P.F. Chang Lettuce Wraps...finally!

So...I promised a few people I would post this last month.... been a little busy. Anyway, if you are a fan of these, they are just like the real deal. Enjoy! Oh... I added this recipe to our dinner mindblock blog too.

PF Chang's Lettuce Wraps

Chicken Mixture

2 Chicken Breast Filets
1 Cup Minced water chestnuts
2/3 Cup Fresh Mushrooms – Chopped
3 T. Green Onion – Chopped
1 tsp. Minced garlic (1 clove)

Bring 2 T. of vegetable oil to high heat in wok or large frying pan. Saute the chicken breasts for 4-5 minutes per side or until done. Remove from pan. Add minced water chestnuts, chopped green onion, garlic and chopped mushrooms to pan and saute.

Chop chicken into small pieces. Add to vegetable mixture and Saute. Add Stir Fry Sauce:

Stir Fry Sauce

8 T. Soy Sauce
8 T. Brown Sugar
2 tsp. Rice Vinegar

Cook until heated through.

Special Sauce

¼ cup sugar
½ cup water
2 T. soy sauce
2 T. Rice vinegar
2 T. Ketchup
1 T. Lemon Juice
1/8 tsp. Sesame oil

Combine all ingredients.

1 T. Chinese Hot Mustard
1-3 Tsp. Red Chili Paste

Dilute 1 T. Chinese Hot mustard with a little water. Just before serving add desired amount of red chili paste and mustard to the Special Sauce. 3 tsp. Of each for Medium/Hot

Assemble lettuce wraps by spooning filling into a iceburg lettuce cup, white rice and desired amount of sauce. Fold up like a taco..

"Two" Lip Festival

Thanksgiving Point has been hosting it's annual Tulip Festival for the last couple of weeks. Jace has always been confused with the word "tulip". He thinks I am saying "two lips"...and then he will explain to me how he "has two lips too!"...funny boy! Today, the tulips were 90% in bloom and it was beautiful! Jen and I took the little kids and spent 2 hours wandering through the gardens. The kids were absolutely entertained...it was a great way to spend the afternoon.

Lady, Jace, Melissa, and Joshie peeking through one of the many bridges...so sweet!

By the end of the walk, the kids were done looking at flowers. Instead, they decided to hide from their moms. Lady was positive she was invisible behind this tree...I played along and she thought she was pretty darn tricky!

This would be when she realized I could see her!

The only thing that would have improved the gardens was some sunshine, but I guess we can't have everything. When I arrived at home, my big kids informed me that I do EVERYTHING with the little kids (cause, ya know, they're not in school all day)! I guess I'll have to make another trip to the gardens for a little after-school adventure...lucky me!

darn middle fingers!

If you follow my facebook, you probably have been wondering about my status last Thursday. Here is the story behind that comment.

Regular day...as regular as they get anyway. School, homework, dinner, bath, bed--you know the routine. Anyway, Jace was not doing so well following the "no getting out of bed" rule. He had been up for a granola bar, a drink, potty (twice), and was throwing his toys onto Carter's bed. After a good 30 minutes of this, Carter came tearing down the stairs yelling

"Jace is swearing mom!"

"No he's not!"

"Ya mom, he's swearing, really!"

"Jace is four, he doesn't even know what swearing is."

"Well, he's swearing in his bed."

I finally went up to check things out. Jace was hiding under his blankets at the bottom of the bed. The conversation went something like this:

"Jace, are you swearing?"

"Yes mom, I'm swearing with my middle finger because I'm mad and I don't want to go to bed, so I'm swearing with my middle finger all by itself, 'cause that is swearing!" (Jace was demonstrating how he was holding up his finger).

"Jace (while trying not to bust out laughing), we do not swear! That is not nice. That makes mom sad."

"But mom, I don't want to go sleep, so I was swearing with my finger because I was mad!"

Apparently, Jace has been listening very closely to the kindergarten conversations happening on the way home from school. I've been smiling about his finger all week!

dancin' man?

Friday was Legacy's annual "2nd grade Dance Festival"....need I say more? Kenzie and Maddy thought the festival was the highlight of 2nd grade. Carter could not have been less impressed with the entire production. The before performance comments consisted of things like "the dances are too hard, especially the cha-cha. I don't want to mess up. I don't want to dance with a girl. I don't want to dance with a boy either. Maybe a girl wouldn't be so bad...." During the dancing, Carter was looking everywhere and watching everyone. He could have cared less about his own dancing. During one song, he was supposed to be lined up clapping. Instead he was watching something across the room with his hands shoved into his pockets. My mom and I could not stop laughing... he just looked so very uncomfortable!

This was the beginning of the "Thriller" dance. Carter liked this song the best...but still would have preferred to be sitting on the side.

Near the end, we all joined in on a little "electric slide" action...which I actually (sadly) remembered quite well.

I did get a happy smile at the end of the festival, and I'm sure the smile was only because Carter knew he was done with the dancing! Aaahh...the life of my second grade son....

a neigh and a moo and a cockadoodledoo

Today we took all the cousins...well, the ones not in school.... and hit the farm at Thanksgiving Point. Everyone was old enough to love it (for the first time ever!). We saw lots of baby goats, chickens, horses, ducks, roosters, peacocks, donkeys, cows...all the usual farm animals. Papa bought dried corn from the little vending machine and the kids could not have been more entertained.

Jace feeding the goats....finally brave enough. Last year he just threw the corn at the goats!

Lady was worried that the goats would bite her fingers, but when she finally had the courage she said "Hey mom! They just licked my fingers and it tickled!"

Even Trey got in on some feeding of goats action!

Of course, we took a break from feeding so the kids could ride the horses. Lady even rode with "no hands mom!" which wasn't exactly the safest way to ride, but she was sure proud.

At the end of the day, I took these last three pictures of my kids and Ty. I'm still learning with this new camera, but I have to admit, these turned out darling! Great end to a very fun day!

Spring (sort of) Break

We have been on Spring Break all week, and the break from school has been perfect! Monday was 70 degrees and we spent the entire day outside...parks, lunch, weeding the flowers...heavenly. Tuesday it was much colder. Wednesday we took the kids bowling at BYU (forgot the camera...bummer!). When we came out of the Wilkinson Center we walked into the middle of a blizzard...WHAT!?! We woke up yesterday to 10+ inches of snow...seriously!? We decided we should take advantage of what is hopefully the last big snow.

These are the mountains from our front yard...trimmed with snow and clouds.

Much shoveling for Tim...and that was some heavy, wet snow!

Jace prefers eating snow to playing in it....at least it wasn't the dreaded yellow snow!

Maddy found jumping made the snow angels even better.

Kenzie packing in more snow around the base of the snowman.

YAY! The snowman is done and hopefully when he melts today, he will take all the bad weather with him.

After much snow time, we warmed up and headed to the Lehi pool. Apparently, so did half of Utah County. After about 10 minutes in the pool, poop was discovered in the main pool, so we all spent 30 minutes freezing while they cleaned up the water. I was hesitant to go back in after my experience with Krypto.... (whatever you call it) two summers ago. Hopefully, none of my kids drank any infected water..so, so gross. I'm not at all ready to send the kids back to school next week, but there is talk from the newsfolk that good weather may be coming, so at least there is that to look forward to. And we are on the final countdown...6 weeks of school to go!

*****I added a new "thing" at the bottom of my blog...scroll down and you can play a very cool version of "Love Story" arranged by John Schmidt.*****

lots and lots of Easter

So....this will probably be way too much info. about our Easter celebrations....I apologize in advance. I decided to share a couple shots of the eggs we made cause they turned out so great! We used hair elastics wrapped around the eggs to make the stripes. The speckled eggs are an old family tradition of adding a tbsp. of vegetable oil to the dye....makes for some cool lookin' eggs.

We had our own egg hunt Saturday morning at home. The kids spent the morning eating way too much candy...seriously, there were so many wrappers on the floor. We cleaned up and headed to Grandma's for the next hunt around 3:00. I made the kids take a few pics before we left...this one is my favorite!

Thanks to a lot of rain, we had our hunt in Grandma's basement. Jace was thrilled to find one of the few real eggs that had been hidden by Papa. In fact, Papa hid the eggs so well, that we spent an extra 45 minutes searching for the last real egg. Grandma didn't want to wait for the egg to reveal itself through smell, so Papa and the boys kept looking (the kids gave up and went upstairs to split up the candy stash). Papa finally remembered where it was...next year he has to make a map of where he hides those eggs, especially if we're inside again!

Easter Sunday...ohhhhh so sweet!

We postponed the famous Easter Egg Throw until Sunday evening...again, thanks to the rain (grrrrr). Three of my five kids threw their eggs right into the fence...nice. The best part was when I did the very same thing! I guess we know where they get their egg throwing skills!

It was a great weekend and the perfect way to lead into Spring Break! Yay!