The Return Of The Empty Nest - E100

Rick Denton  0:00  
This week on the loud quiet episode, 100 the return of the empty nest. Hey guys,

Clancy Denton  0:06  
welcome back to the loud quiet. We are back in our studio. What is this place? I know, yes, it's been a bit we are back at home. It's been a bit that we've been at home. But if you are watching this, you will see that we have a big number up on the TV. This is our 100th episode, man. I mean, 100, I know. Did you ever think we would get to 100 I didn't think we were gonna get to 10. Yeah. I mean, it's just amazing that this is the 100th episode. We are now going into our third year of being empty nesters, and when we started this podcast, it really was a way for us to stay connected, almost a therapy session for Us Weekly that we just record on, yeah, to just, you know, talk through what We had been dealing with. And now it's really become something bigger and something that we have just invested so much of our time and energy into. And

Rick Denton  1:10  
we've done that because of you, the listener and the viewers. We want to say, thank you. This 100 does not exist without the listener, without the viewer. You have encouraged us, you have given us inspiration, you have given us ideas that have taken it beyond just that therapy session of us, oh, let's figure this out together, an episode that's titled, we're not professionals, and let's be honest, we're still not professionals, and have grown this into a community of people that are helping support each other and learning from each other on Facebook, it's got a newsletter. Won't call it a movement yet. I will call it a place that empty nesters can come find other empty nesters and build community together, and none of that would have happened without you, the listener and the viewer. Thank you for joining us as we have experienced this emptiness, living of the loud quiet,

Clancy Denton  2:05  
and thank you for making us be better. When we started this, we really were just kind of doing it for us, but now we feel like we're really doing this for y'all and just to continue to learn from each other. And we'll have another surprise coming out a little later this year that we can't wait to share with you all. And again, it's just just thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We really appreciate it. We couldn't have gotten here without all the love and support.

Rick Denton  2:35  
So we are back. We're back in the studio, and we're back because we had been traveling for almost an entire month. And I hope that you all enjoyed the recap episodes. We purposely chose those three because a lot of you are entering that empty nest phase right now, and those are some of those early episodes and who I think you can tell that it's a little bit different what

Clancy Denton  2:58  
we did back then, we learned how to we learned how to edit,

Rick Denton  3:01  
and we're still learning how to edit, and your feedback and insight always continues to help us out. Now we're back, and it's back after this great period of travel that we went on. And I mean, what'd you say 21 days?

Clancy Denton  3:14  
Yeah, it's it, and it wasn't contiguous, but we were literally home, maybe one day in between. You even did a little bit of an extension, taking Tegan back to school. I felt like we were the Europeans that we see when we go to Mexico and we're like, What do you mean? You've been here for three weeks?

Rick Denton  3:32  
I said to someone last night that I this will be the first time I've slept in our home three nights in a row since the very, very beginning of August.

Clancy Denton  3:39  
And to think when we got back August was almost is almost done. I mean, it's just it was crazy, but

Rick Denton  3:45  
it was a choice, though, yes, this was a choice made because this was the window of time that we had our kids available to travel with us. And that's something that we don't know how much more of that we have left.

Clancy Denton  4:01  
We are still fortunate that our children are still tied somewhat to a school calendar. We still knew that we had the month of August to plan something.

Rick Denton  4:16  
We went to Iceland, New York. Technically, we also went to Boston, because it was a gateway to get out of the city. I had a road trip to take Tegan back to Arizona. And if you want to know more about that, just hit us up, send us an email, send us a DM on the Facebook site, and we'll talk more about the details of the trip. But I think what meant more to us was not so much the destination spectacular. It was building those memories. There are things that we are going to laugh about as a family that no one else is going to get or even think it's funny and we're going to laugh about for decades.

Clancy Denton  4:47  
Tanner said that he was trying to explain one of the inside jokes to his girlfriend, Addison and and she just was like, I don't understand. Like, it just didn't because it was just something that you. We latched on to as a family in Iceland, and still crack up to it, about it right now, but to anyone outside of our family, they probably think that we are, like, super weird.

Rick Denton  5:12  
Yeah, it's not a huge, massive epiphany to experience or to share. It's a reminder that even though you've moved into that empty nest phase, family is still so valuable to us, and travel has continued to be a way for us to bring that family unit together. Travel is a way that we've been able to create those memories that we will continue to laugh about,

Clancy Denton  5:41  
and this trip in particular, Iceland. I mean, we were pretty much together, 24/7,

Rick Denton  5:47  
and it showed it a couple moments it did. I

Clancy Denton  5:50  
will say, though there weren't a lot of flare ups, but I do love and we are very blessed that our children have the relationship that they do because they still enjoy being around each other. It's like they go back to being 10 and seven at points, you know. But then they also are 23 and 20 and discuss things that mature adults would discuss. My heart is just so full when I see them walking in front of us and still picking at each other, but then still just talking about things that we don't necessarily understand.

Rick Denton  6:29  
We have no clue about it, right? The things that bring them together and when they make fun of us, there's a lot of humor in how they they mock us, and it's a fun kind of thing to see them do that together,

Clancy Denton  6:42  
and we give it right back.

Rick Denton  6:46  
Yeah, they're old enough to take it,

Clancy Denton  6:48  
but yes, it was, it was so much fun. And then, yes, we did do a little last minute weekend to New York, and we've talked about how much we love New York, and Tegan loves New York. It's one of her favorite places. It's always fun going with our children to museums as well. Because,

Rick Denton  7:07  
oh Lord, we, most people, go to museums to learn. I don't think our family does

Clancy Denton  7:16  
the amount of animal noises that I had to hear Tanner do in the natural Museum of History. It's just fun. I just love it. And I know they certainly enjoy being with us as well. And they also get the added bonus of, you know, I called this their all inclusive trip, because the parents are still paying for everything. Someone is still paying

Rick Denton  7:46  
for which resort they're going to. It's an all inclusive. It's a hotel, motel or a fine resort. It's an all inclusive for them.

Clancy Denton  7:54  
So with all this travel talk, those of you who have been listening know that Rick and I love to travel. We have compiled a list of our favorite tips and gear for traveling that we would love to share with you all. If you go to our website, the loud, quiet.com there'll be a place that you can click on to get that download and that will also sign you up for our newsletter.

Rick Denton  8:18  
It was a great way to cap summer, and this summer was an interesting one for us, because, as we've talked about, this is not our first rodeo at being the empty nester, and at the beginning of this summer, it was time for Teagan to come back. We'd already established who we were as empty nesters, who is this person invading our space? And

Clancy Denton  8:46  
we loved having our home. We love having our home. We would never not want her to be at home. But yes, it was we had to kind of reframe the way that we do some things. She worked a lot of nights. Well, if we had dates planned, or, you know, group outings planned, I didn't necessarily pay attention to her calendar, so it'd be like the one night off that she was at home, and I would be like, oh, sorry, we have plans that night. I really, I continued to cook for you and me most of most evenings, I could probably count on one hand the amount of times that I cooked for her, and I feel horrible about that. So then I realized, okay, let's shift our Sundays to become our kind of we will cook even before she went to work. I don't remember that as much last summer.

Rick Denton  9:53  
I think it's because of you had said this earlier. I think it's because we were so excited she's back well, and. We were still so excited that she's back again. My tone may make it seem like we weren't excited. I do want her back. It just was, Oh, we've done this before. There's, there was a rhythm to this, oh yeah, oh, she's back, as opposed to, thank God. It's we get to that first time and really experience this. We knew what summer was going to be like, and we knew that it was going to shift for us. You talked about the dinners and that aspect of it, there were times that I realized that I hadn't really interacted with her, and I started the things that she and I can connect over, like video games and those kind of things. But finding the things that sort of connect, it was a massive that's overstating it. It was an adjustment, though, to have her back even. I mean, this is going to sound cheeky and silly, but after a run on a Saturday, hot Sunday, well, when nobody's around, you don't need that swimsuit to jump in the pool to cool off. Skinny dipping suddenly went out the window, right? I had to think about, oh, wait, I can't just wander the house, because there's someone in this house that? Well, that's not right. I

Clancy Denton  11:02  
think there's a lot of things that change when you're aware that, okay, there's someone in this house, then,

Rick Denton  11:12  
well, yeah, some of our couples time, or as all of the church websites call it, intimacy, was certainly affected by having someone in the house, you had to suddenly think about things and spontaneity was no longer the way it was when it's just the two of you,

Clancy Denton  11:28  
like you said when you were driving her back, you were kind of sad because she's going back. I was sad in the driveway because this is the first time that I haven't gone back right with anyone to help them move, because she didn't have a move. Praise Jesus. This child stayed in her apartment. But it was I felt that, oh, I'm not going, or I'm not meeting y'all there. I don't ever do the drive with y'all, but I'm not flying to meet y'all out there. But I but then in my head, I'm like, okay, but we're going in two weeks, so it's okay. So I got to be at home by myself for a few days.

Clancy Denton  12:09  
And I was so looking forward to that, and I had some appointments here and there. Well, we're like, literally in the airport leaving New York, and Tanner says, Mom, hey, these guys are going to Tucson. You want to go shopping with me? No days. And I was like, and, and I was talking to one of my girlfriends, and I said, you don't want to say no, because they're asking you to do something. Now they're also asking you to pay but they're asking you to do something. And so I said, okay, yeah. So I moved one of my appointments up to earlier in the mornings that we could meet, and we had a great time. And he was picking out things for me to take to Tegan when we go see her in a couple weeks. So it was a great day. Would I say, Oh, I wish I would have done that. No, never, right?

Rick Denton  13:03  
You do? You do want those, those moments, though, of where Wait, not only, like the emptiness couple that we talk about, you want those moments where I'm just the emptiness person

Clancy Denton  13:15  
I haven't been, I have not been in this house by myself, maybe once this summer.

Rick Denton  13:22  
Yeah, because now that I've moved my office back here, I don't think you get any alone time here. Wait and you will now, right? Because she's out of the house, and so there, if I'm away, or those kind of things, when I

Clancy Denton  13:36  
go to Austin, we're not away very many now, there's,

Rick Denton  13:39  
there's, there's something to be said about being by yourself. I joked about it. Well, not even joked about it. I commented on it that that one night that I was in the double tree, read, Tucson, Arizona. It's kind of nice.

Clancy Denton  13:56  
Yeah, I was not super sad.

Rick Denton  14:02  
Well, yeah, wait, what did I say to you? I said, Hey, this is the first time that, especially after an intense period of travel where you are side by side for weeks,

Clancy Denton  14:10  
and some of the beds were smaller than we were used to.

Rick Denton  14:14  
And I said, Do you want me to extend my trip to Tucson so that you get a couple extra alone nights, which you didn't pick up on it, but that would have given me a couple extra alumni.

Clancy Denton  14:27  
You may not have wanted to be home, to be with me, but you wanted to be home.

Rick Denton  14:32  
I did want to be home with you. That is true. And I wanted to be home. You know me, I can always spend extra time in Arizona. I love that place. Well, that's, and we're, that's what we're going to have to be doing now is now is the time. And it sounds odd in year three to rediscover how to be empty nesters. You'd think that we would know how to do it. And I think we feel like we. Do know how to do it? And I kind of wonder if there's a little bit of risk in that comfort of, oh yeah, we know how to do this. We invested so much time that first season, that's why we put those episodes out as Greatest Hits, episodes of consciously choosing activities, making sure that we were doing this, making sure we were busy. Now we run the risk of just falling back into a routine and not letting that routine be focused on, how do we be a couple?

Clancy Denton  15:32  
This is life now which I get. There were times in our life that, yes, we have fallen into just routine. Now, routine is not bad. I I was craving routine after traveling, and even Tanner said yesterday, when we were talking to him, he said, I'm kind of ready to get back to class and get to my routine. And I said, Yeah, you know, you had work all summer, then you were off the entire month of August, playing and having fun and so yes, everyone craves routine. I think one of the differences that even between last year and coming out of summer and going into the fall this year is that one you and I are our schedules are way more flexible even this year. Last time at this year, I was still working my job. You were still working a different thing than what we're doing now. We were so, okay, what can we do on the weekend? What can we do this weekend? What can we do? We've already mapped our fall. I mean, our fall is pretty chock full of we have several trips coming up, some that are work related, some that aren't. You know this this Wednesday night, we're going to music trivia. Would we have ever done that last year? Probably

Rick Denton  16:56  
not. That's a great example of we've learned how to be empty nesters in season one, in year one of being empty nesters, we had to learn how to say yes, because we had spent so much time of our lives unable to say yes. That that that muscle, that skill, didn't exist. Now it's become a reflex that the opportunity to do music trivia the first night that we are with kids, out of the house and all that. It wasn't even a it wasn't even a thought. It was just a reflex, yes, and we did it. And

Clancy Denton  17:30  
so now it was our child who invited us being able to drive to Dallas on a Wednesday night and not care if we get back a little later than we're used to getting back, those are the kind of things that we can do now. And

Rick Denton  17:47  
that is such a mental shift. It's not even it's not just about the ability to do it. And I think this is something, if you're a new empty nester, I think this is something you'll start to see. It's not just about the schedule availability to do it. It is the mental choice to say yes, we had almost drawn a ring around our Frisco, Texas residents and said we weren't going to go past this ring. The concept of Dallas, which now makes me sound like a country bumpkin, but this concept of Dallas, which is 35 minutes to an hour away, was something we wouldn't even consider, and now it's a Yeah, the opportunity is there. We'll go do it. No, we're not trying to do that every night, because that's kind of a pain to go that far. It's in our mental acceptance realm, not just our logistical and calendar. And that's something that has really changed, and we didn't have to relearn it. It's just part of who we are now.

Clancy Denton  18:43  
And I think that's a good point for the new empty nesters, is that when before you sent your kids off to school, yes, by junior and senior year, they're getting themselves places there, but they're still in your house. You're still responsible for, you know. Okay, what are they doing? Did they get fed today? Did they do this? Do this? So that takes up part of your mental energy that now I just have to get myself up, you know, and worry about if I get to the gym, when I want to get to the gym, I

Rick Denton  19:24  
didn't even think about the just the the mental space that that's not even some to the it's just not there if she goes to class or if he goes to class on any given Tuesday, I won't know, and I Don't care, what

Clancy Denton  19:40  
hasn't been an issue so far,

Rick Denton  19:43  
but maybe not in the one offs a recurring pattern that would cause me to invest more tuition than I want to stay longer then I start to care.

Clancy Denton  19:53  
So I think, yes, that just allows a part of your brain that is not. Being used for that, that then you can use it for other things. We we just recently started, oh boy. And this was our kids got us hooked on this on the trip because they would do the New York Times connections, yeah, every day, and the mini crossword there. And so I said, Okay, I think I'll do that one I enjoy, and it's good for our brains at this age. So if you're looking for a fun little thing to do, connections on the through the New York Times and the mini crossword. So, you know, we even, we have sat down now for the past, we just started it couple of days, and are doing that together. And, you know, we it also helps us to stay connected. We've texted Tanner, okay, we did connections. That one was easy, that one wasn't easy. And, you know, so it, it opens dialog, not that with him. We really need things, but Right?

Rick Denton  21:00  
She loves that one as well, so we'll be able to talk with her as well.

Clancy Denton  21:03  
Yeah, and I will say I did tell her before she left. I need more texts here and and she has already texted us plenty of you know, things they already have planned and coming up, and I

Rick Denton  21:21  
think that's encouraging to me, even as we're processing this real time right now, that thought that I had, of you know, it's really easy to feel a little too comfortable in a relationship no different than a marriage that has entered that seven to 10 range or whatever, that you can feel a little too comfortable a third year of empty nest, we can start to feel a little too comfortable even something as simple as what you just described, you say, Hey, let's go. Let's sit down and do connections. If we keep doing that, that's just one more thing that is a conscious choice to do together as a couple. And I, I think that's probably shoot. There's probably 1000 tips that could be offered. One of the biggest is just choose to do things together as a couple.

Clancy Denton  22:01  
Yeah, and and with other couples as well. It's always good to have your social network. That was one thing that was really scary for us that first year going into the empty nest is, you know, we've, we've talked about this a lot, that your groups tend to be revolved around your kids, while we have kept some of those closer friends. You know, I think about two years ago now, we have added to our group, and we do things consistently with the people that we have met in that time frame. So it, it, it can happen. You have to put yourself out there. But for new empty nesters, or if you're in the empty nest stage and you still don't feel like you found people after your kids have gone, you have to put some effort into it as well.

Rick Denton  23:03  
Yeah, and if those are the lessons you know here, we're sitting at 100 and those are some of the high level lessons that we've certainly learned. There's a lot still left for us to learn as well.

Clancy Denton  23:16  
Yes, we are by no means experts or professionals.

Rick Denton  23:22  
Hey, maybe you've got some ideas or thoughts or things that you could share with us. The best way to engage, to get connected, is just go to the loud, quiet.com that's the website. That's where you can get all the episodes you can sign up for the newsletter. We've actually got a little something, something sitting with the newsletter that is of interest to anyone who wants to travel. We've got a kind of a dual guide. There is a guide of great gear for travel and some significant tips for travel. So anyone who signs up for the newsletter will get that sent to them as well. Just the loud, quiet.com

Clancy Denton  24:02  
and for those of you who are already on the newsletter, we'll make sure that you have access to that as well. Yeah, just

Rick Denton  24:08  
reach out to us if you want it. We can certainly send that over to you as well. If

Clancy Denton  24:12  
you are in the empty nest and if you do have a travel bug, which we obviously do, it's really fun, because you can go at any time. Yeah, you know, I understand we all still have jobs, but you're not tied to those summer months, unless you're still trying to travel with with your

Rick Denton  24:36  
kids. You are actually giving one of the tips that's in the guide. Oh, there you go.

Clancy Denton  24:41  
There's a little tease there so you can get the rest. But these shoulder seasons are very nice time to travel.

Rick Denton  24:47  
And so here we are, Episode 100 it's hard to believe we're here. And again, it's only because of you, the listener, the viewer, encouraging us that this is something that folks want. That and that they need to have that community of knowing. Look, we're not alone in being the empty

Clancy Denton  25:05  
nesters. Yeah, thanks for those of you who have stuck with us for these past two years. There

Rick Denton  25:13  
we are, Episode 100 thank you all for listening to a another episode of the loud quiet.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai