healthy porch munchin' snacks

you guys, fall is here! football is here! new shows on tv are here! ...what else is here? oh yeah, the everything pumpkin spice *ugh* and that freakout feeling of the holidays arriving is here too. and even though our schedules are nonstop most weeks, snack time is always happening at our house.

"mom, i want a snack" echoes through the house and rings in my ears every hour from both my boys. the boys crawl up on my counters and open up cabinets to scrounge for something to munch on.

most days i make them something. and i learned a super useful trick on serving snacks from my favorite photographer mama, Brooke a while back -- she uses a cupcake tray to divvy up snacks and contain messes with all five of her boys. 

this past weekend we wanted to enjoy the beautiful hot weather & so i made some special snacks for all of us to enjoy on our freshly decorated front porch.

when i'm making snacks, i always make sure to have a good combination of sweet + crunchy + healthy. a good combination of everything. cue gary's eye roll but we won't even get into what his diet is like...
for our snack we had grapes, strawberries, peaches, cukes, carrots, mandarins and a special bowl of crunchy nuts + popcorn.
oh and i made sure not to forget the sweet tea.

the fantastic part is that andrew has discovered a love for nuts + pecans. but not for raisins, even though they're covered in delicious dark chocolate!

after snack time, of course it's play time. and this time, we grabbed a football. gary's been spending too much time with a football lately so it seemed perfectly adequate, right?

and elena was so in love watching daddy & brothers toss the football she wanted in the game SO badly.

you would think daddy was talking plays with andrew, but no. he's just getting a good stern talkin' to about tackling his brother sans the football!

and when they don't pass elena the ball? this:

finally the boys grew tired of running around and seeked rest--after all, it is still hot in south texas.

popcorn, mixed nuts & chocolate covered raisins... buttery, crunchy & chocolately, what else can you ask for, amiright? 

super easy snacks, right? they're perfect for a good afternoon of football tossin' if i do say so myself. what are you healthy go-to snacks around the house?