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Donna's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 5/19/07 -------------------- 4/21/07 3/11/07 2/9/07 1/9/07, Entry 2 12/22/06 12/11/06 11/28/06 11/20/06 11/15/06 11/10/06 11/1/06 10/24/06 10/17/06 10/11/06 10/3/06 9/25/06 9/17/06 9/11/06 9/6/06 8/27/06 8/20/06 8/13/06 8/6/06 7/30/06 7/23/06 7/16/06 7/9/06 7/4/06 6/25/06 6/19/06 6/11/06 6/4/06 -------------------- Donna's Introduction

08/20/06 - Back to school shopping and party planning

August 20, 2006

I suppose it's not the typical back to school for us, because Justin goes to the same place all year long, so not much changes.  Really nothing changes for us this year, because he will still be in the toddler class in September.  He misses the cutoff for preschool by two days, so he will start preschool next year.  No rush though, that just means he gets to live here an extra year with us when he's a high school senior!  So we don't have school supplies to buy yet, but I do have to buy him new clothes every spring and fall, since he is in a different size every year.  Between the new clothing store, Walmart, and Target, we have everything except snowpants, hat, and mittens, which I haven't seen anywhere yet.  I just buy a few basics, since he usually ends up getting more for his birthday and Christmas.  He has a pack of socks, a few pajamas, two shirts, two pairs of jeans, two sweatpants, and boots.  All of his new stuff is 3T, and I think some of the 2T from last year will still fit for a little while too.  Shoes are a little tough to buy because he hates to try them on, so it is hard to tell which ones fit best by struggling to quickly get them on and off his feet while he sits in the shopping cart crying "No put my sandals back on!"  His current sneakers and sandals are size 7, which I know fit perfectly as you can see exactly where his feet are in the sandals, so I bought size 7 ˝ for the new shoes.  This is the first time I've bought a half size.

Well, I'm not sure if I mentioned it yet, but I've decided to have Justin's third birthday party at the indoor playground.  He's been to two other parties there and he had a lot of fun.  So I am in party planning mode.  Last month I reserved the date, which will be the Friday evening after his birthday.  Yesterday Justin was at the babysitter's, so I thought I'd try to get some shopping done.  We went to the outlets and Party Fair and ended up getting all the goody bag items.  Then we came home and decided to check the bag in the closet from his first birthday party to see what we had left over, and there were four more goody bag items left in there.  So now the kids will have 12 things in each goody bag!  I had planned on 8, but we might as well use everything up.  We even finished buying his birthday presents.  I got a Little People's Zoo from Kay-bee outlet yesterday.  Then today at Target, I bought Chutes and Ladders game, washable crayons and markers, and a laptop computer for preschoolers.  I don't think I should buy presents for him when he is with me anymore.  I have done this from the beginning because I would just stick things in the cart and he wouldn't notice, but now he notices!  He ended up playing with the laptop while we walked around the store, and asked for his computer a few times after we got home and I had hidden it in the closet.  He will probably forget about it long before his birthday, but his memory is getting better and better, so no more of that!

Challenge update:  I have been doing this program for a week now, and my favorite ideas from last week are the household binder which stays at home and I'll add to as we go along, and the notebook with to-do lists and project information that goes with me everywhere.  I've tried using a to-do list before, both written and on the computer.  I think the reason they never worked for me was because I would try to go off the same list all the time and add new things, but I'd tend to get used to seeing certain things on the list that I didn't feel like doing and ignore them, and they would stay on there for a long time.  This program requires that you rewrite all unfinished to-do's onto a new list each evening, and that keeps them fresher in my mind than just glancing at the same list all the time.  I am keeping my home list on one side of a page and work list on the other side, and have found that they are both very long.  But I've found that items are being crossed off now instead of being overlooked, so I feel like I am actually making progress instead of just worrying about how impossibly long the list is.

I'd like to say thank you to Shel and IP for the links from our feedback forums to our diaries.  Now people will be able to find us!

Thanks for reading!
Donna

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