now I know my abcs...

Jada has always loved books. Once she knows a story, she can 'read' it by looking at the pictures and telling you the basic story. So we decided to help her to learn to read all the words.

Chelsey has been working a lot with Jada (and Kayla is learning too!) to learn the ABC's, and the letter sounds. After about two or three weeks, Jada went from knowing ABC song to being able to recognize all the letters, the sounds that they make, and can even write some of them! We told her that when she could say all the letters and their sounds, we would take her for Ice Cream and the play place at McDonald's. We made this little sticker book with the alphabet, and we would quiz her a few times a day. Chelsey found lots of free online printable games that made it easier to help teach and learn the ABC's.
Now we are doing a lot of reinforcement of it, and Jada is also learning how to sound out some simple words. Before long, she will know sight words (such as: the, it, he, look, she, etc) and some family words ("At" family includes bat, cat, hat, mat...). She already is able to read one early reader book about a ballerina princess. It is exciting to help our family learn about the magic of books!

Beef... It's What I made for dinner

So we have had a couple sirloin tip roasts from Costco sitting in our freezer for a little while and its made me want to have roast beef. I was also wanting BBQ (why not in January - it was fairly nice weather here in Lethbridge). So I decided to BBQ one of the roasts (the other got thinly sliced to use in Chinese food another day). It turned out really well!

 

I used a rub of sea salt, black pepper, garlic powder, paprika and rosemary. Don't ask me how much of each, as I didn't measure. But go easy on the rosemary, as it has a strong flavour. I let that sit on the roast for a couple of hours as it warmed up to room temperature - everything I had read recommend that. I lightly browned each side on the grill, then using indirect heat (outside two burners on with the inside two burners off, roast over the off burners) and a mix of hickory and apple wood chips for smoke, I let it cook for a little over an hour for 2.25 lb roast. It cooked to between medium rare and medium, and it was nice and tender.  We caught some of the drippings and made a gravy and baked some potatoes in the oven. Jada and Kayla really only ate potatoes with a couple of pieces of meat. They kept asking for more potatoes.

Lessons learned from this:
- One side of my bbq gets a little warmer then the other, so I need to play around with that so it is a little more even.
- I'd cook it closer to 25 min/lb instead of 30.
- I'd definitely do this again!

Christmas

As promised, I'm doing our Christmas post. Only a week after Christmas, not too bad eh?
We had a lot of fun this Christmas. We spent time with both sides of the family - it's fairly easy to do when the two sides live only an hour apart. We spent most of the time with the Innes side, as my Sister Amy and her family were up, and we wanted our girls to have a chance to play with their cousins. So there ended up being 8 grandkids at my parents, with the oldest being 12. Only one grandson too! So our girls had a lot of fun with their cousins.

We spent part of Christmas eve with Chelsey's family. Ate their traditional meal of appetizers (the Parks really really like doing appetizer meals! Its a lot of fun as you get to eat a bunch of different things). When we first got there, Chelsey helped Jada and Kayla put out some "Reindeer Food" - Oatmeal and sugar and sparkles - in the snow. They were excited to leave some food for Rudolf and his friends.

We also opened up a present each. The girls got to open their present from Grandma. They got some small cloth diaper bags and homemade diapers and bibs for their baby dolls. They loved it.

After a short time with Chelsey's Family, we went off to Cardston. As I said, Amy was up, so we decided to go into to Cardston and sleep at my parents house so the girls could sleep with their Cousins. We left some cookies out for Santa, and finally got them in bed about 9ish. It was late for our girls and Amy's girls, but it was Christmas!

Claire, Jada and Jane

 

The next morning, my dad said that they all got up at 530am! Way to early! But they opened up their stockings, and played downstairs. We ate breakfast first, as we knew that once we started opening presents, our girls wouldn't want to do anything else.

 Jada helping pass out presents

 

Christmas morning fun

 

its a little bird

 

Looking at the new toys

 Alayna slept most of that time, so we had Jada and Kayla help open hers later. Everyone had a good time with Christmas. Jada because she went to bed late and got up way too early was out of sorts a bit. Every so oft she would start crying "I want to go home". After a few minutes, her cousins would say, "Jada come play' and happily she went to play again. She got some new colouring things, and had a great time talking and colouring with her cousins. I a new game - Munchkin (I've played before, and have some of the other sets, but never got the original till now) - and I surprised Chelsey with some new baking pans. Kayla's favorite present was a play shopping cart, that could fit her baby dolls in. In fact, once she had that, she didn't care about opening other presents for a little bit.
Chelsey and I had fun playing board games with Amy and Mike and catching up with everyone.

All in all, we had a good time. Can't wait till next year's Christmas when Alayna is more into it!