Back to School

I can't believe the kids go back to school in less than 2 weeks.  It makes me sad; I like having them around and we've had a lot of fun this summer.  Don't get me wrong, we definitely have days when I am ready for school to start;)  I can barely stand to think about Gracie being in school all day, every day.  The littles won't let me dwell on it too long I'm sure!  Next week we will have Hannah, Hattie, and Luke here for 3 days while their moms are at teacher work days, meetings, open houses, etc.  We are as ready as we're going to be for the new school year.  We've had haircuts, dr. appointments, dentist appointments, have all our school supplies ready for open house next week, and bought a few clothing items they needed.  We will give the house a good cleaning and clean the carpets.  I plan to put the girls to work on some projects; disinfecting toys, vacuuming couches, disinfecting door knobs and light switches, and any other jobs I can con them into.  We're going to start giving allowances so they're going to have to earn it:)  I'm working on some food/snack prep to get us through the first couple weeks at least-here's what we have so far!

 I made smoothie packets to keep in the freezer so they can be thrown in the blender with a little milk.  These are all strawberry banana with frozen chunks of banana, frozen strawberries, and frozen cubes of vanilla yogurt. 

 Our snack basket is all stocked up and the girls will pick one each day to take to school for snack time.  This was Dave's Grandma Reed's basket.  The handles are falling off but I love seeing it in the pantry. 

 50 mini, pumpkin, muffins that will go in the freezer.  We can take out how ever many the kids want, microwave them a few seconds and they're good to go.  This is the best, easiest, recipe ever.  It's a box of yellow cake mix (I use just shy of the whole mix), one can of pumpkin, and we like to add mini chocolate chips. 

I also made some "uncrustables."  I'm not sure how they'll go over so I didn't go crazy making a ton.  Madi eats school lunch most days but I have a feeling I'll be packing lots of lunches for Grace.  These will also go in the freezer and will be thrown in her lunch box to be thawed by lunch time!