Thanksgiving in MV

Hey All,

So, after sifting through about 250 pictures from this past Thanksgiving Weekend I think I have come up with the "blog-worthy" ones... though the pictures are somewhat out of order... Dare I say that the best pictures are at the bottom?

Anyway, on Wednesday the Tulare Carters drove down to Mission Viejo to hang out at 23982 Carrillo Dr. for the last time. My parents are moving to Massachusetts in a week and thus ends a page in the history of the Carter family.

So we went down and spent the weekend with my parents and had a blast! On Turkey Day we had an AMAZING meal prepared by my mother... and did I say yet that it was AMAZING? Well it was! We also celebrated our family Christmas as we will not be able to do that in December this year. Maddie was spoiled with tons of books, toys, and even a new radio flier wagon which will be featured in future posts.

On Friday I picked up James Lo (an old friend from Wyoming) and my dad, my sister, James, and I all went to the Ducks game. We had great seats and the Ducks shutout the Chicago Blackhawks 1-0. After that James and I went to Los Angeles and had Mongolian BBQ and Boba. We came home and hung out with my family before going to the Irvine Spectrum and watching the film "Australia" which I highly recommend.

On Saturday we had lunch and then came home! Check out the pics below!

Who does she look like...

Who does Ms. Maddie look like? Lets take a look at those old pictures again...

Bread anyone?

So, my brother has inspired me to start my own attempts at bread making and I have already learned one very important lesson... it ain't easy making bread! I decided to start small with a loaf of Italian Bread (very easy recipe... dare I say "idiot proof"?). That may not sound too tough but, seeing as I have never baked a day in my life... and that is no joke... this was a learning experience. I made the preferment Saturday night but forgot one very important part... I was using "dry yeast" which needs to be proofed in water before adding it to the mixture. So I had to throw out last night's batch of preferment and started again this morning. It all went pretty well after that and below is the finished product. It is very dense (probably because I mixed with my hands as opposed to a mixer) but very nice. Not bad for the first try huh?

Around the house

Well, I thought I was done but I found some more pictures. These are just some pictures and one video that I took a couple of nights ago when we were just hanging out after work.

One thing I must say about Ms. Maddie is that she is obsessed with hygiene. She LOVES to have her ears cleaned out. If I even mention it she scurries off to the bathroom to get the que-tips and brings the box back to me. She then proceeds to lay in my lap and close her eyes... she gets so relaxed that sometimes she almost falls asleep. She also loves to grab que-tips and try and clean out her ears by herself... very cute! She also tries to repay the favor by cleaning out my ears too. She also loves to brush her teeth and often tries to clean our teeth as well... as you can see in one of the pics below.

Other than that there are some pics with Ms. Ruby being a nosey parker. Whenever we sit on the floor Ruby is RIGHT there looking for attention!