Blooming Buds - School Snacks

Everyday the girls have (or should have):
* Breaskfast: We are working on this.
* Midmorning snack (for Mia and Mimi is around 9:30am, and for Gaby is around 10:30am)
* Lunch (which is always the main food of the day)
* Midafternoon snack
* Dinner

I will try to make a post about the strategies that we are going to come up for each food, and today Im going to talk about the Midmorning Snack in School.

One of the things that is driving us crazy is "packing snacks" for three girls everyday. We find specially insane the amount of money that we are spending on this, because the girls find the snacks, eat them at home, and then after a few days they have NO snack left, when they are suppose to last a couple of weeks.

I have been "cooking" an strategy to solve this situation, and here is how my solution looks like in the top shelve of my kitchen closet:
The night before, the only thing I will have to do is to take the bag that is signed with that day's date and the name of each girl and stuck them in the lunchbox as is. Preparing snacks has been a huge time consumer for us, and doing this will help us to save lots of time. I will still need to put in the fruit from the fridge, but it will still faster as it is only one thing for each. I will be spending an extra 4 to 5 bucks a month on ziplock bags, but I think is totally worth it as I know we will be saving a lot of money as the snacks will last longer.

I know you cant really tell by the picture, but each girl has 10 bags with her name and the date for 10 weeks, which means 2 weeks of school. Hopefully, if my idea works, I will be packing another 2 weeks of snacks by the weekend of the 8th and 9th of November.

Everyday I send three different snacks plus something liquid. Here is what a regular snack has:
* Something salty: Pack of crackers, a bag of pop corn, crackers with cheese, breadsticks with cheese dip......
* Something sweet: Strawberry cookies for Gaby, Chocolate cookies for Mia, and Vanilla cookies for Mimi... Also, it could be a small box of cereal, pudding, or a plain cupcake as a special treat for one day.
* A fruit: We normally alternate with apples and bananas, and sometimes is a fruity yogurt).
* Juice: We try to send them a variety of juices, and they mostly get Orange, Grape, Apple, Peach, or Strawberry with Carrots (Gaby's favorite).
* Water: We have been lacking with the water, as both water bottles got lost... We need to buy new ones as I like them to have water ALWAYS.

We were making the juice at home and serving it to each in a juice bottle, but everyday for dinner they will drink the remaining juice from the container, and I really dont want them to have juice two times a day. For a few weeks, we will be getting the juice boxes, until they forget about asking for juice in the house.

Mimi also takes milk to school and a sippy cup (thanks God for powder milk), and I fill out the powder containers everyday. Mia gets a milk box (pictured) that she get before her afternoon nap in school before we picked her up...

I will also continue to look for more ideas for fast and healthy snacks for them, and why not, for us too!