I love blogging!

I love having a blog, and I love blogging about our life. I love that I have my own digital scrapbook of what we have done over the last few years. I sometimes like to look back to what we were doing a year or two ago.
Two years ago this time we were in Washington visiting my Grandparents. Adra was just 3 months old and cute as a button, and Farrah was of course cute as a button too, but going through her terrible twos (she really wasn't that terrible). This was the first year Joshua and I were apart for Valentine's day. Here is a link if you want to see what we were up to two years ago.....here you go!
(sadly the program I used to upload the videos two years ago does not exist anymore....so you can't see the videos anymore)

We have been crazy sick!!

We have been really really really sick, so I haven't had time to update the blog, I have been cleaning up throw up and diarrhea for over a week now. We are finally over the stomach bug finally, but somehow have caught a cold (even though we have be quarantined in this house for like 2 weeks). Before we got sick we started doing a week about rain (at that time it was raining a lot here). Below Adra is making a cloud with lightning and rain.

I made some yummy chocolate covered pretzels. We bought a ton of chocolate bricks for the fondue party new years eve, but they never got used, so I am trying to find ways to use them up. This was a good little snack.

Farrah was at the library with Grandma when Adra and I made the cloud picture, so when she came home she wanted to make one too. Farrah even cut out the cloud. She is getting so good at doing crafts all by herself, mommy doesn't have to help her at all anymore.

Dax likes to climb into things.

We found this craft here, it is an octopus fishing game. Farrah loved creating all the faces.

I found this umbrella craft here. First we colored with crayons and then we did water paints over it.


We then talked a lot about rainbows, and read all of our Noah's Ark books (I think we have around 10). I found this craft here, thee girls loved it, because they love getting their hand traced.

Dax learned to sit up on his own two weeks ago, and last week started pulling himself in the standing position all by himself. He falls a lot, but is persistent.

January 28th was when the sickness hit us. Joshua and I were up all night with the girls, and they were up throwing up. We changed a ton of sheets and pjs. That continued for the next week and a half. We were stuck in the house. We do a couple little activities, because even thought the girls were sick, they also got bored, so they needed some entertaining. I think I got sick on Monday and was sick the whole week. I moved their playroom TV into their room, to try and get them to rest and sleep as much as possible. The best way to get them to lay still is to put a movie on for them.

I found this craft here. We painted a piece of paper with vinegar, and then placed a lot of tissue paper hearts (which I cut the night before). We let the paper dry and then took the tissue paper off the paper, which was supposed to have the tissue bleed on the paper.....didn't work, but they had fun with it.

Josh did a craft with the girls, and they made this craft. They had fun doing something crafty with their daddy.

We also made these heart music makers found here. They first painted paper plates, and then waited for them to dry.

Back to the rainbow activities, we made a rainbow cookie found here. Farrah loved helping me make this, she even cracked the eggs.

We mixed all the colors.

And made a huge rainbow cookie.

Here is the finished heart music maker. Adra made one too. We found some red, pink and white things to put in them (I dyed popcorn kernels red).

We then made a rainbow with the dots found here. Adra just put the dots all over the place, but Farrah did made a real rainbow with it.

We played with play dough. We first played with white and red play dough, and mixed them together to make pink. I then took out my heart cookie cutters, and we made play dough cookies.

Here are the hearts that Farrah made.

Dax and Farrah snuggling together.

Poor little sick baby boy.

Yummy biter biscuit! That was his first one, and he loved it.

Even though we were still recovering from all our illnesses, we went over my parents for the super bowl party last night. I made Stromboli (pictured below), spinach and artichoke dip, meatballs, boneless wings and pecan pie. We all were in a food coma all afternoon and night!

We took a short break from eating and went out to play in the snow. Here Dax is getting all bundled up to go outside. We had fun sledding. As soon as we went outside Dax fell asleep in our arms. He is a sweet toot. Farrah had so much fun sledding. Adra was grumpy and sleepy and didn't want to sled at all, she just walked around and tried to convince us to go back inside.


It seems like we are all having colds now.....hopefully we will be healthy again soon.

Even though they are sick they are still funny.
"Mom I am getting big, and so I can drink Diet Coke soon!" - Farrah

"I am going downstairs to get marshmallows" she pauses to think, "I am not going to eat them, I am going to decorate for you mom." - Adra (she is a smart little cookie!)

While justifying getting a cookie "but mom it's my birthday" - Adra

Here are some lyrics to some songs Farrah made up.....I think we have a mini Molly!
"I give you my heart on the streets of town".....a little later "When it dies you will throw it away and get a new one"

Farrah's prayer this morning,
"Thank you for the food, the blessings, the movies we get to watch, Adra, and the table so I can eat my eggs"

Nail polish! - added video

Our little Adra. She is a special little girl...one of a kind. I love that stinker so much....just look at that face. She keeps life interesting. Two weekends ago she found a bottle of pink nail polish and decided to paint her hands, and mouth with it. In the process she spilled the bottle on the floor. I of course freaked out. New carpet + pink nail polish....a scary combination! I set her up on the counter in our bathroom, and ran to the computer to find a way to get nail polish out of carpet. Hairspray water and alcohol amazingly did the job and you can't even tell! Anyways while I was scrubbing and scrubbing the carpet, I did not realize that Adra was getting into my makeup......this is how I found her. It is hard to get made at that sweet face though!

Dax likes to play in the bath now. He is such a sweet boy!

Two Saturday's ago was Anabelle's birthday party. It was princess party.
Adra just woke up in this picture in her cute tinkerbell outfit.

Dax kept peeking up at me during the drive and smiling.

The sweet princesses. Farrah was so excited to dress up! Adra took a little convincing, and halfway through the party she stripped.

They got their face painted.

The pretty pincesses.

Farrah "cutting" her cake. I don't know why but she sat there for 5 minutes and just kept stabbing that cute little cake.

Nona and Papi as Princess Nona and Prince Charming. Those two are crazy!


We did a snowman theme this week. We did most of our activities on Monday, for some reason I didn't take hardly any pictures the rest of the week.

Making snowman patterns, found here
I printed off a lot of the activities from this page (I just didn't take pictures) Farrah loved the pre-writing books and the number book.

Dressing up a snowman, found here

Making patterns with pom poms.

Sorting pom poms by color

Here was a snowman mobile, found here, that we still haven't finished.....something to work on this week.

I found this idea here. We got out the snow play dough again and had the girls make animal tracks in the "snow". They had a lot of fun doing this!

This a little laminated piece of paper I made that has her name on it. Farrah loves to trace letters, especially when it is her own name!

The girls helped prepare our Family Home evening dessert by sprinkling "snow" on it.

We made snowman pizza for dinner.

Don't they look great....and delicious too!

Dax is crawling, and is all over the place.

Dax crawls from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

He already likes to climb (we might just have another Adra on our hands!). He likes to climb in our new TV stand.
So I didn't take hardly any picture this week except for Monday. Thursday Joshua's parents came up for two nights. We or course had fun with them. We went to Target (which seems to be the tradition when they come up) on Friday, and I found a down comforter for $15! Yes a real down comforter.....and I love it!

Saturday it was 45 degrees outside, and it felt like spring to us, so we spent a good amount of the day outside. Joshua and I cleaned our truck and van out, organized the garage a bit. Dad came over to pick up some things we borrowed from him, and he ended up staying and installing our outside lights (on either side of the garage). It was a great day, we got so much accomplished!

Here are the girls before church this Sunday. (Click on it to make it bigger). Aren't they just amazingly beautiful. I love those little stinkers so much!

Funny things the kids said

When entering the girls room, Farrah and Adra were playing with their doll house. Farrah looked at me and said, "would you like to join us Mommy" - so proper!

My mom took Farrah to the library today for story time, and Adra just kept asking, "Where is my Farrah, I want my Farrah, I miss my Farrah." Sometimes those two fight like cats and dogs, but they love each other so much.

Of course there is a lot more things they said that I just can't think of right now!

Love this girl!

Untitled from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

She is singing "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam"

Week in Review

Here is our weekly review
These next two crafts I found here. This one uses that snowman play dough I made awhile ago, which is amazing by the way....you must make some! The recipe is here. Anyways, you put little balls on a tray and then put colored toothpicks (I colored regular toothpicks) and then give them some beads to sort. Adra struggled with this to begin with, but kept trying and did great! Farrah loved this activity! I will probably do it again next week!

After Farrah used the bigger beads (shown below) she asked to have some smaller ones! She did great with those too.

Here is a quick craft. Just glue a snowflake shape on a piece of paper, and give the kids some fun little things to glue on it. Voila, they loved it!

This is a craft that Farrah got for Christmas. You put the beads on the tray and then when it is all done, you iron it. Farrah sat there and made two whole turtles and then two turtle heads (after she finished each one we would take it up stairs to iron it, and then she would come back down and work on the next one. This activity took a lot of patience, but she loved doing it, and probably worked on it for over an hour!

Here is one of the finished snowflakes!

Mom got a dog! Her name is Bailey, and accourding to Adra she is "HER BAILEY!". The girls (especially Adra), just adore this little puppy, and I do to! Amazingly Joshua even pets her! She is a goldendoodle.....golden retriever and poodle mix. She feels like a stuffed animal, so soft!


Dax and Bailey with their chew toys

Another craft. I saw an idea here and just changed it a little. I put different lengths of tape and let the girls tape them however they wanted on a piece of paper. Then they got to sponge paint the picture.



The hardest part for them was pulling the tape off....it required good finger dexterity and a lot of patience! But they did it without getting frustrated....I was happy.

Adra then decided to paint her face, as she usually does!

I think their favorite part of painting with the sponges, is getting to clean them!

I found this recipe here for snowman clay, and honestly it didn't turn out that great at all. I must have messed up the recipe somehow, but the clay was too squishy and wouldn't form well. The girls had fun decorating it anyways, and I left them out to dry, but know they are shriveled up and turning more of a brown color....not keepers!


It was kind of a slow week, and we didn't do too many crafty things, but we had a fun week. We had a day we played in the snow at Grandma's house....posted below. Last night we went with my parents to a boat show. We had a lot of fun looking at all kinds of different boats, and the girls loved pretending like they were driving them.

Cute things the kids have said

Farrah is now a "sunbeam" at our church, so she gets to do opening exercises with the big kids (I am in the primary presidency, so I get the pleasure of not only teaching all the kids, but know I have Farrah in there too!) Anyways each week one of the kids gives a talk, and another gives a scripture. After church last week while I was cleaning up the room Farrah went up to the podium, and said right in the microphone, "I love Heavenly Father". It was so sweet, she gave her own little talk! - Farrah

Adra has a temper, and has quite a few tantrums throughout the day, usually consisting of telling me "NO!" The funny thing is that all of a sudden in the middle of being mad, she switches back over to sweet Adra. This week after yelling at me and slamming the door in anger, she came out and patted me on the back as she walked by me and said, "sorry momma", and then went in her room to play with Farrah, as sweet as she can be - Adra, that funny girl

When leaving Grandma's house one day, Farrah said, "But Grandma doesn't have any kids, I think she needs kids here." - Farrah

We have a child lock on Dax's door for obvious reasons, and Adra doesn't like it, one morning this week she was crying outside of his door saying, "I want my baby, I want my baby!" - Adra

This week has been a PJ week, we have been extra lazy (seems to be a theme around here!). One day when we actually did get dressed Farrah said "this is a hard day", while putting on her socks. I asked her why it was a hard day, and she said, "because we have to get dressed". What a rough life this little one has! HA -Farrah

My dad just reminded me last night of this funny thing Adra said. Did I mention Adra has a little temper. Well this child loves candy, and mom had real candy canes on her tree, big mistake. One day over the holidays Grandpa was down stairs with Adra while she got a candy cane off a tree. He took it away from her and told her she couldn't eat the candy canes. She yelled at him "NO, Don't talk to me" (I am guessing this, because that is her favorite thing to say along with "Don't look at me", when she is getting into trouble. After several tries, Adra tried a new tactic, she grabbed a candy cane, looked at Grandpa and smiled and said, "Thank you Grandpa, this makes me so happy!", smart little girl! -Adra

We also had our 6 year anniversary this week! I can't believe it has been six years already. I love Joshua so much, and am so thankful for him every single day. With three little kids, life can be crazy sometimes, but I know that I can always depend on him. Above is our first picture together, the night that he got home from his mission. We were just about inseparable from the time he came home. We were engaged less then two month after he got home, and then were married a little over two weeks after that. Pretty crazy, I know, but all I knew at the time is that I loved him so much, and I still do. We are very lucky to have each other.

Snow Day Fun

It warmed up yesterday, and we took advantage. We went to my parents house and made a snowman and sledded!

snowlady from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

sledding from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

we love snow! from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Before we went back in the house to enjoy some yummy hot chocolate, the girls got a little hungry and nibbled on the the snowman's nose!

The Letter E

This has felt like a really lazy week. It has been super cold outside, so we have watched lots of movies, eaten lots of popcorn and drank lots of hot chocolate. We did do some crafts along the way too. We hadn't done very many crafty things over the holiday and Farrah missed it a lot. On Monday we did a lot of little games and crafts (that I hoped were going to stretch throughout the week). Every time we finished something Farrah wanted to do another!

We did a penguin counting game. I got the penguin sheet from here. Then I made an egg carton counter (which I have seen all over the place, and finally found the two minutes needed to make one).

Farrah would shake the egg carton and find the number that the bead landed on. We would then use her little cheat chart (below) that I made a long time ago. She would count the dots that corresponded with the number the bead was on. We then placed that many marshmallows on the penguin grid. I was afraid it was going to be too complicated because there were so many steps, but she did great, and loved it (especially when we were finished and she got to eat the marshmallows)

I printed off two party hats, found here, and cut out the matching shapes from a cereal box, the girls then matched the shapes on the hat. They then colored their party hats when they were done matching.

This was also "E" week, so I tried to do some different "E" activities. Below we are mixing different color paints to make gray, and then painted pieces to later make an elephant.


The finished product is pictured later in this post. We had to wait a day for the paint to dry.
My mom and I went shopping at Micheal's this week (with the kids of course), and I went a little crazy. They had all their christmas stuff on clearance.....i mean crazy deals, so I stocked up for next year.

Back to the elephants. The girls did a great job.

We have had lots of snow....this was after the first snowfall, with only a couple of inches.....we have a lot more now, but I haven't honestly had the energy to get them all suited up to go outside....it takes like 30 minutes just to get all those layers on. I am planning on taking them out on Saturday when I have Joshua's extra hands to help me.

We tried to make a snowman, but the snow was too fluffy, so we made snow angels instead.
We also brought some snow inside to do experiments.

I put some water and food coloring in little tubs and gave the girls each a dropper and we made lots of different colored snow.

Here is Farrah's finished elephant....which she did all by herself. She wanted to add some stripes to the elephants ears....isn't it cute!

I bought these heart shaped muffin tins at Target on sale the other day, and lunch is just so much more fun when placed in these. Today I used a cookie cutter and made snowmen sandwiches (not pictured), they love when they get a "fun" lunch.

We decorated the letter E, and I also had a bunch of cut out shapes that I drew the letter E (upper and lower case) on and then gave the girls each an envelope and let them stuff the cut out shapes in them. They loved this game (didn't get any pictures though).

Here are the girls getting all snuggled up to watch a movie after they played in the snow......hot chocolate in hand, popcorn popping in the microwave. They request this everyday now!

Farrah loves to get her picture taken....she posed like this, what a goof!. This is an Elmo game that I found here. Farrah loved it.

Another fun game that I got from here. We used our cheat chart to help us with the numbers.

Today we did an "E"gg hunt. The girls of course loved this. Inside the eggs I put animals that lay eggs, and then filled the rest with my paper shapes that I wrote the letter E on earlier in the week.



Dax went to the doctor this week:
He weighs 14lbs 6 ounces (3-10%) and is 26 inches long (25-50%).
If we sit him up he can stay for about thirty seconds, then he topples over. He is on the verge of crawling. He scouts all over the place, and can get up on all fours (in the crawl position).

Dax crawls? from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Some cute things the kids have been doing or saying (the few I can remember anyway)
Adra calls her chin a "chinny chin".
Adra loves to sing, her favorite songs are "All the single ladies," and any "Mamma Mia " song....Farrrah has been singing songs from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat".
Farrah told me one morning "I can love on Dax, and Adra, and you, and Daddy all day, but I only pretend to give kisses to Jesus"
Farrah refused to go to bed one night, so she stayed up with Joshua and I and watched TV we are about to turn off the TV and take her to bed (and go to bed ourselves) when Jay Leno comes on, and Farrah looks at the TV and then looks at daddy and says, "Daddy, that is not Dr. Phill." BUSTED....Joshua just looked at me and laughed. Pretty smart little girl!