Independence Day

I love 4th of July!! Today would have been my Daddy's 62nd birthday, but is now Peanuts (my neice Hilary)birthday- so the birthday fun will always continue :) This holiday has always been about being together with family and this year was no exception. We started the day off with a pancake breakfast with our church family; this has become tradition over the years.
With full bellies, we went home to make some festive yummy food.  We loaded up the van and headed down to my sisters to swim and BBQ with everyone. It was a fun time of eating, watching all the cousins play together, laughing and getting thrown in the pool. (I was a party pooper and didn't get thrown in) Then, we loaded back up to go to James' brothers house to eat and do fireworks in the street. Since, Scott and Christine bought their house we've done fireworks there every year. There was about 30 of us, lots of food, fireworks both big and and small and lots of squeals of delight from the kids!
It was after midnight before we got home, but it was a great day spent with those we love, celebrating our great country!!

Swimming in Oct

Our school work was done,
swimming sounded like fun!
The weather was great,
the Verkaik's said come over any date! :)

I love the freedom homeschooling gives us. Only in California in October can you swim. We had finished our schoolwork and then packed lunch and got to swim for a few hours. The water was freezing, but the kids didn't mind one bit and always love to swim.
Thank you Tom and Dawn for opening your home to us.

Living Desert

It was a free day for home schoolers at the Living Desert, so the Mitchells hopped in the Oates family bus and we headed to the desert for the day. We packed lunches and as many cold drinks we could fit in our bags. There was a great picnic area where we sat and ate and the kids went back and forth into the great air conditioned exihibits nearby.

It was roasting hot, but aside from that the kids had a blast. We decided to head home, when Jenna & I realized the kids weren't looking at the animals, but just trying to sit in the shade to stay cool, hehe! :)

Ice cream from McDonalds was just the right treat for everyone as we headed home.

Thanks Mitchells for joining us on a great, hot day :)

Mission San Juan Capistrano

I love that because we homeschool, we can go on a fieldtrip anytime we want and pretty much everywhere we visit presents itself with some sort of learning. CA history is so much fun to teach and the learning opportunities are endless! We visited the 21st California mission, San Juan Capistrano. The grounds are beautiful and we took a guided tour, so we learned a lot of great things.

Love the flowers throughout the grounds

statue of Padre Serra

This is the bell tower from the outside of the grounds to the south

I thought this doorway inside the great church was beautiful

5 Oates in a row with Momma at the koi pond


I absolutely love this picture

outside the East gate

The crosses throughout the mission are beautiful

A cross statue in the original cemetery


the alter and dome in great church

the architecture throughout is amazingly beautiful! I love the wood against the stone with the bells

We had such a great time, everyone was well behaved, the weather was nice and we learned lots of cool stuff! If you get the opportunity go, it's well worth the $8 :)

Birthday Fun

For the big kids birthdays (the girls in Nov & Zach's was Jan 29) we got them passes to Knotts and we spent the day there yesterday. The Oates family bus was full, as 12 of us went! Since we take Rachel & Nathan with us everywhere we go, we got them passes too and Sarah also came. Another family in our home-school group has passes also, so Zach got to bring 2 buddies along, which turned out great because everyone had a buddy!

The little boys thought Camp Snoopy was wonderful! We were laughing because the last time James & I were in Camp Snoopy was with Rachel & Sarah when they were 7 & 9 years old.

We have pictures from 10 years ago riding in these same cars, Zach wasn't a year old yet and Rach & Sarah are so litttle. Crazy how fast time flies! Love those girls!

Us girlies with Gracie's dog that she won. Just what we needed was another stuffed animal!

Rach & Nathan, our big kids

It was cold and cloudy when we got there and as we were in line for our passes it started raining, it just sprinkled on and off for awhile, but once the rain started coming down we got soaked. Good thing they sell ponchos :) $30 later, we were all dry again and found the open rides and had a blast. We decided if it was still raining in 2 hours then we'd head home, but the kids prayed for the rain to stop and it did! The sun came out and the rest of the afternoon was spent going on rides that made me sick just looking at them :) All of the kids were really brave and went on the rides that went upside down, spun in circles and went 80 miles per hour!

Hope was the only one that wanted to go on this ride, so she went by herself. It spun both horizontally and vertically, it looked like it was going to hit the ground! It spun so fast that Hoper couldn't even hold up her body, but she thought it was great! She's in red on the left...

Such a fun day with friends!!! These are some brave kiddos!

This is our traditional self portrait. I love it!

It wasn't crowded at all which made for a great day! We never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a ride and most of them we walked right on and the kids proceeded to stay on the ride multiple times. I think Zach, Grace, Trevor & Hope went on Boomerang 5 times in a row! Crazy kids! We had to have funnel cake and boysenberry punch-we bought unlimited refills and I think we filled up our 32oz. cup 7 times, talk about a sugar high!

Food, Fun & Friends what better way to celebrate a birthday??? We are looking forward to spending many more fun days there in the year to come.

Have passes? Join us!

Beach Bums for the day

Only in Southern California can you have a beach day in January.

Since today was a holiday and the weather has been so nice, we decided to go to the beach. The weather was absolutely beautiful, I think it was nicer than most days in summer, plus the beach wasn't crowded. I had to drive to Laguna for James work, so we went to some beach in Dana Point. We actually weren't sure which beach to go to, but the one we found turned out to be great. The parking was cheap and we parked right on the beach, I hope I can remember how to get back there again. Rachel and Nathan came to our house in the am and I dropped Rach back off at CBU on the way home, which worked out perfect!

My view for the day was amazing!

I absolutely love this series of pictures of Wesley! I have pictures of Zachary just like this. I wish I had the same pictures of every kid.

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This is Rachel's idea of a seagul trap and Hoper played along. She almost caught one, however I'm not sure she would have known what to do if she had caught one :)

Gracie wanted to take a few pictures and had the idea for the feet in the water pic too :)

These kiddos are what I get up for every morning, who I pray for each night. They can make me laugh and cry all in an instant and one of my greatest joys is being their Momma

I love this little man! He makes my heart happy!

It's so fun to watch them play in the waves without a care in the world!

Good-bye beach. It was a wonderful winter day :) See you again in a few months!

Girly Fun

Yesterday Gracie was bored! Imagine that!! :) She didn't want to take a rest, or read, or play outside, (or anything else I suggested) she'd already used her 30 minutes of electronic time, so in an attempt to maintain my sanity, I offered pedicures! :) She instantly got a smile and ran upstairs to get all the stuff! Hope wanted to make it like a "real spa", so they turned on classical music and lined up the nail polish so we could choose our color.

I got to go first, (I just got a pedicure at the nail place last week, but it ended the complaining, made them both happy and felt pretty good too), then Grace and Hope and then Grady and Zach both soaked their feet in the hot water :) Grady asked for pink, but only got clear and Zach made it clear he wasn't getting a pedicure, just relaxing with his feet in the water :)




It ended up being really fun way to spend our Sunday afternoon together and now the girls want to do it every Sunday :)

Field Trip #1 of 2011

One of the greatest things about homeschooling is the freedom it gives us to learn what we want and explore it as much as we want. We are starting a unit study on California History and the first part of that we will be focusing on Native Americans, experiencing things first hand is a great way to learn, so we took a field trip to a local Indian museum at Lake Perris.
You should go and visit it... http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24699I wasn't sure about the local museums, but after some research I found this one. I had never heard of the museum, but it turned out to be great!!! We invited another homeschooling family along and learned allot, but had a great time in the process. Zach had Micah over for a sleep over the night before (another bonus if homeschooling-sleep overs on school nights), so Jo and her other 2 came to our house. Being that we have a bus, we all drove together, which is always fun ;) 6 Oates & 4 Holmes, we stopped by our local drive-thru Starbucks on the way and everyone was happy!
The staff at the museum was fabulous and gave us a full on field trip. We were the only people there, so we got their undivided attention.


hunting for rabbitsWe learned all about the local tribes then and now, got to do some hands on stuff and brought home some pretty cool papers to do some additional learning. After the museum, we headed to the picnic area and had lunch, played on the play ground and then played on the shore of the lake. Jo & I talked (what else?) while the kids searched for shells, Sarah & Grace walked along the water and chatted away, Micah & Zach were digging for treasure, Hope & Seth ran back and forth between the others and the little 2 were having a blast getting wet (Grady thought he was at the ocean and got soaked in the water.)All in all it was a great day! Everyone came home tired and ready for a rest :)
Thanks Holmes family for joining us on our little "Indian" adventure!