I felt like I would be a mother of preschoolers for eons. It's amazing for me to believe that today I officially have more children in middle school and high school than elementary school (3/2). To mark the years and the growth of the children, we started a tradition suggested to me by my good friend and mother of six, Beth Hamann.

Each year on the first day of school we have each of the kids line up in front of the house, oldest to youngest, and they hold a sheet of paper with "K", "1", "2" or whatever their grade is. If little ones roam into the pic, that's okay, but it's all about the ones who are holding the sheets.




I plan to compile a small album for our family and each set of grandparents. How fun to be able to flip through and see the growth year by year! It's also amazing to see how many homes we've lived in (Yikes!)Eventually, we should end up with about 23 first day of school pictures...in 2023! :) Maybe we'll even slip in a few graduation pics as they happen, from high school and college!

Want to start this tradition and your children have already started school for the year? Tomorrow morning take your first pic before school. Capture that memory this year, and next year catch it on the first day of school.