My first three children were raised as military kids.  Never finishing the school year where they started. And if they did finish a year, the teacher and half the children would be different by the end of the year.  Teacher's husbands got orders.  Children's fathers got orders.  It was like being in a bowl and being stirred with a spoon.  Nothing was constant.  As a result, they were, and are, very adaptable.  Whatever happened, you adjusted.  And I couldn't fix their problems.  They all three coped.

But after Ken retired, we settled down to stay in Oklahoma.  We were all relieved to quit moving. Then nine years later we had another son.  He was born here, raised here went to church with ten boys his age that were a constant in his life.  Nothing extraordinary ever happened.  We never moved again.  He graduated from high school with those ten friends.

When he was somewhere between ten and twelve, I taught a night class at the college where I was employed.  I got an extra check.  Jon had been asking to go somewhere, anywhere, to take a vacation.  And I couldn't go.  So I gave him the check from the night class, and told him that he could have the money to take his first vacation.  "You and your father go.  Have a wonderful time.  Call and tell me which way you headed and where you are."  Ken told me that Jon managed the money, and half of the time they slept in the car because Jon didn't want to spend money on motels.  He wanted the trip to last.

They took off in the car and headed north, then east, and after a week ended up on the east coast.  They had a blast.  They got to spend one night in the National Observatory.  They were the last two people there, and the scientists asked them if they wanted to stay the night and look at stars.  Of course!!

When you look back on raising your children, sometimes you know you did the right thing.  There were a dozen things that I needed to spend that check on.  But that investment in Jon and Ken's life was priceless.  One on one time is indeed priceless.  In a house of six, that is sometimes hard to find.
 
 You can't possibly give all of them the same experiences.  By the time Jon was nine, the older three were gone. Those three had traveled all over America when they were growing up.  Jon hadn't.  He came home full of stories and remembers that trip with great fondness.

Proverbs 4: "For I was my father's son, tender and…beloved in the sight of my mother."