First Day of School Memories

As I watch my boys get ready for the start of the school year, it makes me think about my back-to-school days.

By the time August came around I was always looking forward to going back to school. I loved summer vacation as much as the next kid, but by the end of August, I was ready. By that point I had climbed every tree in the neighborhood, played hide-and-go-seek so many times that there were no more good hiding places, went swimming so often I was tired of water and watched all of my favorite movies at least three times.

I was ready to learn new things. I was ready to see friends again. But most of all, I was ready to show off all of my great new supplies from our back-to-school shopping trips. I remember one year in particular: for the first day of school my mom bought me a blue dress with matching hair clips. I also had a blue and green matching pencil case and binder set, but my absolute favorite thing was my lunch box. It was one of those great tin ones that are harder to find nowadays, and my mom and I had decorated it ourselves. We painted flowers and rainbows, and my mom wrote my name in script, and I knew, without a doubt, that I had the best lunch box in the whole school.

I realize that I loved that lunch box so much because I had created it with my mom. That's why I always try to do fun things with my boys, whether it's creating origami paper airplanes, going birdwatching with them, watching them sail or taking them to an interactive museum. I believe that it's the memories that are formed by doing active things together that are the most important.