Back to school blues and tricks to help

Here we are once again at the beginning of the school year. Have you gone crazy yet? Back to school shopping, clothes shopping, writing your child's name on everything they own, getting the bus schedule and finally going to the meet the teacher nights. It really is a lot to get ready is such a short amount of time and I am here to make your time even more hectic. You see I have some wonderful tricks and tips to help you during the school week but it might make your Sunday a bit busy.

Let me begin by explaining how I reached these ideas. I get up on a school day at 5 a.m. to fix everyone a real breakfast because it actually has vitamins and nutrients that your child needs instead of cereal...which is easy but not really much on the healthy side of things. Once Breakfast is served it is time to make school lunches. Both of my girls are lactose Intolerant so I send them to school with their lunch to make sure that they don't get something that will make them sick. Once I have done that I help anyone who needs it with little things like hair or picking out clothes. All of this takes a good hour and half and by the time my girls get on the bus I feel like I have gone crazy. So I have come up with a few things that really help my morning.

First I pre-cook a bunch of breakfast meals. I do breakfast burritos, french toast and pancakes. This way all I have to do is pull them from the freezer and throw them in the microwave for a few minutes.

Pancakes- 1 minute then turn over and do another 30 seconds in the microwave from frozen.

Breakfast burritos- Take a damp paper towel and wrap it around your burrito, then place it in the microwave for 45 seconds each.

French toast- I do mine with hot dog buns. Take two and place them in the microwave for 45 seconds.

Super easy and I am not trying to rush and get things on the table. When I am doing the pancakes or french toast I also scramble some eggs to go with them for that extra protein. This way you have breakfast done in about 5 minutes instead of 30!

For lunch I have started making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, placing them in freezer bags and then just grabbing them and throwing them in the lunch box when I am making lunch. This is quicker than making them that morning. I also bag grapes in snack size baggies and buy the snack size carrots. So far all I have had to do is grab 3 ready made things. I then take some ranch and place it in a small container with a lid and a small bottle of water and lunch is done. This is something that use to take me 15 minutes and I have gotten it down to about five.

So here we are something that use to take me 45 minutes has been cut down to 10 and honestly given me another 30 minutes of sleep. With all of the back to school stuff and getting back in the groove of things it is hard trying something new but it really has saved me from loosing my mind in the early mornings! I also have the girls pick out what they are going to wear the next day the night before so that they aren't going crazy and getting drama filled at 6 a.m.

All of this only takes about half an hour to and hour to put together and really helps those mornings when it seems your life is crazy and just can't go right. I also have the girls ash the grapes and bag them so that they are helping do their own things. We also bag strawberries and blueberries. Last year my daughter was going through a faze where she loved celery with peanut butter so we were preparing those also. Anything you can just grab and put in the bag makes life so much easier on you. Good luck and welcome back to a new school year!