Time to think about School already!?!!

I just realized that due to my remote location and lack of available shopping places and lack of desire to drive my whole krew the three hours it would take to get to a good shopping place, I have to do online clothing shopping this year. Not that I'm afraid of Walmart, we do have one of those, but they don't carry the kind of clothes my kids like/need. My kids won't wear jeans. My youngest two are in school this year and they don't do zippers and snaps. It's exhausting to fill up a cart with clothes for four and try them all on everyone without any fits or episodes. I simply decided, I must measure well, and do my bargain hunting online. This unfortunately means that I must start NOW in order to give the stores time to get our purchases to us before school starts. This also means that I must go through all the clothes they currently have and be sure I'm not purchasing things they don't really need. I'll take a financial hit in the shipping department but that will likely beat the gas cost and exhaustion factor of actually going to the stores. I have found a list of stores I'd like to shop at, and printed their size charts. I will make a list of what I want to buy for each child, and check it off as I find the items. I won't make any final purchases until I've seen the best and cheapest offerings at each store. I also will have to consider what my kids like to wear. The boys are easy, they're basically casual preppies (if that makes any sense) who like elastic waist khaki's and t-shirts. The girls are another matter. My little 3yr-old is a princess. She loves dressy fluffy clothes and a twirly dress or skirt is her favorite! She'll even resort to wearing her petti-skirt slip with a t-shirt to get the desired effect! Everything must be very girly and the more fluff and bling the better. My 8yr-old is another matter entirely. She is deciding between elegance and tom-boy. Is there such a thing as an elegant tom boy? She loves makeup and girly hair. She likes to dress up. She also loves to be the fastest runner and most athletic. Too girly and it gets in her way. Too tom-boy and it's unflattering. Either way, she doesn't want to be noticed or stand out. It's shopping for her that I dread the most. These last two years of school, she'd only wear what be bought for her about once before refusing to wear it ever again. Hopefully, I'll have better luck this year. I also have a new baby boy on the way. Since he wasn't planned for, I haven't kept any hand-me-downs for him. I'll have to do a bit of shopping for him too. I admit it's fun to buy new things. It's like a bit of Christmas in the summer. I don't enjoy the cost, the exhaustive search and the wait for packages to arrive, or carrying the packages from post office to car and home. At any rate, fun or not, it's time to do it. Any delay will cause me more trouble than it's worth!