balance

I find it really hard to balance everything in my life. It seems like whenever I excel at something the quality of something else severely decreases. I always tell Josh, if once part of the house is clean, then there is another part that is a wreck.....this theory describes everything in my life!
This week I have been doing lots of crafts with the girls, and making sure that we are spending good quality, and educational time together. I have been doing great at this. My laundry, however, is piling up. I have only done one load, and I still haven't put it away yet. I guess it is the old, every action has and equal and opposite reaction. Oh well, I am having a lot of fun with the girls, and Dax, but soon we will run out of clothes, so I need to find a balance. We still are not completely unpacked yet, which I am not fretting over. I like getting it done a little at a time, and we are getting rid of a lot of things. Joshua has been my motivator to having a clutter free home....I am trying, but I am a bit of a pack rat. I really do like living with less stuff in the house, it makes the house look so much better, and calmer, plus it is less cleaning for me. We still have a lot of things we need to tackle, such as the play room....I have nightmares about cleaning out that room, but with Christmas coming we need to make room for all the new toys. Right now that room is busting at the seams!

read to dax from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Dax is always surrounded my his sisters!

My mom is the new chicken lady! Yes my parents have 15 new children, and they sure are smelly! They will soon go out to the barn. My girls love to play with them and hold them. I just keep my distance! They are pretty fun to watch though, and it will be so nice once they start laying eggs!


Joshua brought these home from his last Mexico trip. They have the day of the cadaver, instead of Halloween, and there is skull stuff everywhere.

Farrah loved it!

A couple weeks ago, while I had a friend watching my kids and while Josh was in Mexico I decided to paint the girls room. I had some help from my mom and a friend, and I just LOVE the way it turned out, and so do the girls. Now my pretty little princesses have a princess pink room! I still have no idea what I am going to paint in Dax's room.

Empanda night! These are called Arab empanadas, and Joshua used to eat them all the time on his mission in Argentina. We saw a show on the food network that featured these, so Josh decided we should make them. He looked up authentic recipes and translated them from Spanish to English for me. They don't use tablespoons or teaspoons, they just measure in spoonful, we we had to guess with the seasonings. We made the dough and the filling together, it was so much fun cooking with him. We made a ton of them, and my parents came over to try them too! They were very, very good, but a lot of work. We decided we should have an empanada night every month or so, because there are so many different varieties of them. It was so much fun trying something that Joshua used to eat all the time.
Here is the first batch, ready to go in the oven.

You squeeze lemon juice on them before you eat them. Adra loved squeezing the lemons!

Dax watched while we feasted!

The finished product! Yum!

We had a fall themed Monday, I made leaf shaped sandwiches and then we made fall trees. I was trying to teach Adra the colors we were using. She seems to struggle with colors, according to her every color is PINK!


Before I had started working on the alphabet with Farrah, but with all the craziness from the move, I got a little distracted. I started again this week, and decided I would have Adra participate too. So far we have made alligator's out of the letter A, and apple trees. The girls really love doing these crafts. I usually wait till Adra is asleep and Farrah and I do them, but Adra really loves doing it. Yesterday when daddy came home she went up to him and started telling him about the picture she made, she was so proud, it just filled my heart! I love those girls so much!

Our thankful tree. I have been checking out a lot of blogs lately because I wanted to start doing more creative crafty things with the girls. So I decided to make a thankful tree, and I think it turned out great! I cut it out of an Ikea bookshelf box, and then spray painted it. I hung it up in our living room, and it looks so good (can you tell I am proud of myself)! Last night we did it for the first time, we each thought of something we were grateful for and I wrote it on some leaves that I cut out. Daddy was thankful for work, I was thankful for family, Farrah was thankful for Adra, and toys, and Adra was thankful for books. We are going to do this every night when Daddy gets home from work. Soon the tree will be filled with thankful leaves. The girls really liked doing it, and I think it is a great way for them to remember everything that we should be grateful for.

Daxie, my little monkey!