I'll take my mornings to go, please!

As a mom of 5 I need to be organized, or things around here will fall apart and FEMA will knock on my door offering disaster relief.

This morning we are going to the zoo with my MOPS playgroup. I am also running at 5:30 am. I also have to feed my family dinner ... and attend a MOPS meeting in the evening.

Tonight after all my housework was done I quickly filled my dining room table again.

I set out clothing for all 5 kids.

My running gear and energy bar for breakfast.

Sunscreen so I remember to put it on the kids.

The packed up diaper bag.

My purse.

Our lunch box for the zoo. It is already packed with shelf foods and our cold food is in the fridge. Our water bottles and sippys are in the freezer half full of water.

I also have out cereal bowls and cereal.

I don't do this daily .. although sometimes I think I should. But I do it on school days, days when we have lots of plans, Sundays .... wow, ok, I do this everyday but Saturday! Not always to this extent though. Diaper bag and purse almost always. Clothes are typically left on the dressers, breakfast dishes I pretty much always set out.

It really makes a HUGE difference in our mornings!

Not only are we heading to the zoo, but I have a MOPS event in the evening .. busy day! I know we wont be home from the zoo until around 2pm, and dinner sneaks up pretty quick at 5:30 .. and back out the door at 6:45 for a MOPS meeting at 7! So on an already busy day I need to make dinner AND a snack!

I wanted to make a 7 layer dip for my MOPS meeting and while I was planning for that a fabulous idea popped into my head!

I made 2.

One is a "dip" beans, sour cream, salsa, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes meant to be scooped up with chips.

The other one is dinner. Beans, TACO MEAT, sour cream, salsa, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes ... see how I did that... turned a snack into dinner :) I am going to call it "one dish tacos"

When it was time for dinner I set 1 dish on the table and let everyone scoop out a spoonful and shove it into a taco shell! Can I get a Woohoo for easy dinners!??!?! This actually worked out great for my family, mainly because we LOVE tacos and some of my kids are bad "passers" ... we end up with all the dishes around their plate because they forget to pass! Tacos typically have 7ish bowls to pass! Tonight we had 1 !!

I also had less dishes .. easier clean up .. my snack for MOPS was already ready to and all I had to do after dinner was nurse M5 and go!

I was on time to the zoo, enjoyed a 1.5 hour nap after the zoo (hey, running at 5:30am makes you sleepy at 3pm!) still make a great dinner for my family and be on time to MOPS with a snack in hand!

Do you have a plan to make your mornings/ whole day go smoother?