Favorite Fried Rice

This is one of my favorite dinners to cook! It's a light alternate to greasy fried rice you get at Chinese restaurants... and kids love it! When Will was little, I used to put this into a blender for him... and now he really happy every time i make it! The original recipe calls for 1/2 c. butter... but I've found that it's much healthier if you use chicken broth (plus the flavor is much better, and less greasy.) By adding little tablespoon of butter, there is still that butter taste! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!


1 cup white rice, (not instant)
1 to 2 chicken breasts (or 7-10 chicken tenders,) cut into small pieces
½ white onion, finely chopped
2 carrots finely grated
¾ c frozen peas
½ c chicken broth + 1 T. (or less) butter
2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 scrambled eggs


Preparation:
1.Make one cup rice
2.Marinate chicken in soy sauce (I buy frozen chicken, in the morning I take frozen chicken and place in a Ziploc bag, with the soy sauce, and place in a large bowl of water and set in fridge... by the time dinner rolls around, it's thawed and marinated!). If you don’t have much time you can mix it with chicken before cooking.
3.Cook chicken in small amount of olive oil.
4.Add carrots and onions and sauté until onions are clear.
5.Add frozen peas and cook until soft, (or add any of your favorite vegies, mushrooms, squash, whatever)
6.Add cooked rice to mixture
7.In separate pan, scramble 3 eggs, chop finely and add to mixture.
8. take ½ C. broth + 1 T. butter in small bowl, add crushed garlic and stir and heat for 30 - 45 seconds in microwave. Then add to chicken mixture, cook on med/low heat, 3-5 minutes.
9.Mix well, add soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste.

(I find that this recipe is always much better the next day, because overnight the garlic has time to marinate into the rice... really adding a lot of flavor... so, i make a bigger batch and have left overs for lunches, store in tight containers in fridge!)

Happy boys love this fried ricy goodness!

Mint Chocolate Cookies:

fast, easy and so good! Need a quick 'home made' dessert? This is the perfect recipe... keep cake mix and mint chocolate chips on hand, for last minute treats!!

Devil’s food Cake mix
1/3 C. Water (maybe a T. more!)
1 Egg
¼ C. Butter, softened
1 C. Andie's chopped mints are best (or mint flavored chocolate chips, shown above.)
1/2 C. Chocolate chips

Mix ingredients… drop ‘sticky dough’ on to greased cookies sheet, bake about 10 min. 350 degrees.

"Thick wavy locks... round button nose..." --Shreck 2

We really didn't' want to... but we decide it was time to give our little buddy a hair cut. It's just too hard to take care of and it's getting to be warm outside. Time for a short summer do...
Before: (I trimmed it about 2 weeks ago... so, it used to be a lot longer!)

Apparently, the ear area is the most challenging spot to trim on a 2 year old's head... We thought this could be 'the new look' in Hollywood! (Really, I was laughing so hard, I could barley take the picture!)

After:

These were tears of joy! I promise!

After Will's cut... Caitlin was really excited to get her hair cut too! "ME TURN!! ME TURN!!" Daddy had to explain that little girls have long pretty hair... she still insisted. So, we gave her a little trim, too. (practly nothing, we love her long blond hair!)

Guess all the excitement of 'the barber shop' wore Caitlin out... she wrapped herself in a blanket and fell asleep just like this, watching Thomas the Train... But that didn't stop Will, from using this 'slide' (My step aerobic box), and each time before he zoomed down he'd stop and look at 'Sleeping Beauty' gibber some secret to her... and be on his way. It was really cute to watch!

Oh, PS. We are back from our little trip to St. George!! We had a GREAT time and will post pictures soon! :)

Toot Toot!

Last week I was picking up Caitlin at Nana Great's house, when Will spotted this "Toot Toot" in the neighbors yard. They just couldn't help but run over and play with it...and for once... I had my camera! So, I got a few cute pictures!!

Enjoy!

AWESOME WEEKEND!

FRIDAY!

I had such a great weekend, So I thought I'd tell you all about it! Justin and I went to Hale Center Theatre on Friday night to see "Annie Get Your Gun!" We had a great time, and they did such a wonderful job, But when does Hale not do a FAB job!!

When we got our tickets, (just last Wednesday)... the show was almost sold out, so we actually had 5 paid seats in between us. We got there early, and just stared at each other longingly. ha. Everyone was so nice... they scooted down so we could sit next to each other! and I dare say I got a better seat, because they all moved down!! hehe. :)

If you've never seen this show before some of the familiar show tunes are: "There's no Business Like Show Business", "They Say It's Wonderful"(They say that falling in love is wonderful.. it's wonderful, so they tell me...), "I Got The Sun In The Morning" (and the moon at night!), "Anything You Can Do" (I can do better!!)

SUPER CUTE!! It really made me miss being on the stage... Some day!! some day!!

After we went to Crown Burger for a bite to eat!! BIG Thanks to Justin's parents for watching the babies... :) We enjoyed the evening with each other SO much!!

SATURDAY!

Then of course, Saturday I went to Stephenie Meyer's THE HOST book signing! and that was a wild and crazy experience... It's pretty much the funnest thing I've done in a while! I was so glad I was able to go!! My Friend Yung and her friends Amber, Amee, and Teri and I started walking over to Highland High School at around 10:00 am. The auditorium doors opened at 10:30.

I suddenly felt like a silly high school er again hanging out in the hallways! It was fun to see all the different t-shirts, stuffed animal 'wolfs', Apple earrings, red ribbons in hair and all the different age groups that Stephenie has reached out to!! (well, this picture has non of that... but it was EVERY WHERE!)

As soon as we were inside the auditorium... we had an hour before Stephenie even arrived! Channel 2 news had a camera guy there filming all of us wild and crazy fans. One lady... stood up and started screaming... "MARRY ME EDWARD, YOU'RE HOT! I LOVE YOU! WHOOOA!"

kinda weird and unexpected! We all felt really embarrassed for her.

Me, with my snack! I look like I have 4 arms! HA! Also, I was glad I came prepared with snacks...(apple, banana, trail mix and water) We were there for 5 hours and the vending machines were pretty scary looking!

Finally, the moment came 11:30 am STEPHENIE came out on the stage... YES we jumped out of our seats, YES we clapped and HECK YES, we screamed our little voice boxes out!!

IT WAS AWESOME!!!!

She signed books for one hour, then took a half an hour to look through a box of questions from us! Then at 1:00 started to talk a little bit about her new book and answer questions from the box!! (I video recorded some of her q & a's but the quality is not very good and it's really hard to hear... so, I'll type them up in the next couple days, and post them! :)

From Left to Right: Red Shirt, Owner of Kings English (book shop in SL) they 'hosted' the whole shin-dig! Next, Black shirt, and jeans, first person to have books signed! (LUCKY). Next: red shirt, sitting:THE STEPHENIE MEYER!!! Next, yellow shirt: Stephenie's Publish. Next: Channel 2 News Camera Dude! Next: Stephenie's Sister, Emily... who she dedicated one of her books to.

Seating was General Admission in the auditorium... but to get our books signed... they called us up by groups! Our tickets had our number on them. There were 20 people per group, and we were group 29!! Our group was called to go up at 3:15 pm!! It was pretty exciting. and they made us put 'post-its' in our books where we wanted her to sign... (only two, Twilight books and she only personalized (wrote our names...) on our "host" books! BUT you could have as many host books as you wanted... you just had to buy them from Kings English! (One lady had like 12 host books!! End of the year teacher gifts she told us, CRAZY!)

When it was my turn to have my books signed... I was pretty excited, my heart was racing... and it was really really cool! (they told us not to say too much to her because she needed to keep signing books for other people... so I just said... "I love your writings, you are so talented!!" she looked up and said "Thank You!" and then I grabbed my books and skipped away like a little school girl! Oh yeah, I think I let out a little scream or yelp, and jumped up and down... (Actually, I almost fell down the stairs while walking off the stage.) YEAH, I became one of "those" people, HA. I was so glad I was able to go! Can't wait to read THE HOST! (Justin's reading it now!)

Some other pictures through out the day:

Friends: Amber and Yung (my neighbor!) It's actually Amber's birthday in two weeks... She works for American West airlines... and can fly for almost nothing. Yung told her to fly to SL because she had an early birthday peasant for her. Yung picked Amber up in the morning and handed her a new copy of THE HOST and TWILIGHT... with a ticket to Saturdays signing! SHE WAS TOTALLY SURPRISED AND EXCITED!! What a fun gift! GO YUNG!!

Buddies: Yung, Amber, Amee, and Teri

HAHA! This is Justin's Cousin's Wife... Shera!! We were both surprised to see each other there!! The best part was that... her friend was saving a seat for her right in front of us!! How cool is that! We had a fun time together while we waited to get our books signed! She was in group 16 and we were in group 29.

Sorry, the quality of these pictures are really fuzzy and bad... i had to zoom, and the lighting in that place was really bad!

When I got home, I just had to take a nap! I honestly don't know how Stephenie does it... she did a book signing Friday night at Thanksgiving point... and then ours oun satruday! Crazy Girl!

Then at 5:30 pm, we got the kids ready for our Stake Carnival... by the time we got there all the food was gone, so we had a snow cone and the kids jumped in the bouncing castle for a little bit. Then we went home and invited some friends over to have Papa Murphy's Pizza with us. We got a Taco Pizza which we cooked on the Grill! IT was SO good! :)

SUNDAY!

Sunday was just awesome! I was released from primary, and now I'm able to go to Sunday School and Relief Society!!! It was simply wonderful!! (I loved Primary, and I'm sure I'll miss it. It was just time to move on!)

Then, after church, we went to Justin's parents for dinner. Cute Caitlin dressed up in her Cinderella dress with shoes, purse and all... and fell a sleep on the way over (5 minute car ride!) She's so cute when she's a sleep! Dinner was delicious and visiting was a blast! Sundays are just a wonderful day! LOVE them!

FYI!

Guess who's going to Stephenie Meyer's "The Host" book signing on Saturday???


ME!

I am one happy boy!!!

Happy 2nd Birthday William!

Here are a few of our favorite pictures of our baby boy! The first picture was how we told Justin's family that we were expecting again... We found it fitting for Caitlin to tell them since she was the one to tell us we were having a 'baby'... (at 6 months old... she said the word baby!)

May 8, 2006

Our little Will....

May 8, 2008

Happy Birthday Wilbur!