Apron strings have been cut.

I've had a few people ask me how it has been to move far away from family for the first time. I have to be honest, it hasn't felt weird or much different at all. I still talk to my parents a lot - phone, email, text, skype. When we first moved here and I didn't have a job I was grateful for any chance to talk on the phone to my mom. Sometimes it was my only human interaction other than seeing Jeff when he finally came home from school.

However, things are moving on. They repainted my bedroom, boxed up my old barbies, and they seem to be doing just fine without me.

In fact, I tried to Skype with them the other week. It quickly turned into this:



This is because now that nearly all of their children are out of the house, they can pick back up on their dazzling social lives. Here they are rubbing shoulders with my dad's good friend (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Muhammad Yunus.



Soon I'm sure I'll hardly hear from them, except to get glamorous Christmas cards full of their adventures and achievements.

By the way, today is my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad! Christian asked him how old he was this morning at breakfast, and when my dad told him 54, he said, "Whoa. My parents are old." I would laugh more at this if I wasn't pretty sure that if I told Christian I was 26 he would say something similar about having an old sister.