cutting down on cow's milk

So far, I seem to be meeting my 6 cup a day goal for water!
Our family has always consumed large amounts of dairy every day. While I don't think that we will or even should cut it out entirely, I would definitely like to cut down.
We used to buy about 4 bags (equal to approx. 4 gallons) of milk each week! I probably drank more than anyone else in our family. We have been going through maybe one bag a week now. We have all been drinking more water recently. When I want a glass of milk, I am now making myself drink a glass of water first and then if I still want the milk then I will have some. Usually, I don't end up drinking the milk.
Also, I made some rice milk a few days ago and the kids seem to like it, especially Ethan. It is much cheaper than cow's milk and if I started making it with brown rice it would be quite healthy as well. I would highly recommend making your own, if you plan to drink rice milk. Canola oil is one of the first ingredients in commercial rice milk. When you make your own you would obviously eliminate that and you also have control over the other ingredients that go in it. I found a variety of recipes with quite a range over how much rice you should put in. I ended up doing this:

RICE MILK
1 cup cooked rice
4 cups pure water
approx 1 tsp vanilla
approx 1 tbsp brown sugar

Blend together for 1-2 minutes. I have a Vitamix (a high speed blender) and do not need to strain it, but if you have a regular blender you may need to strain it before you drink it.

Another area that really has been helping is eating less cold cereal. We have always eaten cereal for breakfast, so this is a really hard one to get away from. I have found some oatmeal recipes that I have been trying, my favourites are ones that I can prepare the night before, so I don't have to cook anything in the morning! I will add those recipes this week hopefully. When we have oatmeal, we don't need milk. When we have cereal, the boys seem to want rice milk now. So we have cut down to about a quarter of the cow's milk consumption that we used to have!
Now to do something about the cheese and yogurt!