Bit by bit, the mornings are becoming less out of control. Here’s what I did for breakfast this week.

We are heading into the second week of school.  Our first week was great.

Last weekend I had all the kids pick out their clothes for the week on Sunday.

We have already taken care of that for this week.

Next, we focused on the lunch system. That is still working well.

After that, I got a checklist together to help the kids take care of all their afternoon crap independently. This system has worked really, REALLY well! Number 3 and 4 are self sufficient at this point. Number 5 and 6 (the kindergartener and first grader will need a couple more weeks of practice before they are more independent).

After that, I took care of the school paper situation. That has also worked very well.

So we are doing well on the weekends preparing for Monday mornings. We’ve got the lunches nailed down. Our after school routine is pretty set.

The next thing that would to make the mornings run even more smoothly is to get some breakfasts ready to go ahead of time.

I’ve pretty much cut out cereal and lots of other processed stuff, so this is a little bit more of a challenge.

Here is what I did today to have some healthy and unprocessed breakfasts ready to go right away:

I prepped some smoothies, and I made some egg “muffins.” My kids like both of these, and so do I.

First the smoothies…

My kids LOVE smoothies. And I love them because they are a really easy way to get fruit into the kids in a way that makes them they feel like they are having a treat.

I usually buy a whole bunch of bananas from Costco planning to let them get overripe.  I use some for banana bread.

The rest I use for smoothies.

I cut each banana into four pieces,

and I freeze them for a little while on a cookie tray.That way, when I put them into a bag in the freezer, they aren’t all stuck together. I know that four pieces of banana is about equal to one whole banana.

I use these to make frozen banana coffee smoothies. Whenever I have leftover coffee, I put it in the fridge in a mason jar. When I want a smoothie I just add about a cup of milk and about a cup and a half of coffee to one and a half bananas (six pieces). It’s so easy, and it’s delicious. Seriously.

For the kids, I blend up frozen strawberries ( I get a big bag from Costco) and bananas.

I divided everything up for smoothies already, so in the morning all I have to do is dump one of these with some milk (or sometimes I use orange juice instead but the milk makes it almost like a milkshake) into the blender.

Easy and delicious!

SIDE NOTE: I freaking LOVE my Ninja. LOVE. IT. You could crush rocks in that thing. I use it for all sorts of other stuff (like salsa and eggs and soup). TOTALLY worth the investment. Well, actually, I didn’t buy it. They sent it to me for free. But had I paid money, I would have been totally happy. Definitely worth it, and if you want to get one for yourself, click here:

This took me approximately 5 minutes to prepare.  It will make enough smoothies for the kids for the next four days.

In addition to that, I made egg muffins. I’ve posted these before here,  but in those I used tomato and spinach, and most of the kids don’t love tomatoes. They used to, but now they’ve decided they “don’t like them anymore.” You know, the year my garden produces about 4000 tomatoes my kids decide they are totally disgusting.

So for this week I just scrambled twelve eggs, added a little milk and then poured that into muffin tins. I mixed in some cut up ham and some cheese, and baked at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Here they are:

I can just microwave those each morning. They won’t last until Friday, but they’ll at least give me something quick to give the kids (that I feel good about) for the next couple days.

Oh, and those are silicone muffin tin liners. AWESOME. I use them all the time for these egg muffins, and little mini meatloaf muffins and banana bread muffins and all kinds of muffins! Nothing sticks to them! If you need some of those, click here:

So there it is.

What I did to make my mornings run a little more smoothly this week.

It feels good to be prepared, and it feels good to know that tomorrow there’s a decent chance I won’t be the cranky, bitchy mom I was last year, rushing my kids out to the bus like a braless and crazed lunatic.

Well, I might still be braless and crazed. But at least it won’t be because I wasn’t prepared.

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