Family Outing

The other weekend we went out and had a fun little day out as a family. We went to see the new muppet movie. It was super good/cute! The girls liked it.

 The girls had fun riding on this little kermit car outside of the theatre. Weee!

Afterwards we got some yummy food at We're Twisted Pretzels. We all shared soup, a pretzel and pizza pretzel, and a pretzel dog!. Seriously yummy.

 We've been watching Top Secret Recipe on CMT, and we decided to try this Mrs. Fields recipe. Incredible! It def. does some things differently, like starting with COLD butter, and freezing 30 min. before you bake them, but this is the best cookie I've ever eaten. But it uses all basic cookie ingredients. yay!

	It’s best to use a stand mixer for these cookies if you have one, although a hand mixer will also work fine. The quality of your chocolate chips is a big factor in these cookies, so use the best ones you can find. If the dough is tacky (it sticks to your fingers), you should add a little bit more flour. Cookies will seem undercooked when they first come out of the oven, but that is exactly what you want for the perfect clone.
	1 cup cold unsalted butter (cubed) 1 cup light brown sugar 3/4 cup granulated sugar 1 ½ teaspoons salt 2 eggs 1 tablespoon Madagascar vanilla extract 16 ounces all-purpose bleached flour (just over 3 cups) 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 2 cups high quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
	1. Combine butter with sugars and salt in a large bowl using the paddle of an electric mixer on high speed until consistency of peanut butter. 2. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. 3. In a separate large bowl combine flour with baking soda and baking powder. Pour this dry mix into the wet stuff and mix just until combined. Mix in chocolate chips. 4. Use an ice cream scoop to scoop out ¼ cup portions 3 inches apart on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. 5. Place a 2 ½-inch ring mold (or biscuit cutter) over each portion of dough and press down on the dough with your fingers so that is molded into a circle around the inside edge of the can. Place the dough into your freezer for 30 to 40 minutes. 6. Preheat a convection oven to 275 degrees (or a conventional oven to 300 degrees). 7. When you are ready to make the cookies, flip over each of the frozen dough pucks onto the parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake (use top rack for conventional oven) for 20 to 22 minutes or just until a couple of the cookies show slight browning around the edges. Rotate cookies halfway through cooking time. 8. Immediately slide the parchment paper with the cookies on it off of the baking sheet to prevent further cooking. Allow cookies to cool for 5 to 10 minutes before handling. Makes 20 cookies.

 This awesome gingerbread house we got from Aunt Sherida and Uncle Ross as a part of our advent calendar we got for Christmas. It was so much fun! This is the final result, and the girls destroying it the next day. mmm..it tasted as good as it smelled.

 This is Mae seconds before bending down to chomp santa!

These are the next big thing, crotch boots, haven't you heard of them?