Back to School

My children boarded the school buses for the first time this year less than an hour ago. While I should be doing research and writing lesson plans for my return to work as a high school English teacher next week, I first need to blog the lump out of my throat. I am pretty blue this morning. My baby is headed to first grade! How can that be? Plus, it was a really fun summer packed with swimming, bike rides, ice pops, and loafing around. While I'm kind of sad, I am caught up in the excitement of the new school year and am happy that my kids all left with big smiles on their faces. Really big ones. Look:

I like that picture, but I recently read an article about taking back to school photos that describes just that pose as cliche and expected. The article suggested taking photos of backpacks, school lunches, or shoes lined up at the door. Eh. Our backpacks aren't too inspiring

and you don't want to see the state of my boys' shoes. so I lined up the family water bottles, and while that picture may say "Make love not landfills," it doesn't say "Back to School."

The older kids each were asked to bring a book for pleasure reading to school today. Lucky public school kids! Let me say I attended Catholic schools until college and was never told to bring a book for pleasure reading or do anything else pleasurable for that matter. Maybe a photo of the books would be a nice non-cliche memory, but my ten year old son was still hemming and hawing between Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from The Wayside School and a nonfiction book called The Kid Who Invented Popsicles as we walked out the door this morning. This is what my nine year old daughter packed:

She absolutely loves the wickedly evil pixie Opal Koboi in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books. It's a nice cover, but that shot doesn't scream "School Days" either. I believe the following picture does capture the essence of beginning school in September 2009. It is of what I think is the most important school supply my children have with them today, because as I was shouting "I love you! Have a great day!" what I was really thinking this morning as they got on those buses was "I love you, and don't you dare bring home swine flu!"