First day of Preschool, again

*Warning, this turned into quite the long post, because I started to do my journaling thing again. I guess that is what happens when I am too lazy to write in an ACTUAL journal!*

Natalie's preschool started up again today. I have to say she was SO EXCITED to start, she has been missing on her teacher for the last month or so, and just within the last few days has been asking if school is "tomorrow?" every day. We have been ready for school to start in a lot of different ways. Natalie is just one of those kids that loves to interact with "her friends" and she loves school so much, so needless to say she was starting to get a little stir crazy after two months of no school.

It doesn't help that we live in an apartment and she has to share her personal space with a 2 year old boy who is learning more and more every day on how to annoy his big sister. She needs the time away from him, and he needs the time away from her too! It makes such a difference and they are so much NICER to one another after even a brief period of separation. It just shows me the difference of boys and girls. Brady and Nat are best friends in the sense that they love each other to death, but they are still so different in play styles and likes that it is just a different sibling dynamic than say with 2 boys or 2 girls. Something neither Keith nor I have ever experienced so it is fun to watch and see how they show love.

School prep officially started when Natalie and I tackled Target 2 weeks ago during the tax free weekend (I know, what were we thinking??), and we had SUCH a blast! I wanted to post about the trip all by itself with pictures of her modeling her clothes, but a fashion show just never got done, so I am smooshing that experience into this post! Anywho, we went late on a Saturday and had so much fun looking at all the clothes. Natalie was all, "Ohh, this is cute!" and "Oh my goodness, that is so cute" and "oh! How cute", she was being well....really cute! I let her pick out a lot of her own things too, within reason, and she got some great stuff! She even found this super awesome clearance jean skirt that was hanging in the wrong place, but we snagged it up! What a find, she is a bargain shopper at heart, just like me! After Target we headed to Wal Mart on the hunt for a non tacky Tinkerbell shirt. I normally hate, HATE shirts with characters on them, but since we got all nice and normal clothes so far, I figured one shirt that she will just LOVE won't kill me! Anywho, I had no idea that there was a stinkin' baseball game, so it took us FOR-E-VER to actually GET to Wal Mart. I mean we were driving down this street, then that street and had to take this detour, then cut behind that building, and then finally snuck behind some cones to make it out of there and make it to a normal non blocked street to make it to Wal Mart. And after all that, no non tacky Tinkerbell shirts! Dang it! But, because it took us SO long to get there, by the time we left the baseball game was coming to a close, and that meant FIREWORKS! So Natalie and I pulled over on the side of the road and watched a seriously rockin' display of fireworks! It was amazing, the best end to a great night!

Well, if any of you actually read all that, kudos to you! And now for your viewing pleasure some pics of Natalie in some of her school clothes!

Here she is this morning in her first day of school outfit, new shoes, shirt and pants! LOL, I remember the days of picking out just the right thing to wear on the first day. She loves this shirt so much, it came from the "big girl section" and she is so proud of that fact!
This is my favorite top that we got (clearance!!) and the skirt that she found! She loved it so much that I gave in and let her wear this to church. I tried to be a stickler and make her save all her school clothes for school, but I am a softie and she asked so sweet!
Don't you love the purple socks? She wore her cowboy boots so you couldn't see them, but I love that they were her choice of socks. (yeah and that is Brady laying on the floor refusing to get in the picture!)

Anyways, today went off without a hitch. She had a great time in class, and after a bit of sadness over some of her friends not being there (they have moved on to Kindergarten) she settled right in. This year she will be one of the big kids, and I think she will enjoy that very much! I can't wait to see what the school year holds for her and for me too!