Have A Slammin' School Year with Slammers Snacks

We've been chatting about the start of the school year a lot lately. We've covered everything from back-to-school style to how to stay organized to how to keep from burning out before the year is over.

We are in the throws of Fall Break, and all the travels that we've packed into this quick little break, but we know it's right back to the grind come Monday. While we love getting a break every six weeks, sometimes it's a little tough trying to readjust back to our normal schedule. It's like the first week of school all over again. Especially Fall Break for some reason. It still feels like Summer, so we end up treating it like Summer. Those late nights and lazy mornings will all come to a head on Monday. 

To help ease us back in to real life and to help everyone officially kick off their school year on the right foot, we are doing a fun little giveaway with Slammers Snacks. We love these little organic pouches filled with fruit and veggie goodness. With school and sports starting back up in full swing, they are the perfect grab and go snack to have on hand. Our kids love packing them in their lunch box or having them for a quick post practice snack!

You can grab them at most major grocery retailers (check to see if they are in your area here), but you can also order them online. And now you can win a case with us! 

It's super easy to win! Just leave a comment letting us know...

WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT THIS SCHOOL YEAR? 

And you will be entered to win! 

Winner will be chosen at random and announced on Sunday, September 30th. Additional chances to win will be posted on Instagram today (both on our feed and the Slammers Snacks feed). Winner must be 18 or over and a resident of the United States or Canada. Winner will have 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner will be chosen.

Good luck everyone! 

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Battle the Burnout

Happy Monday sweet friends! We just wrapped up another fun filled weekend full of sports and kids activities. It's so much fun to watch our kids compete and come home each night with huge smiles on their sweaty faces. But, we would be lying if we didn't say it was a little exhausting.

Long gone are the lazy Sundays sleeping in late. Now we pop up almost earlier than we do for school, each grab a kid and rush out the door. Sometimes we meet in the middle to cheer all of them on before heading to the next game time location, but most times weekends require an act of logistics the Pentagon would be proud of.

Our kids are none the wiser of our exhaustion though. They are happy, thriving, and soaking up each moment of this part of their childhood. Sure there are down moments, or moments of frustration and stress, but overall, they love their activities with such a passion that it's all worth it in the end. 

We get asked all the time how we balance it all. How do we manage three kids, all in different activities, and stay sane? How do they balance it all? How are they not over tired? Stressed?

The answer...we don't really have one. The demands in school are high and increasing each year. Throwing in extracurriculars can be a lot. Throw in multiple extracurriculars, or elite level sports, and you are talking a whole different level of challenge. 

We ultimately let our kids guide us. We check in with them often, monitor their emotions and school grades routinely, and never have a problem tuning into the backseat carpool conversations they don't think we hear over Taylor Swift blasting on our speakers. 

Sometimes we get life wrong. As moms we question ourselves often if we are making the right decisions for our tiny little humans, but we've founds some tips and tricks along the way to make this stage of life as stress-free as possible for our kids.

Here's a few tips we have for battling the sports burnout, but we'd love to hear your thoughts too!

HOW TO BATTLE SPORTS BURNOUT FOR KIDS

Let them choose. First and foremost, let you kids choose what sports and activities interests them.
Speaking with other parents, and from personal experience, kids all naturally gravitate towards certain activities.

Let them choose what they want to participate in rather than what you enjoyed as a kid/have an interest in now/had dreams of. The more interested in the activity, the more confident they will be as well as more invested. They will naturally set their own goals, and it's so rewarding to see when they accomplish them on their own accord.

Play one on one. Nothing is more fun to a kid than getting to getting to show off their skills one on one. Let them choose the activity (promise they will choose something in their wheel house!), and work with them one on one with no pressure. They will think it so much fun beating mommy at a personal home run derby or a goal kicking shootout. It also gives you a chance to have an open conversation about their activity. You can chat one on one about their goals, anything that's bothering them, or monitor if something is hurting them you might not have seen before.

Fuel the fun, and their bodies. Give them good fuel - not just during halftime or before the game, but all the time! Let their bodies build the energy it needs by give them great meals and snacks as often as you can. We try to keep quality filling snacks on hand all the time. Let's be honest, kids eat non-stop, and they can kill a bag of Goldfish faster than you can blink. But, we found protein packed snacks or ones with a little more substance go a longer way.

These Slammers pouches top our list. They are packed with tons of protein, contain organic ingredients, and have full servings of fruit and veggies. Our kids love their yogurt-like texture, and they are so easy to have on hand for grab and go snacking. You can find them at most major grocery retailers or snag them here.

Slammers are by far one of our favorite pouch snacks. Other favorite snacks to have on hand include peanut butter to-go cups, cheese/pretzel/apple snack packs you can find in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, and smoothies.

Encourage off the field play. One thing about being part of the team is that you instantly have a handful or more of children who have at least one thing in common (and so do the parents!). Encourage off the field socializing. Even if that is as something as small as an after game ice cream stop, or as big as hosting the team for a random weekend pool party. Take the time to facilitate the relationships with teammates outside of the game. It's amazing how excited your little athlete will be to know they always have a friend they can chat with about their same interests. Some of our little one's teammates are some of their closest friends, even if they don't go to the same school.

Night, night. Sleep tight. You've heard it a million times before, but getting good sleep is way important. Nothing is worse than a tired, cranky child. And we can guarantee that if your little athlete is over tired, they are not going to want to do much of anything, let alone continuously do something that is burning all the remainder of their energy. So tuck them in early and often!

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Making Post Game Snack A Grand Slam! {printable}

Sports season is here! All though it never officially stops for us. But during the Spring we are in full sports mode and there's no stopping until June.

We spend our weeks racing from practice to practice, eating dinner somewhere around 4:30p.m. and then again (because kids are always hungry) at 9:00p.m., and doing homework/answering emails/returning phone calls amidst the chaos of it all.

We spend our weekends cheering on the sidelines of rainy soccer fields, jetting off to a variety of cities for two-day cheer competitions, and keeping scoreboard for the little league team all day long.

Our cars are loaded down with enough sporting goods that we could open our own Dicks, and we're burning all those hard earned hotel rewards points from swiping our Amex at Target at a mind boggling rate for out of state competitions and tournaments.

And we wouldn't change a single thing.

Well other than holding practice in anything under 40 degrees. We're southerners, it should be against the law! #mommydoesntdocold

We love that our kids are so active and enjoy a variety of activities. We were both the same way growing up and love seeing what our children are into as they get older and become comfortable in their own interests. Now we know it will change as they get older, and their interests will evolve, but for now we are happy to support them in whatever they choose - even if it means we ate an old granola bar for dinner and our cars have the scent of au de sweaty child.

Being a sports mom means you have a lot of duties. Most importantly - the after game snack.

If you don't bring your A game in the after game snack department you'll be ejected faster than you can say #momfail. 

With so many kids in so many different activities though, we learned long ago to keep the actual snack portion of the snack time super easy. No pinterest worthy sports themed snacks coming from this crew. There was a time way back in the day that we had time for that, but now we go with healthy already prepared snacks that we know kids love. 

We choose the kids favorite Slammers pouches, a crunchy snack or granola bar, and we package them up with waters or our favorite sports drinks. We package them all together with a cute printable and then we are ready to go. 

The best thing about this is it looks like we put a ton of effort into it to make it pretty and themed, but really we let the snacks do the talking and we lay claim to after game snack hall of fame. 

During basketball season I was inspired by these Slammers pouches to create a fun themed printable. These are our one of our favorite protein packed snacks, and they are perfect for refueling little athletes. There are so many yummy flavors to choose from and our kids love when we freeze them as a post game treat. 

I had made a soccer printable and a few other sports ones a few years ago, but I needed to add basketball and baseball into the mix. These are some of our favorite go-to snacks, and with the fun sayings and flavors it was easy to pair together a fun printable with a healthy snack with just a few seconds of effort. 

For basketball season I came up with partnering the orange Epic pouches with a printable that read "Let's Make Snack a SLAM DUNK"!

I attached it with curling ribbon to the actual pouch, passed out orange sports drinks with it and we were all set for a yummy after game snack. 

Now that Spring sports are in full effect, I recycled the idea for soccer reusing my already made printable. Then I got inspired again by the pouches and created a new printable for baseball season. 

I easily came up with the theme "Let's Make Snack a GRAND SLAM!". See lots of cute, not a whole lot of effort. :) 

And I've been wanting to use this stash of Take Me Out to the Ball Game ribbon for years. I was so glad to find the perfect time to use it! 

I put all our snack goodies together in a lunch bag and tied them up. Super easy, and looks great for a quick grab and go after game snack. 

Now we can reuse these over and over the entire season and not even give two thoughts to our game day duties. Just a quick print on our printer, and a quick shopping trip to our pantry for all the snacks.

Now you can win at making your post game snack a grand slam too. Here are the downloads for the printables for you to enjoy!

Download the Baseball snack printable. 
Download the Basketball snack printable. 

What sports sidelines are you cheering from this season? Do you have a favorite after game snack that your kids love? Please share because our post game snack duties are out of control this season and we love sharing snacks the kids actually will eat! 

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**Part of this post is sponsored by Slammers Snacks as part of our ambassadorship with GoGormet. All thoughts and opinions are our own!

Have a Slammin' Summer!

The countdown is on and we are just a few days away from school. For weeks now our calendar has been filled with end of school year festivities. Field days, art shows, and now it's time for the final hurrah - the last day of school!

Little Cute celebrates her last day tomorrow. On her field day she and her classmates each exchanged fun summer gifts. She came up with the idea to give each of her friends some fun squirt guns. The last day of school is going to be extremely low key filled with lots of playground play and movie watching.

A few of us are sending in some yummy snacks for the kids to enjoy through out the day. I know I won't have time to make anything homemade, so I went for the next best easiest thing - a pouch snack!

My kids love these Slammers snack pouches.  They taste yummy, and they always try to copy what the kid on the front of their pouch snack is doing when they eat them. (Where/how this started I have no idea, but they think it's a fun game.)

I love them because...
1: It's a pouch snack! Hello super easy, mess free and healthy snack!
2: The kids have no idea they are eating a healthy serving of organic fruits, vegetables and protein each time they consume one. My kids think these are a huge treat! (And what mom would I be if I spoiled that joy for them?)

I have a hard time keeping them in the pantry so sometimes I have to hide them so they won't eat an entire box in a day. So, I knew L.C. would be excited to bring them into class for her friends, and I know her teachers will be excited that it doesn't contain frosting, candy, or - their personal favorite - frozen treats on a stick.

I whipped up this fun "Slammin'" themed printable to coordinate with the pouches. (Note: You can't tell in photos, but there is an outline of an electric guitar behind the wording as well.) 

With a quick attachment with some gold and black curling ribbon they are ready to go.

We are all set to celebrate and we can't wait to check off the last day of preschool for the school year!

Download the "Slammin' Summer" printable HERE.

When does your Slammin' summer start? 

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**We received this product as part of the Go Gourmet/Slammers Snacks ambassador program. All thoughts and opinions are our own.