Totally agree. It's time to let the sons/daughters go. Let them grow up. My wife and I are part of the "Local" crowd. We live 2 hours from the academy. In the fall, we have season tickets to football games. We'd see our son for a couple hours during tailgates before the 6 home games. After that, we only saw him at thanksgiving, christmas, spring break, and summer vacation. We did do one or two 3 day weekends in the 4 years, but rarely. And even one of his summer breaks, instead of 3 weeks, we saw him for 2 days. He chose to use his 3 week summer vacation one year to volunteer time at an orphanage in Peru. So we saw him for 1 day when we picked him up and took him to DIA and 1 other day picking him back up on his return flight.
The rest of the time, he spent his time off with his friends/classmates. They went skiing, biking, or whatever they wanted to do. It doesn't matter how much time or money you have, your son/daughter now have their own lives to live. Unfortunately, their life no longer includes being with mom/dad as much. Now that my son has graduated from the academy, I've basically seen him twice a year. Long weekend when we'd fly out to california to see him around memorial day; and for a week at christmas when he comes home to visit.
Of course, my family being a military family, we're all use to the idea. For the non-military family, it's hard for many to not think of their son/daughter as simply "OFF TO COLLEGE". They want to be able to see their son/daughter every couple of weekends, along with the entire summer, spring break, and a long christmas break. Get use to it. Once they graduate from the academy, you'll be lucky to see them once a year. Once I was full time active duty, I saw my parents basically once every 3-4 YEARS. Usually on my way moving out or back into the country.