Favorite Food Friday: Asian Dressing

I love salad! I can eat it as a side or as my meal or as a snack or as... well, you get the point. One of my favorites is salad with Asian style dressing.

The problem for me is I can never find one that I like in a bottle. And every time that I have attempted to create my own it hasn't turned out right - until now. I finely found a blend that I love - not too sweet or salty or orangey - just perfect for my tastes.

what you put in it:
2 tablespoons reduced sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon Mirin
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, finely minced
1 teaspoon sugar
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 cup olive oil

how you make it:

Combine all ingredients, except for the oil, in a mixing bowl. Slowly add in oil while stirring with a whisk. Serve on a bed of lettuce mixed with mandarin oranges, almonds and crunchy chow mein noodles (also good are water chestnuts and bamboo shoots). Enjoy!

(To play along with Favorite Food Friday click here!)

La Habra Children's Museum

Our city has a children's museum that I have been wanting to take Dillon to. It is small and totally quaint. It has been around for over thirty years and I remember going there when I was a kid. I took Dillon and Jordan there today, even though I thought that she might be a bit too old and that he might be a tad too young. But I was wrong and they both had a good time. Like I said, it's small, so I thought that it would only take us an hour or less at the museum - I was wrong - we were there for close to two hours.

They had a play area, a dress up area complete with a stage, a "dinosaur" excavation area, a carousel and many more things. Since today is also Earth day the had a craft area where the kids were able to paint flower pots and plant a flower in it. Dillon loved painting his and Jordan's turned out great.

We had a fun day and I will definitely take Dillon back.

Quack Quack

Today I took Dillon and Jordan to the park for a picnic and to feed the ducks. Dillon was excited to go but once we got there he showed almost NO interest in the ducks... or his lunch. He did have a great time playing on the play equipment and he did feed one or two ducks. There were some little ducklings and he was enthralled with them. They were so cute! We also saw a few turtles. I have never seen turtles in the pond before (and I've been going to this park since I was Dillon's age - probably younger) so it was pretty neat. There were four of them and every time I tried to get close enough to take a picture one would jump back into the pond. I finally outsmarted them and snuck up from behind and was able to get a decent picture.

Easter Egg Cake

Easter Celebrations

We had a wonderful Easter despite the early start. We decided to go to the 7am service at our church and to get there on time we had to leave the house right around 6am which meant getting up somewhere in the neighborhood of 5am. We got to church only to discover that there was no Kidshouse that early (or if there was we couldn't find it in any of the normal locations.) which meant bringing Dillon with us into the "big church." We sat in the back near the exit because we had no idea how he would behave having to sit there for an hour (thankfully the service was shorter than the normal hour and a half since the last time he was in the "big church" he bust out singing the Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin while our pastor was praying- thankfully it was not during a service and better yet - I wasn't there). He did amazing... He bobbed his head along with the Worship music and sat still most of the time. He was quiet and only had to be reminded once. I was so proud of him.

After church we headed over to Derek's house for some donuts and an Easter egg hunt. He had fun looking around the house for his eggs and eating the yummy treats inside.

Next stop of the day was to Jason's parent's house. There was another egg hunt and Dillon was so excited. I even like it because we get to get in on the action as the Easter Bunny hides an egg for all the adults with a five dollar bill inside. We had a nice, relaxing day celebrating the resurrection of our King!

Easter Egg Fun

Soaring Stats

I took Dillon to the pediatrician for his three year checkup and every thing checked out great. He weight in at thirty-seven pounds (ninety-fifth percentile) and was thirty-nine inches tall (ninetieth percentile). My kid is likely going to be a giant - I swear that he will be taller than me by the time he is five!

Out Of The Mouth Of My Babe

Dillon says some of the funniest (and sometimes annoying) things. The kid never forgets anything - he'll bring stuff up days, weeks and even months later. Here are a few of my favorite (and least favorite) things that have come out of his little mouth lately.

Something that he says all. the. time. that drives me insane is "what?" It's not so much that he says it probably in the neighborhood of five hundred times a day, but it's how he says it. It's like Whhuuuuttt. Loooooong and exaggerated and so annoying.

Another thing that he says quite frequently is "I'm upset." He never says I'm mad or sad, it's that he's upset. And I have no clue where this came from because neither Jason nor I ever says that.

I think that Dillon was born to be a nudist. The kid never wants to wear his clothes! This, for some reason bugs Jason - He is constantly asking me why I don't ever put clothes on the kid. The other day when I was changing Dillon's diaper shortly Jason was due to come home from work, I was trying to put his pants back on and he was not cooperating. I said "Don't you want to make Daddy happy by putting on your pants?" "No, I want him to be mad... at you!" Well, gee, thanks a bunch.

Back before Christmas we were watching the movie Mickey's Once upon a Christmas. There is a part in it with Huey, Dewey, and Louie. When Dillon saw them he said: "Mommy, too many Donalds!" Ever since then when there is a lot of something that is how he refers to it - as too many whatever. For example, "Dillon, do you want some grapes?" "I want too many grapes"

I took him to Disneyland a few weeks ago and decided to take him to see Playhouse Disney Live. I took him one other time and that was last May when we went with my mom and Nana. As we were sitting on the floor waiting for the show to start, Dillon looked at me and said: "Last time we came in here with Grammie and Nana." Wow! I was astonished that he had remembered something from almost a year ago - something that happened about a month after he turned two.

When we were driving home from picking up his Valentine's pictures he says to me: Mommy, my window get dirty. I looked at his window and sure enough - bird poop. I told him that a birdy went poo poo on his window. His response? "That is not nice!" The whole rest of the way home he kept saying, "why did the birdy go poo poo on my window" and "but, why?" We stopped at Starbucks on the way home and as we were leaving he saw a bunch of birds sitting on a telephone wire. "Mommy, too many birdies. (a short pause) I wonder which one went poo poo on my window. Maybe it was that one on the bell." It was a funny statement on it's own, but made funnier by the fact that we were about five miles away from where it all started.

He always wants to know who is singing when we are listening to the radio. During the Christmas season I constantly listen to Christmas music. One day while we were driving he asked me "Mommy, who's singing?" I replied "Mariah Carey" He responded "I don't like her... change it!" Jason about spit out his drink laughing so hard. A few songs later it was the song "Up on a Housetop." Dillon declared "Arrgh... a pirate song!" Why? Because they were saying (or so he thought) "Yo, ho, ho!" (You know, "Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go!")

We don't eat fast food often, in fact hardly ever, but that doesn't stop Dillon from knowing the names of all the places. My three favorite names are: Some Boy (Subway) Jacket Box (Jack in the Box) and Carlos Mc Junior (Carl's Jr.) I sort of understand the Jacket Box one but the Carl's Jr. one baffles me to no end!

Jason's parents are Catholic and have a statue of the Virgin Mary in their back yard. Dillon was watering some flowers near her and inquired about the statue. My mother-in-law told him that it was Mary and that if you talk to her she can talk back to you. Dillon looked at her and said "No she can't... She's a statue!"

There are soooo many more to share, but I don't want to keep you reading all day.

The Super Details

Dillon's birthday party was a lot of fun to plan. I started with a photo shoot where I took over eighty pictures (gotta love digital cameras). The invitations were super easy. I made two different collages using one of my favorite sites, picnik. The front of the invitation was all pictures and the back had all the info and some more pictures. Next I uploaded them to Costco's photo center and had them printed as 4x6 photos in a matte finish. I used double-sided tape to tape the front and back together. I mailed them in 5x7 manila envelopes that I ran thought the printer to address. I decided that it would look more "top secret" to have the addresses printed directly on the envelopes instead of hand addressing them or using labels. I picked a basic font for the envelopes (I think it was Courier).

After I had made and printed and assembled the invites Jason and I thought that since the party was at one pm people might eat before they came and we were planning to have food, so I hopped back on picnik and made a food will be served card. I had them printed as wallets and put one in each envelope along with the invitation.

I wanted to keep the decorations fun and easy and didn't want to use crape paper and balloons. While I was brainstorming ideas, I thought it would be fun to have, for lack of better words, word bubbles like in comic books with the words used on the Batman TV show. I googled "Batman Fight Words" and came up with a list of words that I liked. I made stencils using this font and traced the letters onto poster board. The letters were painted using acrylic paint and then the poster boards were cut into jagged circles. I used a staple gun to hang them along the fence. My "niece" Alyssa made a poster that we hung on the outside fence reading "Slagle Crime Fighting Superhero League"

I also made a banner that read Happy 3rd Birthday Dillon loosely using this idea from the awesome blog imperfect / pleated poppy. (Really cute stuff over there!). Since I knew that my banner was going to be long, I made my background signs with half sheets of letter sized paper. I used the same font from the word bubbles for the banner.

Since most of the kids at the party were in the 2-5 age range, I kept the activities to a minimum. I bought a pack of PlayDoh from Target (on sale!) and some plastic cookie cutters from Michael's and set up a PlayDoh table. I also put out several sticks of sidewalk chalk and let the kids color on the patio with it. I decided on playing one organized game - pin the mask on the superhero. My brother drew me a cute little superhero and I painted it. I made some masks out of a sheet of cardstock. And after all the hard work on the game... we didn't play it! But the little guy looked super cute hanging on the fence with the signs.

I know some people don't give out party favors, but I like to. I bought some little bath buckets from the dollar spot at Target and filled them with Batman & Spiderman fruit snacks, a couple of Spiderman temporary tattoos (also from the dollar spot), a small tub of PlayDoh, some twenty-five cent crayons and some superhero coloring pages. Each bucket also had some Super Dillon bubbles. I bought bubbles from the party section at Target and peeled off the labels. I printed a picture of Dillon on some letter sized labels (three per sheet) and then affixed those labels to the bubbles. I coated the new labels with Mod Podge for paper so that the bubble drips wouldn't cause the picture to bleed.

So there you have the details from my lil' superhero's birthday. I would also like to thank my super helpers for all their hard work pulling this all together. Thanks Kara, Tiffany and Alyssa - you guys are awesome!!