My oldest son turned 30?

Was 1981 all that long ago? It seems like only yesterday to me. I remember 1981 like it was last year. Nickolas Lloyd Dorsey was born Aug 28th. He was 9lbs 8oz and already out grew the clothes we got him to come home in. 3 days later he and his mom are coming home, I got laid off and my mom is coming to visit for a week. Yikes!

I still can't believe I have a son who's 30. I tease my friends saying his mom was a cradle robber. Truth be told, she is older than me, but only by 2 weeks. We've been divorced for over 20 years now, but stay in touch. For both of us, our kids were always number 1.

I do see a lot of me in him. He loves his kids (BTW, he made me a grandpa for the 5th time 2 days before his birthday), he likes to turn wrenches, he likes motorcycles, he likes trucks and he has my hairline.

Nick was meant to be a family man. He married a lovely girl Stacey, who already had 2 children, so he started right off with a family. Now they have 2 together and they are a lovely family.

I remember when I was stationed in Oklahoma and we went to a squadron family picnic. Nick had to be about 4. They had a bean bag race and Nick wanted in it even though he had never seen one before. He couldn't get a handle on jumping and going forward, but he wouldn't quit. He stayed at it until he finished. That was one of many, many times I've been proud of him. But that sticks out in my many happy memory files.

I can't cover 30 years in a blog post, but I can tell you one thing though. There has never been a day that he's disappointed me. Like all of us, as kids and young adults we had our ups and downs and so has he. But he's always over come all of the downs.

To me, he's my oldest boy, but he's a man I'm proud to call my son.