The new school year means new teachers, new books and supplies, new friends and the start-up once again of afterschool activities and homework.

At this age, my sons’ homework doesn’t take much time and requires little more from me than reading directions or offering a little assistance when needed.

Homework is the responsibility of my sons, not me. I have plenty of “homework” to get done myself. They both know if their grades are affected because homework is simply not getting done, then there will be consequences.

So, other than the occasional moan-and-groan when I have to give them a little prodding, homework is completed.

Our daughter started preschool this year. We aren’t getting bombarded with homework assignments, but at orientation, the parents were given an assignment.

It was an assignment that left us all moaning-and-groaning:

“Answer the following questions about your child and attach six pictures.”

Every parent in the room went still. Hushed murmurs followed. Comments included:

“Pictures? What are pictures?”

“Attach them to a flash drive, you mean?”

“Pictures” aren’t anything we are familiar with. They are those things falling out of the once sticky pages of thick books from our childhood.

“Pictures” or “photographs” are those things on Facebook. Or those pretty images of our darling babes still sitting in the confined space of our digital cameras. Remember, the ones from the hospital eight years ago when Junior was born? They are still on that little memory card.

So, how exactly do we attach those to a worksheet?

We have oodles of beautiful pictures. I love taking pictures and my mother-in-law is a professional photographer. She took family pictures of us on the California shore just this past July.

I will have them printed one day. Soon. For now, we can admire the cuteness of our brood on the computer. We don’t even buy the ridiculously overpriced school pictures because we have every intention of printing the ones we just had snapped while wearing our matching outfits.

When we get around to buying prints, the next task will be finding frames and then actually hanging them or finding a location for them to sit and collect dust; the rest of the prints will likely end up in a shoebox (labeled: “When the kids were small.”)

We managed to get the pictures for our daughter’s preschool homework printed, but I put if off as long as possible, ended up running out of photo paper and sifted through a backlog of digital pictures that would rival photo centers nationwide.

Each photo is snapped with good intentions to preserve a memory. I just have to remember to do the preserving in my free time (do you hear the sarcasm?).

For now, thank you preschool, for helping to make a dent – six pictures deep – in our ocean of family memories. There is now actual proof on photo paper that our daughter was once an infant.