@Youdon’tsay Your quote for DS2 was the same one I used in my son’s year book ad.
I did the photo albums for my older kids, too. I need to start working on S’s. I also put a small family picture in a frame. Not sure if the kids kept them out, but they were on their desks when we visited freshman year. Actually, they both still have them out at their apartments, 4 and 6 years later. 
I love those quotes, @Youdon’tsay .
The dog. The dog going into ds’s room looking for him.
I also wrote a letter and put it under my kids pillows the first time I dropped them off.
Yes, I saw what my boys brought home from freshman year and then what they took back with them. The photo albums were something they kept with them each year.
Also, if you are from a state that is overly proud of itself (we’re from Texas), and your kid is going OOS, include a state flag. I got them for ds2 and three of his friends who went to Chicago, Oregon and NC. I was delighted when I saw FB photos of the flags proudly hanging in their dorm rooms. And the Chicago boy took a pic of the flag with all the fellow Texas friends he made freshman year. :x
Oh boy, this thread is killing me. I love reading about all the sweet things parents are doing for their kids.
We have photo albums made by Shutterfly each year of our family vacations. Been doing it for five years now, and they go to all the grandparents for Christmas. I am planning to have them printed for my daughter and leave them as a surprise for her to find in her dorm room. We go on really interesting vacations and she loves looking at them here at home, so I think it will be nice for her to look if she feels homesick. They are very thin paperbacks, so they don’t take up room. I think I might take some photos of stuff around here too and slip them in.
Oh my, I am near tears reading this thread and mine doesn’t graduate high school for two more years. Even though she insists she wants to come home every weekend, I’m sure that will change, lol.
Ugh - this will be a hard one. I’ll be the mom bursting into tears and crying for a couple hours on the way home.
D started college last year at a school 10 hours away. Plan was to leave 5 AM Friday. She worked M, T, W, which gave us a whole day to load the car, have one last family dinner, etc. But Thursday morning she gets a text from work (a day camp) that at least one of the kids she’d been working around has lice! So instead of a nice, organized packing process, we spent several hours doing the lice treatment and comb-out, plus multiple loads of laundry.
Somehow we left on time on Friday, moved her stuff into the dorm, then headed for a hotel (actual student move-in day was Saturday). Spent the evening doing another comb out and lice treatment. By the time we left her for good on Saturday morning, we’d all been so busy that there really wasn’t time to think about missing her.
Obviously, I don’t recommend purposely contracting lice :), but I will say that keeping busy right up until the moment of separation is a good strategy for keeping the tears at bay.
@LuckyCharms913 This would be my worst nightmare! When dd was 13 she came home from camp with lice and spread it to her brothers before we were aware. It took weeks to get rid of. DD has very long hair I just can’t imagine going through that again with the short time we have between her return from her camp job and college move in!
We left both of our kids little surprises under their bed pillows. DD found hers right away. Took DS a couple of weeks!
But even nicer was both of THEM left us very nice notes which we found here when we got home. Framed and on my bookshelf now.
When my first left for college it did not hit me initially. It hit me three weeks later when every song and every commercial made me cry. Her younger sister did not seem to mind that she was gone :-?
My older daughter had a stuffed animal that she became attached to at the age of 7 months. He came with us wherever we went. When we took her to school she left this animal home- on her bed- alone. My husband positioned him waving goodbye. That did me in. Two weeks later she asked me to send him to her- turned out that her roommate brought hers!
At our older daughter’s orientation they had us write our kids a letter and put it in the campus mail. We did, and it arrived for her first day of school. I also had both of my kids send me a first day of school picture, which I took every year starting with preschool.
I had a rough time with my younger daughter because it took her until October to adjust - despite having an amazing orientation experience. It is very hard to leave your kid at school knowing that they are not quite right yet. By mid October she loved her school, and although I was happy for her I found myself a little sad that she no longer needed me for my pep talks.
One of the things that I find difficult is not having that day-to-day chit chat that typically happens when your kids are in the house, such as “I spilled water all over my shirt today and walked around soaking wet,” or “ugh I hope my game is not rained out,” etc. I still talk and text often (probably too often), but it is not the same. The good news is that watching your kids grow and hearing about their accomplishments is still very exciting, despite doing it from a distance.
I did that too! She and her roommate took them of each other 
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I still miss my daughters a lot, at least on certain occasions. Such as today, when I went to the July 4 parade in my home town, a parade that we used to go to as a family.
I’m a little worried about drop off because: (1) we’re bringing a crowd of 4 people to drop her off and (2) I’m the only person in that crowd who thinks we should do more than throw all the stuff on D16’s floor and wave goodbye.
D16 is attending a school that is a 4-hour flight away and we won’t see her until Thanksgiving. The whole family (plus MIL) are staying in MIL’s cabin about an hour to 90 minutes away from the school for a few days before drop off. MIL insists on coming on move-in day (DH and I wanted to get a hotel near the college for one night), and won’t deal with the hotel. “Don’t cling - you have to drop her and go!” I wanted to at least get her to a bike shop so she has the means to get around campus, and maybe drop off a few things from Trader Joes since I know she’s lazy and won’t go to the dining hall more than once a day, but apparently I’m insane. DH thinks we should drop her off with 4 or 5 outfits, a bottle of shampoo, a sheet and a towel and she’ll probably be fine, but she can always let us know later if she needs anything else. 
^^If you are going to do more than just drop her off, be aware that the rooms are small and often hot. So to have 4 people from your family on top of whoever the roommate will be bringing at the same time, could be very uncomfortable and counterproductive. Last year it was just my DS and I moving him in to a room where his roommate and 2 parents were also trying to maneuver, on a hot and sticky day, and it was not that much fun!
I’m with your DH, @eh1234. We had grandparents inform us they were coming for move-out D’s first year. Crowded and distracting, although they truly wanted to help. And move-out has a very different emotional feeling than move-in! Understand your MIL wants to be part of the excitement, but perhaps she would agree to visit after a couple weeks of school when your D is more settled and they can enjoy each other?
You can always say the school limits the number of people that can assist with move in.
The drop off for freshman year last August was wrenching. I surreptitiously left a letter and $20 on D’s dresser for her to find later. A week later, she had a line from the (admittedly mushy) letter tattooed on her foot! So weird and sweet at the same time.
After having her home all summer, I know drop off and coming home to an empty house is again going to be hard. Just hoping it doesn’t provoke any more tattoos!
I’m the wrong person to ask, since my entire family of 7, plus my sister’s BFF, came to drop me off. It sure made moving all the stuff in easy! Then we went to lunch and my family plus Lisa drove off. It helped that I was only 2 hours away from home so that if I’d forgotten anything crucial, an emergency supply run wouldn’t have been impossible, though I was fine.
My D’s college has 2 days of parent activities, then a send-off at the end of Day 2. We will be there. We have no grandparents to tag along, but I would not be a fan of dropping and running. And while we’re making sure D packs sensibly, we’re not taking only the bare necessities (do NOT ask how many pairs of shoes she is bringing!).
So maybe you can get MIL to compromise and visit later, since she lives so close by. D is thrilled that some of our in-laws that are like grandparents (she even calls them Mimi and Papa) will be visiting her in October. Seeing familiar faces after a few weeks should be a real pick-up after being away from home for so long.