What are YOU Making for Dinner? :)

One of my favorite recipes is my mom's Orange Chicken, and I thought it needed to be shared. It is so easy, especially if you think ahead. Set things up like this:

From left to right: boneless/skinless chicken breast, egg (beaten), breadcrumbs, a frying pan of olive oil, a casserole dish sprayed with pam and filled with about half of the sauce.

Sauce:

2 Cups Orange Juice

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup White Vinegar

2 T BBQ Sauce (It's actually just for color)

One by one, dip the chicken breasts in the egg, then the bread crumbs, and then brown for about two minutes on one side...
And then the other:
As you take them off the frying pan, place them gently in the casserole dish. Then, pour the rest of the sauce so that the chicken breasts are almost covered. (But don't let the sauce get too close to the top of the casserole dish. It can spill easily as you put it in and take it out of the oven.):
Cover with foil, and bake at 350° F for about 40 minutes. Thicken the sauce with a little cornstarch, and serve over rice.

The quest to make dinner continues. Hopefully this can help you all add one more easy recipe to your arsenal!

I get an inordinate amount of joy from organizing things. Few things make me happier than designing a system for things and diminishing clutter. The most recent project? Cal's toys. What you are about to see is a miracle. Literally, about a 6-square-foot area of his floor used to be completely impassable, what with toys, outgrown clothes and blankets, baby gear, etc. I was a bit paralyzed about the project, because all the toy-storage systems seemed too small for Cal's things, and I didn't want to have a useless piece of furniture taking up space. This is about de-cluttering, remember? I was getting frustrated, and then...

One $70 trip to Ikea later, and voila:

I took a shot in the mirror to show part of the rest of the room:
I am so excited about this new organizational unit. Cal can reach and access all his toys, and the shelves are deep and wide enough to hold his larger toys. There's even room to add another shelf as he grows taller and has more things, although hopefully we'll never end up with too much stuff. Why does order make me so happy?

Vocal Rest, and Happenings from the Week

We had a wild week, filled with activities! As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have a resolution to do more fun activities with Cal, even if they're simple. This week, we had a lot of fun.

Monday: I discovered Cal has an intense love of popcorn, which means that he is definitely my son. Once a day (sometimes more than that), he comes to me and says "pa-kornnnnnnn!" I unwrap it and put it in the microwave, and then every time a kernel pops he gasps dramatically. After a minute of that, he yells out "Bowl!" and gets one of our big red bowls out from the bottom cabinet. Then we sit on the couch together and fight over it. It's become a daily routine.

Also on Monday, we prepared jello jigglers. I didn't let Cal pour the boiling water, of course, but he did get to open the jello packets, and mix. Oh how this boy loves to mix.
We made lots of different colors, and then put them in the fridge to set, so we could cookie cut them when our friends came over on Thursday:

Tuesday, we got together with all the younger moms from church for a fun luncheon put on by some very sweet ladies from the ward. Cal played in nursery with his friends while I got to hear a lesson and eat lunch with my friends. Afterward, he was very interested in helping clean up the chairs:


On Wednesday, I went to an ENT about soreness I've been experiencing with my voice. He did a scope on my throat (I do NOT recommend that, ever), and determined that the best thing to do would be to go on vocal rest for 5 days. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this. I have a two-year-old and a lot of social commitments. Wish me luck.

Thursday, we got a last minute call that our friends were sick with ear infections, so we jello-jiggled by ourselves.

I had a fun time at book club, and am excited that it seems to be working -- people are showing up and reading the books! Yay!

Friday was a little bit of a boring day. I woke up not feeling too great, but dragged myself to the gym anyway (pat on the back!). We lay low the rest of the morning and afternoon, and somewhere in the middle there, I came upon this disturbing scene:

First thought: "Oh no, my germaphobia is rubbing off." Going to try to be more relaxed about cleanliness this week...

Also enjoyed a fun girls' night out with about 8 or 9 of the girls in my congregation. I'm loving that there are so many fun people living close by!

While at girls' night out, Reed sent me this photo of Cal choosing a book to read:

Every time we tell Cal to pick another book, he has to pull his chair over and ponder his decision.

Saturday, Reed was at MacWorld in San Francisco, so Cal and I took a picnic lunch to the park with friends. He was super excited to pack a brown bag lunch, and insisted in holding it all the way to the playground:

There are huge duck ponds at the park we visited, but they're drained right now. The boys climbed down inside and were running around, and Cal went over to investigate this little opening in the ground (6" diameter plastic pipe, filled with water). Imagine my surprise when he suddenly "fell in" -- his leg disappeared up to his diaper! I freaked out and ran over, but Cal was laughing about it. His right half was completely soaked.

All in all, it was a busy week for me and this little guy:

Hopefully I can keep coming up with activities to keep him happy, curious, active and engaged. Things go better for the both of us when we're having fun together every day. :)

Fun Day in Palo Alto!

I have a New Year's resolution to do more fun things with Cal. On Saturday, we decided to take a family day trip to the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the excursion turned out wonderfully! We met up with Aunt Heather, and the four of us had a total blast.

The first things we saw when entered the little museum were these kinetic machines. The kids could grab tennis balls from the ground and send it through the machines by cranking knobs and turning wheels. Cal LOVED it! Here he is, dragging Daddy along:

There was a wind turbine where you could rearrange the parts to see what the most efficient use of wind energy would be (yes, this is Palo Alto):

Cal loved pushing the yellow "Wind" button and getting blasted with wind:
Next, we went to the bug exhibit. All the windows were toddler-height, so we adults had to crouch down on our knees to see. I think Cal was excited to have everything at his level!

This was the water-energy machine:

Tesla sphere:

At the butterfly cabinet, Cal would hide inside and then pop out like a jack-in-the-box. EVERY picture I tried to snap of this was blurry. Luckily, Heather got one shot:

More bugs:

After the museum, we headed outside to the tiny zoo. It was really cute! Can you see the python in the photo below?

There was a gorgeous, neon pheasant in this cage, but you can barely see it from my photo:
Cal was very interested, and asked for the car keys so he could unlock the door. This is a picture of us explaining that our keys wouldn't work:
All those animals, and of course Cal's favorite thing to do was to watch the ducks:


They had a little observation hole for the badger pen:
Look at this face:

Mommy doesn't like geese, but Cal was very interested.

We finished up at the zoo, but our fun day did not stop there. The four of us went back to Heather's house to pick up Winnie, then walked over to the playground nearby.

Winnie dug in the sandbox for about 20 minutes straight:

We ended the day with a trip to "the Melt", a grilled cheese sandwich restaurant. It was perfect for a cold, kinda drizzly night.
What a fantastic way to spend a Saturday! I am so glad to have found another activity that Cal loved.