Back to school.

Well.

Back to school kicked my tail.

I feel like I am just now resurfacing and clawing around gasping for air, and writing makes me feel like I'm breathing, so here I am. (Plus, Steve has been begging me to get back on our blog since I started blogging at Bright Light Forever... like... over 6 months ago. Hi love!)

I got zero pictures of first-day-of-school on the front porch, but the kids were obviously adorable and attractive, so go ahead and just imagine that. We were just a buzz of activity and I never remembered until we were all buckled in and ready to go.

There was, however, plenty of time to take poor-quality pictures in the pick-up line!

It is always a million miles long the first week of school. I can only assume this is because of the poor, bewildered parents-of-kindergarteners who are new to this routine. We just plan on it taking basically forever for the first five days, and then everything works itself out.

But before that happens, we spend a lot of time here.

Going zero miles per hour.

Sending text messages to Steve of how long the line behind us is. (And the line in front of me is way longer than this!)

And jamming to our favorite tunes (this summer the most-requested song was "Crossfire"--a throwback by Ben Kweller, Ben Lee, and Ben Folds) and enjoying the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous (not sarcastic--actually beautiful) view of farmland by the school driveway.

While I know the first day of school is important and exciting, I don't really mind that I missed the photo-ops. We lived in them, and that was fun, but I know the things my kiddos will really remember will be things like this.

Our little daily routines all line up one after another and form the latticework of each week, month, and year. And looking back on the things I've documented so in the past 420 posts it has become really clear to me how precious these little things are. I love looking at photos of our morning routine when the kids were little, photos of them playing together on the floor, bath times and park times and dancing in the kitchen.

Knowing that our time here is ticking down (we'll be done with residency and on to the Air Force in July) has reminded me to photograph and slow down and enjoy. We love it here.

Even the pick up line.

(Well... mostly.)