitment to showing up so often.

His summer has had a nice rhythm- he drives to school for lifting and soccer workouts everyday at 9, then often stops to volunteer for a couple hours on his way home. Then he has some time to chill/shower before heading to work at Panera at 2 or 3 most days. He also has had a decent amount of summer work for his 3 upcoming AP classes that he’s been chipping away at. (Also, he’s supposed to be working through an online ACT prep program, but I’m not convinced a ton of that has been happening….). After work you’ll usually find him on his Xbox laughing and yelling with his friends over the headphones, lol, until sometime after I go to bed… ha.

Anyway, I’ll stop bragging about what a fantastic kid I have now. 😜 Hey, if there’s ever a time to brag on my kid, it’s on his birthday, right? 🥰

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for Ethan, of course. 🙂