Parenting and Time Allocation: A Natural Experiment

My wife and I have one kid.  For the last 2 days, our 10 year old has gone off on a class trip with his classmates to some place in the LA mountains.  We have missed him but it has been an interesting experiment to learn about how we allocate our time towards him.  In his absence, with our time windfall, we have "reoptimized"!    We took a long walk to a good outdoor lunch place just South of Wilshire on Westwood Blvd.  I was in no rush to leave lunch because I knew that I would work late into the night.  Last night, I watched more of the LA Clippers game with the volume on because I knew it couldn't keep him up.  At dinner, my wife and I spoke about slightly more mature subject matter than when he is around but we did return again and again to him and what lessons he would learn from this trip concerning personal growth and independence and relying on one's own good judgement.  He went to a place where there is 14 inches of snow sitting there so we hope he was sharp enough to put on his thermals!