Top 9 Ways to tell your 3 1/2 year old is sick

I have been thinking about ways that us moms realize our kids our sick. When Leyna gets sick...BAM...she is sick. Poor little girl. I debated whether to bring her in today since she hasn't had a fever for more than 3 or 5 days, whatever they tell you on the Kaiser advice line. But a mom just knows, especially a mom with an asthmatic. Thankfully, I brought her in and sure enough we are now dealing with pneumonia episode #4 in her little life.
So here are my top 9 ways to tell when your 3 1/2 year old is sick:
9) She has a runny nose.
8) She has a cough...not her daily asthma cough, but a wet one.
7) Her forehead feels like it is on fire. 103.8 last night
6) She doesn't ask for food every 30 minutes like usual.
5) She just wants to lay on the couch and not run around like her normal spazzy self.
4) She actually sits to watch an entire movie instead of going to play with her dolls.
3) She wants me to cuddle with her.
2) She falls asleep on the couch.
1) When I am reading to her she asks if I could stop so she can just go to sleep.

I love my little Leyna-bug...in sickness and in health. :)

Happy New Year

Ok, no new pictures this time. Do you want to know what my favorite part of bringing in the new year is? Hands down, it has to be the countdown starting at "10" with the kids at 7:59:50. Yes...it is awesome! When are they going to figure out that you are really supposed to do it at 11:59:50? :) Please don't tell them. We had party blowers, hats, sparking cider and it was memorable. Then we call a bunch of people and do it all over again and they just love it. One added bonus is that now Leyna knows how to count backwards from 10. We brought in the new year with Leo's family this year and the cousins had so much fun with the party blowers. Kids + sugar + loud noise + screaming = fun memories. Thanks Robert family for letting us experience a kids' new year celebration with you before we even had our girls. :)

Hello?

Hello Blogging Friends! I know not many people check this blog anymore since I haven't posted since June or something crazy like that. One of my friends even threatened to delete me. The truth is, some random person made a comment on one of my posts and it kind of weirded me out, but I'll try again and see what happens. Plus, I have been a little busy like all of you. So....since I haven't blogged in awhile...Happy Independence Day, Happy Halloween, Happy Thanksgiving and MERRY CHRISTMAS! :) I think I will try to post a picture from each month just to get you caught up if you are interested. I am not a writer or a photographer, but I think that is OK. We are embarking on the journey of "home educating" this year and we are pleased to say that it is going well so far. I am very thankful for that, although we have been thoroughly enjoying our Christmas break. Katrina said that she is going to have sooooo much to do when we start school back up in January. I don't think she realized that we were taking a real break, not putting stuff off so that it would pile up for later. She was relieved to know that we would just continue with our regular schedule again after the break and not have like 60 spelling words in one week. :)

Ok, so here are my photos of the month. I did cheat and add two for October. Please leave a comment if you look at this so I can know if any of my friends still look at this. Thanks! :)

10th Anniversary
Rafting Trip July

Camping at Silverlake with the Robert family
My fave picture of Leo and Leyna
August

Coaching the Royal Pixies
Katrina and her cheerleader...Leyna
September

Jog-a-thon for school (no not our little family school, but the bigger school that we are part of)
Katrina ran 4.5 miles and Leyna did 4.0...they really surprised me
October

I love this pic of the girls all ready for "Show your Colors Night" at AWANA
October

PSP--part of the homeschool group at a harvest party
November

Caden, Dason, Katrina, Kylin and Leyna
at Star of Bethlehem
December

Pay It Forward

I am excited to be a recipient of Sarah's Pay it Forward post and I'm even more excited to "pay it forward" here. I was supposed to post this in February but with a busy tax season and Nina's stroke, I put it off for too long. Now that summer is here I might just have some more time. So......

Here's how it works:

I will be receiving an item from Sarah P. In the mean time, the first three people to comment on this post that they want to participate, will receive a handmade item from me. I do get 365 days to complete it; I promise to try not to take that long though! The gift is a surprise and I will do my best to tailor it to you.

If you are interested, post in the comments here. If you are one of the first three people, then go ahead and post your "Pay it Forward" on your blog.

The handmade items do not have to be extensive. Do not feel you need to spend days and days on them. Just do what you can.
Fun, fun! =)

Happy Father's Day...Papa

We affectionately call Leo "Papa". The girls just adore him and it is so cute to see. "Papai" is dad in Portuguese, but Katrina shortened it as a toddler and it has stuck. We are so thankful for him.

I'm not sure who had more fun on the rides. Katrina wanted to go on every ride with "Papa". Walking to Disneyland on our first day...sporting their Brazil shirts.

Leo on his new scooter...getting ready to ride. He is pretty excited about getting to ride it to work which is less than 3 miles away.

Oh Where, Oh Where Have We Been?

Hello fellow blog readers...I am back and trying to get caught up on life, photos, blogs, Facebook, bills, cleaning, etc. Where have we been? Well since my last post, we celebrated Dason's 5th Birthday,


Kylin's 2nd Birthday

and Easter. We love living so close to some cousins and the kids really have a lot of fun together. The Easter bunny showed up in a convertible this year and the kids had fun with that.




I finished up tax season and quarterlies...YAY! We had our 2nd annual last day of tax season celebration at the park with the whole DV fam.

Katrina had a filling and her little frozen cheek was so cute. She was such a trooper in the dentist office and was so brave.


The weekend after tax season(16th) we went camping with our good friends the Dyers up near Fort Ross. It was a beautiful weekend, BUT we had to come home after just one night since Leyna got super sick. It was a hard decision to make, but I'm glad we packed everything up early Friday night and headed home because...Leyna threw up that night in bed from coughing (would have been in the tent trailer and that would have been A MESS), she had an ear infection in each ear and she had pneumonia again. So we made the right choice to come back. We'll have to camp again Dyer fam.

Rachel Dyer was all bundled up and ready for bed.

Leyna pretty much wanted to sleep the whole day on Friday. Not normal for a 2 1/2 year old.

The weekend of the 25th I went to the CHEA convention with Kelly and that was very interesting. Long story, but the short version is that we decided to homeschool Katrina next year and I wanted to check out different curriculums since I could get into the conference for free.

I also had a horrible sinus infection for like 12 days and that was miserable so that kind of finished up April for us. :)

May 1st we were scheduled to leave for Leo's work conference in San Diego and on Wednesday, April 29th, his boss decided to cancel the trip. Bummer! We had gotten the girls are psyched up about Legoland and SeaWorld. We didn't tell them that the trip was cancelled and just told Katrina (who always knows what day it is and what happens on that day) that it was changed. We put the girls in the van at 6am on Saturday and headed south. When we were 45 minutes away, we said, "We're going to Disneyland!!!!" It was so fun to surprise them! We had a blast. We arrived at our hotel at 1:30 and were in Disneyland by 2:00. It really was such a fun vacation and very exciting to be able to do this for them. I'm proud to say that we did Disneyland on a budget. The only food items we bought in the park while we were there for 5 days was one frozen banana ($3.75) and one ice cream bar ($4). We do have to admit that we are officially tired of PB & J sandwiches, though. :) I bought some stuff for the girls at the Disney store on clearance and gave them to them at the hotel so we didn't have to visit the stores. Next time we go, I'm sure we will not be able to get away with this, but for this year it was good to stay within our budget. Disneyland pics will have to follow in another post on a slideshow or something.

So....that is what we have been up to. Hopefully, I can update more often, but you know how it is. Happy May everyone!

Moving Day

So this last weekend, as I already mentioned, Leo and I took a trip to Reno again. My parents and Brett and Kelly watched the kids for us so we could drive there and do a big packing/moving day for Nina. We never could have done all we did in a weekend with a 5 & 2 year old wanting to help. I took a few pics of our weekend and packing adventures.

Nina and Leo...5 weeks after her stroke in the "skilled nursing facility".

The end of our moving day adventure...I had that sharpie on my shirt for hours without realizing it. Nice.

Jonas & Leo posing in the storage unit...which was on the third floor...I have never seen one like that, but I haven't been to many storage units.