Plaid Dresses

I believe it all began when the Lone Star Girl was quite small and I read (for myself, not to her) The Facts And Fictions of Minna Pratt, a lovely children's novel that includes one small detail of a girl measuring her years by the plaid dresses hanging in her closet - one for each first day of school.  I decided then that my little girl would always have a plaid dress on the first day of each new school year, and later that my two girls would.  Preferably, but not necessarily, red (a fine red tartan is the only plaid that really counts in my opinion, although a really spectacular green and blue tartan can be nice sometimes, like on a moor, but not at school). 

Did you know that to this day Burlington Coat Factory carries red plaid dresses almost every year even when no other stores are doing so?  I don't know if they share our passion for red-plaid-first-day-of-school-dresses or if it is pure chance, but they do.

Middle school rather interrupted our tradition as the Lone Star Girl was required to wear a uniform of sorts, and I was sometimes lax during those middle school years about keeping the tradition for the Lone Star Baby as well, as there were times when it wasn't easy to find school-y clothes for her due to her decidedly preschool-y size. 

This school year, though, as the Lone Star Baby heads off to a new school in the middle of next week, leaving behind the school she has attended since she was eighteen months old, and the Lone Star Girl heads off to high school ... the plaid dresses are so, so back.