I can hardly believe it’s happened. But I let our 11-year-old son leave home.

Don’t you just love it when I’m over dramatic? Yeah, Lee loves it too.

So anyway, Keaton hasn’t left forever. He’ll be back on Friday. But that feels like a lifetime to me.

This is the first time he’s gone anywhere without me. I mean anywhere for a whole week. Since Keaton was born, Lee and I have been on vacation twice without him. Both times were to Vegas. Neither time was for a full week. And both times I called him every single day.

I, of course, told Keaton he needs to call me every single night. He better do it too. I know he doesn’t want me calling his group leader to make sure they are all ok. I’ll do it.

I’ve already called Keaton once. About a half hour after Lee dropped Keaton off at church. And he didn’t answer. I don’t know why we got him that cell phone. He never answers the dang thing. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt because it is in his backpack so he probably just didn’t hear it.

So where did Keaton go? He’s off to Colorado on a church trip. They are going to worship and discuss how their lives relate to God and they are going to enjoy Colorado. One day this week they are going to white water rafting. It nearly killed me to sign the permission slip to allow him to go white water rafting….without me, but I did it.

He is going to have so much fun on this trip. I just love the fact that he gets to see the world. He gets to see people who aren’t white. [I don't know if you've ever been in the midwest, but unless you are in Chicago or Minneapolis there aren't a whole heck of a lot of non-white people land. I think Keaton has maybe ten black kids, one asian kid and maybe two hispanic kids in his grade. And he has probably 300 kids in his class.] He gets to see the beautiful landscapes as he travels from here to Colorado. He will get up close and personal with the mountains.

One of my favorite bloggers, AGK, just recently traveled by car/truck across the US as she moved her family from Georgia to Colorado. And her pictures are so breathtaking [of course, part of that is because she's a fabulous photographer]. I’m so excited that Keaton will get to enjoy that too.

But while I’m excited for his adventures, I’m also scared. He’s my baby. I worry about it. It’s frightening to see you’re baby go off without you. I guess it’s something I’m going to have to get used to though.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 7:46 pm and is filed under A day in our life. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.