Molly and DJ's wedding

This was a busy week! While I was running around packing, doing laundry, cleaning the house, the girls somehow where able to relax! They love each other so much!

I have been trying to feed Dax more, cereal I mean, and this boy loves it. I think I have only given it to him 4 or 5 times since I introduced it to him over two weeks ago....like I said before....life has been busy!

Daxie eats more from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

I did find time however one night to tattoo the girls.....they loved it! Both the girls scratched it off though, and then they were sad that their tattoos were gone!

As most of you know, this week was so busy because it was wedding week! Molly and DJ got married on Saturday. We left Friday afternoon to head to Kentucky. I put the girls hairs in foam curlers for the day. They loved it, and felt like princesses (that is what they kept telling me). Adra's hair is still too short for curlers however, and her hair ended up crazy....but it somehow fit her well :-)

We checked into the hotel Friday afternoon and we went to the the Louisville temple Friday night. We were so happy to all go to the temple together....which is very hard to do when you have kids (especially one who is nursing!). I want to express extra thanks to Megan, Quin (I hope I spelled your name right!), Mason, Charlie, Jake and Conrad......I think that is everyone! It was so special that the whole Childress family was able to go spend time in the temple together.....what a special experience....and it wouldn't have been possible without all those sweet people willing to watch all our kids!
We got out of the temple around 9:30pm, we went back to the hotel and myself and the other girls got ready for the bachelorette party!! WOOHOO!
Here is Molly her last night as a single lady!

Saturday morning Molly is getting ready for the big day. Here is Farrah watching Megan do Molly's makeup.

At 12:30 Molly and DJ were sealed together in the Louisville temple. Thanks again to all that helped watch our kids so that we were able to watch them be sealed. What a special day. We have gained a new family member, and could not be happier. We all love DJ so much (my girls especially!). We also got to meet and fall in love with DJ's family, they were so great and fit right in with all of us. I wish we all lived closer together!
Dax in his sweet tux! What a cute boy!

Farrah looking gorgeous at the reception hall!

Mr and Mrs Steffensen


Molly and her neices

Overwhelmed!

Farrah dancing the night away!

mollys wedding from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Lets Dance from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

The girls getting ready to throw rice

And off they go.....happily ever after

Dax chilling while we clean up

The next morning.....Farrah recovering after a rough night of partying. (don't worry it is milk)

Time to leave the hotel.

We had a great weekend. What is better is that this week is Thanksgiving week, so we get to go spend more time with family, having fun and making memories.

Cereal

Farrah is reading Dax a book. The girls love books, and they especially love the books we get a the library. Every time we get a new batch they sit and look though all of them.

Last Thursday we fed Dax rice cereal! We haven't done it since then, because we have been so busy, and I really didn't want to add to my never ending to do list. But I will probably start again next week.

yummy from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

So Adra didn't hear the part about not feeding Dax anything else, because a couple days later I gave the girls some sour apple cotton candy, and Adra fed some to Dax!


Here are the bags of icing I prepared for the girls to use. Pretty fall colors

Yes, they decorated cookies without any clothes on....this was on purpose, because I didn't want the icing to get all over their clothes. After we decorated, the girls went straight to the bath!

We made Thanksgiving cookies. YUM!

The finished products. Joshua made the turkey....he did a great job, don't you think?

We made bee's out of the letter B

Farrah had a fun time sorting through rice. I gave her a bucket with rice and a bunch of different objects in them, and a slotted spoon. After she separated all the objects with the rice, she had fun transferring the rice to different containers, using different tools. She played with this for over an hour!

So I also had a birthday yesterday. We celebrated it on Saturday in Kentucky and Sunday in Ohio.
Dax recently started sucking on his lower lip and making these funny noises....here is the video.

lets make some noise from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

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!

Halloween

Halloween
Josh's family came up to go trick our treating in our new neighborhood. It was so nice just walking around our neighborhood and meeting people and getting lots of candy. We had so much fun. It was a little cold and windy, but the kids didn't really care, because they were just amazed that they could go to all these houses and people would just give them candy. One house they went to had their porch lights on, so the girls went up and rang the doorbell right at the same time these two boys (probably under 13 years old). No one answered the door, so the two boys reached into their pillow cases full of candy and gave each girl a piece of their own candy. What a sweet simple act, but it had such an affect on us. How thoughtful those boys were, their parents are doing something right! Of course when they got to our house, we made sure they could get a lot of candy.

I put Farrah's hair in curlers, and she decided while I was taking pictures of her with them in her hair that she would make some more funny faces. I love that girl!


This is how Dax looks most of the time. He stopped taking his pacifier a couple months ago, because he figured out how to suck his fingers. It is the sweetest thing ever. He went to the doctor last week and weighed 13lbs 1 ounce, and was 25 inches long. Adra went to the doctor too, and she weight 24.1 lbs, and was 34 inches tall.

The girls, Tinker Bell, Lady Bug, and Musketeer (it is from a barbie movie). Adra kept trying to sting people, and I kept telling her that she was a lady bug and not a bee. I told her nursery teacher and she told me that they sing the "Bringing home a baby bumble bee song" and use finger puppets of bees and lady bugs, so that is why she was probably doing that.

All the cousins

Dax the dragon

I attempted to dress up this year

Our house bombarded with trick or treaters.....I LOVE IT!

Time to go trick of treating


Farrah just LOVED trick or treating.

Untitled from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Dax was mad he couldn't have any candy

Candy time from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

This is my favorite thing Dax does, he loves to grab your face and then tries to pull you in for a kiss.