Stair Boy

Dax started consistently crawling up the stairs last weekend.  He does not attempt to climb down (he has fallen down the stairs twice).  So after he climbs up the stairs, he just stands at the top and whines, until someone comes and carries him back down. 

Target

I have a deep love of Target. I went there this morning with the kids. If any of you know me and have been around me for the last 2.5 years, then you know my daughter Adra. Adra is unlike any other child I have met. For a good 1.5 years she was a difficult child (have I ever mentioned that). Don't get me wrong, she is snuggly and kissy and sweet, but at times she is a handful. She has changed a lot in the last few months (maybe 6 months now). During her "difficult" time I really couldn't do anything by myself (when I say by myself I mean with my kids, because honestly when you have 3 children ages 4 and under you are never really by yourself). I almost felt like a prisoner, if I wanted to run and get some milk, I couldn't. Luckily my parents live a stones throw away and my mom helps me a lot. We go to the grocery at the same time, so she can help with the kids (Adra). Lately I have been able to go more places with the kids without a helper, and it feels great. This morning I went to Target, for a couple hours, and the kids stayed in the cart, and never once cried. Oh, that gives me so much joy. Not only did I get to go to my favorite store in the world, I never once had to tell my children "NO",  "Stay in the cart!", "Sit down!", "Don't touch that!".
                                                  Oh Happiness!

Elmo's World!

Over the weekend we decided it was high time we went down to Louisville for no reason at all but to just hang out with the other Childress clan.  We get to visit them often, but it is usually because of a birthday or wedding, and it is just crazy busy.  We planned on having a fun day swimming at their pool, but we woke up Saturday to rain....all day rain.  We decided to go to the Science Museum in Louisville instead, and we had so much fun, the kids had fun too!  Here are some pictures of our trip.

Looking at the river. 

So excited to see Elmo's World!

First we went to the Kid Zone!

Look what I made!  A flower.

There was a water station.  Dax got soaked, but he had fun drinking the water.

This is what Josh and BC did the whole time we were at the water station. They competed to build the best boat!

Then Adra showed me her booger.

There was of course the occasional melt down.

We then went to the Elmo's World exhibit, which was all about your body.

 
This was Grover's Dace area.  The girls had fun dancing around.

science center from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

 Then they got to go to the Elmo's World room.  Which was so neat!

Farrah digesting food.

Playing the Organ organ.

Time to shop!

We had such a fun weekend!  Thanks so much BC and Hope for letting us come visit!  The kids really miss their cousins!

This entertained Dax the whole way home, he just kept trying to balance the balls on his head, and then laughed whenever they fell down (yes I had fun reaching back there every few seconds to pick up the balls for him).

Zoo pictures!

This week we made bears, per the girls request. I recently bought some cheap paper plates just for crafts.

Working hard

Showing off her finished bear face.

Mom called this morning and suggested we go to the zoo since the weather was nice and cool (well low 80's will low humidity seems cool to us).  We both forgot our cameras, but who needs a camera if you have Farrah.  

              Monkey                  ?                     Monkey                Monkey

       Monkey                     Lion                    Monkey                Butterflies

      Rhinoceros            Orangutan            Monkey           Elephant bathing    

                ?                     Birds                    ?                       Elephant

   Lion                            ?                           ?                          Stork

               Bear               Polar Bear               Bug                      Lemur

Quiet time

I am the only one awake, and the house is very quiet, except for the tapping of the keyboard.  Joshua is sick with a fever, so was sent to bed early, and I just got the girls to finally go to sleep.  We went to the library this evening and went to story time (we just happened to come at the right time!). I also finally signed the kids up for the summer reading program, which ends August 28th, but I know we will have no problem reading 20 books by then, I think we read 6 today already.   I love the library, I love books, I just wish I read more.  I have a great excuse this week to catch up on some reading, our DIRECTV is not working, so no TV for us.  Instead of turning my brain off and turning the TV on, I am going to curl up in my glider and get lost in "The Princess Bride", which I have seen probably a million times but have never read. 

I make fire

So I have been watching The Colony this season, and Joshua and I have also gotten into watching Dual Survivors.  Both wonderful shows by the way.  They got me thinking about how I really have no life sustaining skills.  I don't know how to make fire (without matches), I don't know how to set traps to catch food, I don't know how to build a shelter, I don't know which plants or bugs are safe to eat, I don't know the medicinal uses of different plants, I don't know which way South is, the list goes on and on!  So pretty much if some sort of life altering disaster happens, I am screwed (and so are my children!).  I was telling my husband how we should go and try and live in the wilderness for a while, and just "live off the land" so we will be forced to learn these skills, then he kindly reminded me how when we are camping I freak out whenever I see a daddy long leg.  I love him for bringing me back to reality.  But seriously I wish I had more outdoorsy skills.  One day I think we should go out in my parents woods, and try to make a fire, sounds like fun right? RIGHT? OK maybe not, but I think about this stuff all the time, maybe I can just learn all of the skills I need from watching these two shows.....yeah I will just tell myself that.

Updated to new blogpot....and I am having trouble figuring it out! Frustrated

My parents are still in the process of draining their pond to fix it.  Since the guy drained it, it filled back up, so he drained it again, and amazingly there are fish in it again (a breed of blue gill that we have never had in the pond before).  Josh and I went down with a net a caught maybe 20+ fish!  We then decided to put them in the kids swimming pool so the kids could "play" with them. 

The girls loved helping Daddy fillet the fish. 

It is hard to take a picture of this girl, she never stays still!

Best fish skinner in the world!  They don't make them anymore, but you can get them on Ebay

The girls painted some pretty pictures

Then they decided it would be more fun to paint Mommy

Then they painted each other!

Farrah got me to put some make up on her. 

She is breathtaking!

Seriously, it hurts me...She is too beautiful!

Dimples!

Here is Farrah working on Preschool. She loves it so much. We do it Monday, Wednesday and Friday.


















So I am just updated to the newer version of blogspot (which I figured out from helping Joshua with his blog). There are some things I like about it, but one thing that is really frustrating me is the picture uploading. Once I uploaded the pictures I couldn't add text in between them! I know you can add a caption now to the pictures (which is new), but I prefer not to use that feature, and still be able to write in between the pictures! I have not figured out how to do that. So hopefully if I play around on this a little longer, I can figure it out. Do most people write their whole blog out first and then add pictures? That takes too much thought for me. Anyways here is what I wanted to write in between the pictures, you can just look at the pictures and try to figure out where these comments belong:

The next day after we caught all the fish we had a fish fry!  Bluegill is one of the best tasting fish.  Josh loves fried foods! So he figured since we were already frying the fish, we should make onion rings....they were AMAZING!  We then looked around to find other things to fry.  We got some jalapenos out of the garden, stuffed them with cream cheese and made some insanely hot jalapeno poppers!

We did a lot of painting this week, and used lots of different things to paint with.  The girls had so much fun rolling the cars in the paint, and then Farrah had the great idea to get some plastic animals and make animal prints in the paint.  I feel like I have been slacking lately with the crafts, I blame it on the warm weather.  Once winter comes and we are stuck in the house, I am sure we will start doing more creative crafts.

Farrah and I started preschool this week.  This is a decision I have been struggling with for a long time, to put her in preschool, or home school preschool her.  Honestly preschool is EXPENSIVE!  I had no idea!  I think the cheapest place we found was almost $200 a month!  So I finally decided to do preschool at home.  I LOVE doing it with her, and I looking forward to have more structure with it.  Last year we did preschool maybe once a week, but it was very informal and not very organized.  I am trying to make this more official.  We are doing preschool every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  I have three plastic file folders (shown above) each with a weeks worth of preschool in it.  We mostly do handouts, on average 4 (front a back) each time.  I took a picture of two of the handouts that we did on our first preschool.  I can not tell you how much Farrah loves it and looks forward to it.  We do it in the afternoon when both Dax and Adra are napping.  Every time I also have her write her name on her handouts, and she is getting so good at it (I let her copy off one that I wrote), soon she will be able to do it by memory.  I am hoping to start incorporating more crafty things too, and hopefully can get Adra involved in that aspect of it. 
The girls are doing classes at the Y.  This was their last week, and the next session starts in September, so I need to decide what to sign Farrah up for.  I think I am going to wait for Adra to turn 3 and be potty trained before I sign her up for another class.  She loved gymnastics but she is just too advanced for the 2 year old class, and was a little bored.  Throughout the year Farrah will be taking a variety of classes; dancing, swimming, art, pottery, Spanish, and more!  They have so many different classes at the Y, and I am so grateful for that so she can have some real "classroom" experience. 

Dax can say "No" now.  He is a snugly, sweet, adorable baby.  We love it when he gives us snuggles, and kisses, and head butts (which are Dax kisses).

Farrah and Adra are getting bigger and older way too fast.  I just want to freeze them in time.  They play so well together, and I am so happy they have each other!

That is all for now. 
Hopefully I figure out this new blog thing, so I can integrate text and pictures better!