I Want Candy!

Do you hear The Strangeloves, Bow Wow Wow or Aaron Carter singing in your head? 

Just curious. 

I hear Bow Wow Wow- #ilovethe80s- but that's not the point of this post...

School starts in less than 3 weeks. This will be my third year packing school lunches. When my oldest son started Kindergarten, I dreamed about cute lunches that looked like superheroes and sticky note encouragements that I could pack inside his lunchbox... I bought an Avengers lunchbox, Batman water bottle, and eco-friendly storage containers. I spent hours on Pinterest looking at school lunch ideas. I was quite impressed with myself. #firsttimeschoolmom

About a month or so into the school year my son comes home and says,

"Mom, can't you just give me a peanut butter sandwich?" 😲

While it might have been a small blow to my ego, it was a blessing in disguise. My third son entered the world just a few months later, and I had no capacity to pack cute and creative lunches. In fact, some days I forgot all about lunch until we were walking out the door!

This year my 4.5 year old enters Pre-K and will be joining us at school. So that's 3 packed lunches I'm responsible for. (My hubby packs his own lunch for work- thank God!)  We may have cute lunchboxes, but I promise our lunches will be pretty simple. I don't have time to plan like I used to and I will take any shortcut I can to make packing lunches quick & easy! I was thrilled to find this bin idea:

The original Facebook post (which can be found here) has 7 bins set up for the picking. Each bin is labeled with a 1 or 2, indicating how many items from that bin you can grab for lunch. This system is completely self-serve. However, we will most likely have sandwiches or leftovers for lunch. (Or soup in the winter months. YUM!) I will be taking care of that part of the lunch prepping & packing, but the rest is up to them- and I know my boys will love it! 

Here is how I plan to organize my bins:

Crunchy Snacks (1): crackers, pretzels, Pirate's Booty, veggie straws, Sun Chips, popcorn, etc.
Fruit & Veggies (2): apples, clementines, grapes, bell peppers, celery, carrots, etc. (possibly applesauce)
Dairy (1): string cheese/diced cheese, yogurt tubes
Nuts & Bars (1): granola bars, trail mix, nuts
Treats (1): fruit leather, fruit snacks, cookies, or candy (We make the Halloween candy last a LOOONG time.)

My local grocery store had a great sale on granola bars, peanuts and Go-Gurt this week, so I stocked up! If you have any school lunch tips or tricks, please send them my way. When it comes to #momlife,  I'll take all the help I can get! 

♫ ♥ Ashley