It's pretty silly to get so nostalgic about a time of year that used to make me crazy. When my husband and I were outfitting our five children for a new school year, I dreaded the annual chore and expense of buying new clothes, school supplies, shoes, and socks. (Just for fun sometime, try buying socks for five kids and then matching them into pairs each time you do laundry.)

As I remember it, what made shopping for five children even harder was that they all just had to have the Star Wars lunchbox or Trapper-Keeper notebook, and only those brands, that all their friends were convincing their parent to buy. In those days I would have preferred being buried in an ant hill with honey in my hair to shopping for school supplies.

Now that our children are all grown, and our sons have kids of their own, I find myself wistfully looking at all the snazzy new back to school stuff and wishing our grandson lived close enough to benefit from my sudden compulsion to buy five of everything. I think even Nils, who will soon be 11, and is a surprisingly wise and careful spender, would discourage that. If I don't get over this back to school buying urge – and so far, it's only an urge – before our year-old granddaughter Emma goes to school, however, I may be in trouble. You know girls want it all... and five of it.

Fortunately, when I start getting too sentimental about no longer having youngsters to shepherd through another year of school, I get a reality check from my Entertainment Fort Smith colleagues Lynn Wasson and Donna Payne. Between them they do have five children in grades K through 9, and when I see them juggling the schedules, anxieties and expenses that go with all that, plus their duties here at he magazine, I shut up and count my blessings.

Besides, with several new Westark students joining us as interns for the coming school year, and two of our first three high school interns heading off for college, I've still got students to keep up with, too. Looks like this school year may be pretty exciting after all.

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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