I've been a mommy for 5 years now.

My precious first born princess Kyla turned 5 years old on Saturday.

Before I post all of the pictures from the fun day, I need to express my very outspoken pride and love for my darling daughter~


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Kyla, LaLa, La-la butts, monkey butts, princess, baby girl;

I wish there was a way in which I could describe, so you would understand, the feeling that you give me. My heart literally feels warmth and my eyes fill with happy tears when I think about what you are to me. You've brought me life that I was desperately in need of. You have shown me what true pride feels like as I am immensly proud of you and that you are mine.

I find peace in looking at your beautiful face full of new freckles and enjoy even more that you love your freckles. I hope that you embrace your obvious skills at learning new things and push your intelligence to the absolute limit you can. You show all of your feelings in your bright blue eyes and I hope that your eyes always possess kindness and honesty. I wish you much strength to get through any difficult times that lie ahead and hope that you know that I will always be there for you. I hope that you'll allow me to kiss and smell your neck even when you are probably too old to let me do that (o: If not, you'll have to continue to sleep with a blanket under your neck and pretend you want to switch with me, so I can have yours every once in awhile......

I think I'm done with you growing now, and would like you to please stop at age 5.

Thank you my darling girl!!! Thank you for being everything that you are and will continue to be. Your daddy and I love you so very much. More than "the last number." XOXO

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Kyla woke up to these balloons in her room on her birthday




All Kyla wanted for her birthday was to have a pool party - Thank goodness for Meme & Papa having a pool, because she must have said at least 20 times that she is " SOOO glad she had a pool party for her 5th birthday!" LOL She was so happy all day!

I feel so bad, I didn't take any pictures of the first hour of swimming, so I missed Abby, Ruby, and TJ with baby Gavin all in the water! I could have gotten some really cute pictures too.







Kyla and her cousin Ava - hopefully they will be spending lots of time together!!

This is who I'm hoping will be strong enough to deal with Kade when he gets older... then Cheryl and I can be in-laws!

the kids waiting to dive for change!


taking a break from the water

And this is Jack's future wife, so Becky and I can be in-laws! When Kyla and Kade aren't around Camy and Jack play SO well together!!

Jack is without arm rings this year and jumping in completely going underwater and swimming alone through out the length of the pool: " I do it!" is all he keeps saying when you try to help.

Seriously - how cute is this?

precious little Aubrey!


eating popsicles by the side of the pool (o:

Oops, these uploaded backwards...



Opening presents.... there are about 25 more of these pictures, I just loved her reactions in most of these (o:







She had a wonderful wonderful day!!! XOXO

What a nice weekend.... way too short though!

Robert ended up not working over the weekend, which is probably good because he has a horrible respiratory / bronchial thing that the kids all had - in fact they sent him home today too so they don't chance getting sick at work!

Saturday morning I signed Kyla up for Lakewood / Bellflower AYSO. I realized that she probably wont be able to do cheerleading too because there will be 2 nights a week practice and a Saturday game for Soccer, and I imagine the same for pop warner too. I explained what both options involved and she chose soccer - she said: "I want to run mom." I'm excited actually, hopefully she'll be playing with a lot of girls that she'll be in school with. She needs some little girl friends her age - all the wonderful girls in her life are either younger by 2 years or older by 5 (o:

After that, I took Kyla and Kade and met Becky, Randy, and Camy at May Boyar park for a free library celebration day. They were giving away free books, pony rides, a juggler show and face painting.. they also had yummy sno cones and hot dogs / snacks for sale.

Sunday morning we went to the park to play baseball and play in the sand with their new sand toys ( from Easter that haven't been used yet )

It was a really nice morning!

Don't worry Dodger fan's... we aren't Angels Fans - we just like the hat. We aren't baseball people (o: ( Kade had a Dodger hat on that day.... strangers probably think we are nuts )

The remaining Sunday was spent at Super Mex with my mom and dad, and then a trip to Costco with my dad and my boys.... I LOVE it there. I got nearly every thing I needed for Kyla's bday party this weekend (o: ( and spent way too much money of course! )

Super Mex is ALWAYS yummy!



OOOOH, I almost forgot. I met a Superbowl player at BJ's Friday night. It was a Raider Superbowl Ring, but a Superbowl ring none the less!!! He played in the 2002 Superbowl in San Diego.

We were talking football for like 45 minutes before I even noticed it and he never even told me he was on the team. Maybe it was because I made fun of his Raider shirt? (o: He was a very nice guy - anyway, I thought it was cool! A Cowboy ring would have turned me into a screaming teenager at a rock concert!

Mother's day and hospital stays.....

( this is going to be a very long post )

I've contimplated how much detail I should get into regarding what brought us to the hospital for Jack, but I've decided that since it's medical, that I'm going to treat the issue as if it was his ears or hands or tummy that was having the issues.

Background: Jack was not circumsized at birth due to having a "hidden penis" It hadn't fully dropped at the time of his birth. We have seen urologists since then and they always insisted that we would need to wait until he was old enough for a "local" instead of being put under since nothing was technically wrong.

Well - something is now technically wrong.

Last week he started complaining that his "pee pee" hurt, but he was still urinating with no problem, so I assumed that it was bugging him when it was "active" <--- lol.... not sure what I should have said! it looked the same. Friday brought a doctors appt for all 3 kids, and Jack had an ear infection and Kyla had bronchitis. ( Kade is too stubborn to get sick! ) I had the doctor look at him while we were there, and he told me that if it gets worse before the antibiotics kick in to take him to the ER. We almost did Friday night, but he seemed ok, so we thought we would wait until Robert got off work the next day ( no fever or anything ) Well, Robert went to work and Jack woke up, he had his first pee of the morning and screamed louder and more painfully than I have ever heard - the pain dropped him to the floor. I threw him in a baking soda bath which helped keep him calm while I prepped the kids and myself and we were in the ER within 30 minutes. My parents had Kyla and Kade and Robert met us at Los Alamitos hospital. They took a culture and he wouldn't pee because he was so freaked out about the pain. 6 hours of sitting in an 8 x 8 room later, they ordered an ambulance and my Jackie and I got our first ambulance ride to LB Memorial. Our bed was all ready.... it was overlooking this really nice outside patio and we got our own little tv, dvd, vcr player and everything (o:



Then came the IV. We had to swaddle him and have 4 people help. He didn't do that badly actually - and didn't even really mess with it after a few minutes.




After a short time we were moved out of our own nice big room to a shared room with a little boy who had been there for 9 days with phnemonia. Poor little boy.

Jack was continually hooked up to his IV, wasn't urinating and was in a lot of pain. They gave him morphine for the pain and had 2 kinds of antibiotics running through him at all times. We were there until Monday at minimum as there were no specialists there over the weekend. The first night was really hard and they had to re-do his IV at 2:30 a.m. ( that was not fun - it broke my heart )
For the most part though, he was an ideal patient. The nurses all loved him, and he even said "thanks" after they finished doing stuff to him - even if he didn't like it.

After the 3rd IV insertion - the nurses said they've never had a 3 yr old lay so still! I know if it would have been Kade in the hospital they would have either kicked us out or charged me double!!! Kyla would have just been dramatic the whole entire time (o:

I cried a lot, I held him the whole time practically, and I did my best to keep it together. It really could have been SO much worse, but it was very difficult to see my baby like that.

My mom came up and brought lots of toys and cards, and Robert stayed with him for several hours so I could have a little bit of a mother's day.... He kept the kids otherwise, and had campout's with Kade at night time. Kyla wanted to be with meme of course for the most part (o:

There is so much more to say about our stay there, but my brain is on slow mode - so I'm going to leave it the general stuff... I can't even say enough though about how thankful I am about everyone's concern and offers to help ( not to mention my amazing friends with the meal deliveries!!!!!!!!! it was hard to accept, but I'm giving in this time... I LOVE YOU GUYS!! )


The journey isn't over unfortunately - we have to change his antibiotic and see a specialist tomorrow.... at least we aren't in the hospital anymore!!

Jack was taking lots of pictures with my phone... we watched this movie 4 times while we were there, so he was thrilled to find the big sticker on the wall!





Can you tell how tired I am?


Kyla playing nintendo with Jackie...



Right after we heard we get to go home (o:

Pictures took up some of our boring time

Kade playing nintendo with Jackie!

This is a silly picture, but I had to take it because it's a picture of his "tape" that he loved. He wouldn't put it down. It was soft squishy tape that the nurse gave him a whole roll of to take home.

One of his get well cards from Kyla and Papa

These are the rest of his get well cards:

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For mother's day I took the kids to the carnival at Mayfair park like we do every year... It was nice to get out of the hospital and be with Kyla and Kade for a bit (o: They had fun. Kade started out slow, but he warmed up and ended up enjoying himself. He even won his brother a little dragon (o:










This ride had her CRACKING up!!!!




Notice Kade's "gold chain" I do not love this! He got it at one of those $.25 machines at pacific star and wont take it off. Nice.


Ok, I have to show off my beautiful roses. I'm so not a roses person, but these are just amazing. Colors I haven't seen before.... I hope the pictures do them justice!



I hope all of my mommy friends had an absolutely wonderful mother's day with their babies and their families!!! XOXOXO