The number 12

12...Twelve...One dozen...
eggs I used to fix breakfast
loads of laundry I washed today
books we checked out at the library
slices of bread used to make lunch
number of granola bars eaten today

times I needed to referee my kids

number of people our van can hold
It's a very popular number around here, just thought I'd share...

Costco Comments

Nearly every time I go to Costco, some kind shopper finds it necessary to share their wisdom about both the number of kids I have and how full my basket is. I'm not sure why complete strangers find it necessary to share their "wisdom", but I guess 5 well behaved, matching, marching kids is too much for people to handle (hehe!)
Today alone I heard...


Are all these kids yours?

Wow, you don't look old enough for ALL these kids!

Don't you know what causes it?

Are you trying for a basketball team?

Wow, you have your hands full!

Are you feeding an army?

8 gallons of milk? You should get a cow!

What kind of car do you drive? You're going to need a trailer to get all that food home.

Seriously people, 5 kids is not that many! Why does it matter to you how many loaves of bread or gallons of milk I buy?

Now really people, are there not enough great buys at Costco to keep you occupied? If my kids are running wild or climbing the racks, then please feel free to comment, but when they are walking by the cart and happily eating their churros or helping by pushing a second cart, then please keep all your stupid comments to yourself!!!

Does anybody else have this problem? Or is it just me? I try to be kind and think of some whitty response, but I was just irritated today!

Just saying...

Dirk turns 4!

This little guy makes me smile and his laugh makes you want to giggle.

Grady and Dirk are buddies from church and are two peas in a pod.

We all had lots of fun celebrating Dirsk's birthday, thanks for inviting us Courtney and Darrel.

Oh and Court, the cupcakes were delicious!!!

Happy 4th Birthday Dirk!!!

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 :)

Bubbles for breakfast

I love sitting outside in the morning with my coffee and basking in the sun just for a few minutes, usually while the kids are eating their breakfast. Today, I asked Grady what he wanted for breakfast and his answer was "bubbles" (they got bubbles in their valentine goody bags) So bubbles it was...Coffee and Bubbles, what a great way to start the day :) of course I had to grab the camera...

He was so proud of all the bubbles he was blowing, it made both his day and mine. Bubbles aren't too bad for breakfast!

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!

The foot

Lots of you have asked, what it looks like or to send you pics, so here it is, a few progressive shots of Wesley's foot over a weeks span. We still don't know how or what bit him, but it is what it is...a bite of some sort on his left foot.

Right before we left for Loma Linda...it doesn't actually look that bad here, it was starting to turn black and his heel was really swollen. When I touched it, puss and blood oozed everywhere. (nasty, I know!)

Wednesday Jan 19


On the couch for a little bit on Friday, Jan 21 before we headed back to Loma Linda. It's all bandaged up to cover where they cut it open to drain it.


The purple marker is the outer area of where his foot was a deep red & swollen.


Friday, January 21.


Monday January 24th
Right after coming home from our 5 night/6 day stay at Loma Linda.

Friday, January 28

All the skin around it pealed off on it's own. It looks like raw skin, but it's just new skin I guess. The swelling has gone down almost all together.

This whole ordeal has been so CRAZY!!! Wesley is amazingly resilient and with a shoe on will now run; if he is barefoot or with just a sock he will only walk on his tippy toes. We are so grateful that while the hospital stay was long and hard, that we didn't have to come home on IV antibiotics for 6 wks like the doctors had initially thought. We saw the Dr today and he thought it was healing nicely. Wesley still has oral antibiotics through Monday and then Tuesday he has to get blood work done to make sure the infection is completely gone.
Thank you so very much for everyone who has supported us through this, we are extremely blessed and thank God for all of you!