School Supply Shopping....sigh.

And so it begins....

We took Brooke school supply shopping the other day. sigh...

My little baby. School supply shopping.

For the 1st grade!

Yikes.

This is me... ------> :-(

Anyway, the time has come. So we hit the stores. We pulled the list out. And we started gathering the materials on the list.

Ugh. If only it was that simple!! Who knew?!?! Ok.. so first off.. There is this main list for all the school district's divided by grade. So all 1st graders need... x, y, and z (except it was more like 15 things!). Then you had to flip it over and see the back and look by school to see what individual items your particular elementary school called for extra. (there are several elem schools in the area). The only extra thing on our school's list was "add 2 glue sticks". Easy enough.

Funny part of the story. So before we went official school supply shopping, Brad had been at WalMart, saw the list and thought he'd pick up whatever she needed. He came home with ..... 2 glue sticks. That's it. Ha! He got an E for effort.

Then a couple days later, his mom called from WalMart saying she was there with the same list and she had 2 glue sticks in her cart and did Brooke need anything else? Ha. They both read it the same way... that the ONLY thing Brooke needed for her school was 2 glue sticks.

Well, that'd be nice... but not by a long shot.

So anyway, on this day, we set out to find our stuff. And you know, it would be nice if the stores would carry the actual items you were looking for instead of something completely different! The lists are very specific - 5 inch scissors. 4 pocket folders, no brads, primary solid colors.

Anyway, it was a bit of chore. Because of the specificity of the list. And you'd look and find CLOSE to what you needed, but not exactly what was on the list. Arg. So aggravating.

But in the end, we did get everything. Well, except for a 12 pck of pencils...darnit. They only had 24 packs. Whatever. It only took us about an hour... and it all came from one store.

I was even able to pick up the very few (like 3 things!) things that Brenna needed as well. I have also already gotten Brenna's backpack (elsewhere), which she now needs this year (something different...she didn't need a backpack last year?) and I have ordered Brooke's (from Land's End - we went with this one), along with a matching lunchbox, and it should be here very soon! So they now, both have their school supplies each in a bag at home nestled safely in the closet until its time for Meet the Teacher night. Where I might cry...