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.

May, almost competing with the Christmas season in terms of busy schedules, can be so overwhelming that even with your best intentions, things fall through the cracks.  Summer begins, and the fun begins! With children home, camps to go to, VBS to work, then packing for vacation and the laundry aftermath when you return, often those things that slipped through the cracks never get caught!

If you are sending your children back to school and in your organizing come across announcements for high school graduates who you never congratulated, do not fret. You have a great opportunity before you!

Contact the parents to get the Fall mailing address for their child. If they are attending a university, on their first week of class, send them a care package with an encouraging letter, and include a gift card or cash gift. All college students would love this. College student or not, no one minds receiving a gift in the mail even if it is a little late.

See? You actually have spread out the fun. They had so many activities and gifts to open in May. Now is the perfect time to send a gift!

Excuse me, I need to go email a few out-of-state parents....