Meal Planner - Recipe Ideas for the Week

So, even though I am working full time, I still like to feel like I'm the mom and can still get dinner on the table every once in awhile... but when I don't get home until after 6 pm after driving in horrendous Vegas traffic, sometimes the last thing I want to do is cook. I'm imagining that there are others like me out there, so I am putting a few of my fast recipe ideas online. If anyone else has a quick dinner idea, please post it here.

I try to use the same ingredients in more than one meal, set up a slow cooker, and use advanced planning to help create dinners on busy weekdays. I also like to make meals that I can freeze and use again in a week or two.

So, for all you busy mom's out there, here are some ideas (these are not necessarily kid friendly, so you might have to make some adjustments). The three main meals are:

Night 1: Mini Pizzas
Night 2: Quesadillas
Night 3: Calzones

Main ingredients:
Pre-cooked chicken (like Tyson grilled chicken strips)
Tortillas
Salsa
Pizza dough (store bought or recipe below)
Shredded mozzarella
Pizza toppings
Tomato sauce with spices or ready-made spaghetti sauce (make enough for two meals)

To prep for night 1, make the dough recipe in advance if you can:
Breadstick/Pizza Dough
1 T. yeast
1 T. sugar
1 ½ c. warm water
1 tsp. salt
3 T. oil
3-4 c. flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine warm water, yeast and sugar. Sir and add in flour, salt and oil. Knead and shape with more flour until not sticky. Let rise, then punch down. Split dough in half and save one half for recipe the next night.

Night 1: Roll dough out flat and cut out circles for mini pizzas - load up with pizza sauce, cheese and toppings and bake at 350 until slightly browned. Wrap up leftovers for lunches.

Night 2: Use chicken, cheese and tortillas to make quesadillas. Serve with salsa, or add in sour cream and avacados. Cut into triangles with a pizza cutter.

Night 3: Use second half of pizza dough - roll out into two circles and add chicken, cheese and other pizza toppings; fold over half of circle to make calzone. Crimp edges with a fork to seal in ingredients. Brush outside with an egg white. Bake at 350 until golden brown.

I will try to post other ideas next week - I tried to start a recipe club with my family and a few friends last year and then I got pregnant and lost my mind. So maybe this can be a replacement for that idea.

President Hinckley Passes Away

Beloved Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, who led The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through 12 years of global expansion, has died at the age of 97. President Hinckley was the 15th president in the 177-year history of the Church and had served as its president since March 12, 1995.



The Church president died at his apartment in downtown Salt Lake City at 7:00 p.m. Sunday night from causes incident to age. Members of his family were at his bedside. A successor is not expected to be formally chosen by the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles until after President Hinckley’s funeral within the next few days.

For a full story, go to http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/

This breaks my heart and makes me happy at the same time - I really feel like President Hinckley was my President - he was the leader of the LDS church for longer than any other President during my lifetime, and the entire time Matt has been a member of the church. I am so sad to see him pass and I will miss his wonderful sense of humor and very realistic perspective on life, but I am so happy that he will be reunited with his wife - they were always such a wonderful example to me of a loving and fulfulling marriage.

First Cereal

We started giving Claire rice cereal after the doctor Ok'd it at her four month check up, but so far it's just a bit frustrating, for both of us. We'll get the hang of it soon though.



And I just had to put these two pics - she has changed so much in two months!

Texas Friends

I love having friends who have babies Claire's age, I just wish they all lived on our street. We miss you guys!!

The Nevada Caucus

So, I would not call myself a really political person, even though I always vote. I admit that there have been times I've stepped into a voting booth and not had all of the information about every candidate.

This year, Nevada had a Presidential Caucus instead of a Primary election... I am still a bit fuzzy on the details, but how it works is that each voting district is given a number of delegates based on the registered number of voters in the area. So, for our district we had 14 Republican delegates who needed to be chosen in our Caucus, and their votes only would go towards the next vote which is on Feb 23.

It felt like a flashback to the old days - instead of walking into a little private booth to vote, we had to declare our support for a candidate before we could be selected as delegate. There were several members of our ward there, so we kind of rallied together to vote for our delegates.

I decided to support Mitt Romney - I wouldn't call myself a "Mitten", the term Rush Limbaugh coined for female Mitt supporters (although I do think he is handsome and looks very presidential). So, there we were with 13 people who wanted to be delegates - if we had exactly 14 we didn't need to do a vote, which meant no one minute speech followed by a possibly embarrassing "playground" style vote. I did not want to be the last kid picked for the kickball team, but with some persuasion from my friends in the ward I stepped forward to be #14. And low and behold, four more people stepped up right when I did. Crap! Now I had to do the speech!!!

Long story short, I got out something about same-sex marriage and supporting families, and I am now an official Republican Party Delegate. Of course, once we were "elected" we were told there is a $35 fee to be a delegate. Nice... But maybe that is just for the dinner they are having...

Anyway, I do feel kind of excited to be more involved and a part of the process, but it did feel a little old school, like not 1980s but 1880s when we held a straw vote at the end to report back to the polls (it didn't really count) and we ran out of official ballot sheets. So, I scrawled out Mitt Romney on a torn piece of binder paper and that was my vote! Very official!

Oh, and Mitt Romney won the Caucus and received 51 percent of the Republican Party vote - and Hillary Clinton won in a close race on the Democrat side.

Four Months Old!

Time is flying by! Claire is exactly four months old today and Matt and I both went to her four-month check up today, where we had to watch Claire get three shots. She got all red in the face and just screamed. The nurse had me stand near Claire and talk to her, but then I felt like Claire was looking at me like - "how could you let this happen to me?" It's one of the worst experiences I've had so far being a mom... no fun.




But, here are Claire's new stats:

Age: 4 Months
Weight: 15 lbs, 3 oz
Height: 25 1/4 inches (the nurse had to measure her twice because she jumped up on the charts from like a 50% to 90% - she has that long Hiller torso).

Tummy Time, Toe Time

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Bathtime With Dad

Crazy Dreams

When I have a lot of things that I am worried about, or just a lot going on, I sometimes get these crazy stress dreams that combine wacky events, people and places into situations that would NEVER happen... at least I hope they'd never happen...

I am back at work full time (for the past month or so), working two days a week from home for as long as Claire will let me, and then the other days balancing childcare with Matt's school schedule and with a fabulous girl in our ward who is watching Claire the rest of the time. So far it seems to be working out really well, but I had this crazy dream the night before I was dropping Claire off the first time at her house.

In the dream I was trying to tell her all this stuff about Claire - how much she eats, sleeps, poops, etc. all while trying to take a shower and get ready for work at the same time (I was modest, of course). I must have also been worried subconsciously about not shaving my legs enough and having Matt comment on my Sasquatch legs, because in the dream I looked down and I had the hairiest legs ever! Like more than Matt's :) I woke up in a panic - my legs were in fact prickly, but that was all. I think it's so funny how my brain grabs on to random thoughts and facts and tosses them together for my enjoyment and panic every night.

Anyway, I think balancing a job and a family is harder than I ever thought - I used to think I would be able to, and want to, do it all. I just really appreciate and respect all of the SAH moms I know who have made that sacrifice to be home with their kids. I can't do that right now, so I am thankful for all of you who are cutting me some slack for the things that I'm slacking on .... I will get the hang of this soon, and shave my legs to boot!

Grouchy Little Candy Cane

I know this is a bit late, but I just got the pictures from our ward Christmas Party. Matt played a grouchy candy cane - quite the stretch for him, since he's usually a very happy person. :)


We made his costume literally an hour before the play, so it wasn't my best work. He did a great job and, as far as I'm concerned, was the star of the show.