NO UNIFORMS!

O.K. I'm in a little bit of distress here. You know me . . . last minute gal for almost everything. What's a little bit of procrastination here and there? And P.S. how can I have my act together and be all organized when Mateo and Sarah keep me busy with all their "travesuras"? So there is one thing that I LOVE about all the schools that Tino has gone to so far. They have all been uniform schools.

The whole go to the mall and buy school clothes thing has been a completely non-existent issue. The yearly routine goes something like this: I show up to school the Friday before school starts for "Meet Your Teacher", buy 6 uniform shirts and 3 "Spirit" t-shirts and call it a day. Easy as pie. I have done this for . . . . 2 years of pre-school, Kindergarten, 1st grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade. The only reason I didn't do this 2nd grade is because that was Tino's "1st grade" year and he bumped up to 2nd grade 20 days into the school year. Imagine the HORROR and complete DISTRESS that entered into my life on Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. when I went to go buy uniform shirts at Tino's "optional uniform" school, only to find out that there ARE NO MORE UNIFORMS! YIKES! So, needless to say, we hit Old Navy on Saturday which was about 1 week later than the rest of Central Florida hit Old Navy to buy school clothes. The store was CLEANED OUT! And being the absolute mall lover that I am (NOT), I refused to check that scene out. 3 collared shirts, 3 t-shirts, 4 pairs of boxer briefs, 6 pairs of socks and WAY TOO MUCH $$$$$$$ later, we are "ready" for at least the first week of school. You all know how I am a little over the edge when it comes to searching for bargains, shopping only the sales, and coupon clipping. Can you believe I didn't have ONE Old Navy coupon or discount AND that sales-tax free days in Florida ended about 1 week ago?

Tonight I told Tino to go pick out what to wear, he pulled out a piece of paper and pen. He told me to go ahead and make a list of what he should wear each day of the week, because he didn't want people to make comments if he wore the same clothes more than one day in a row. I told him he was going into 5th grade and he has been choosing his own (uniform) clothes for school for years now. His reply: "Mom, I might be going into 5th grade, but I'M ONLY 8 YEARS OLD. Kids that are 8 years old don't know how to choose good matching outfits to wear to school." YIKES! And can you remind me again why it is that some parents and children actually like going to non-uniform schools???????

I already have a big giant headache and the school year hasn't even begun! There's a lot to be said for navy, gray, white collared shirts and khaki or navy dockers.