Year End School Holiday 2014

or in this case, preparation for back to school 2015. i have a love-hate relationship with back to school preparations. i love doing the list, i hate the ticking off process; i love buying uniforms, i hate getting the name tags sewn and getting the shirts ironed; i love looking at new text books, i hate wrapping them.

many ask me why i start my preparation early, many give me virtual salute in fact. but honestly, starting early means you have a longer time getting it done. and i do need that long, long time because once the big items are sorted (i.e. the books and the uniform) i start to procrastinate and end up taking forever to finish what i've started. plus its better to spread out the things you do so that you don't start to hate doing it as you'll be doing it for years and years to come!

the boys got their text books quite early this year, about 2-3 weeks before the school holidays started. i got them wrapped over a weekend when hubby was not around, i.e. a 'we won't be going out' weekend. with my start-stop attitude, it took over a day to wrap almost 40 books.

i moved on to the next big item, the school uniforms. i went to a nearby aeon while the boys were in agama school but they did not have uniforms stocked up yet so i went to 1utama after i picked them up from agama school. a quick 30 minutes in-and-pay-and-out with 2 huge plastic bags of uniforms. i got new shirts for the boys but their pants were recycled.

then came the bit i hate most, taking off the name tags and school badges from the old uniforms. i seriously hate doing that so i spread them over a week so i wouldn't go mental. got them all tucked in the pocket of the new shirts and brought them to tailor to get them sewn. and then ironing 24 sets of uniforms over the space of 3 days.

once the school holidays started, i took the boys to get their stationeries and then their shoes.

i was kind of on the fence with buying school books. usually when i go, there's a long line of parents at the book shop that it totally turns you off. but this year, i drove by the school after lunch and there were practically no cars parked outside. we went to the book shop and there was only about 1-2 parents getting the books, so we joined the queue and got the boys' books on the first day the bookshop opened.

i'm actually surprised that currently i have settled 90% of the list, just pending school bags, amir's shoes and a few books that were not yet available at the book shop. other than that, its pretty much sorted, alhamdulillah. so now, we can enjoy the rest of the year-end school holidays.