The Oakes Family

Marty writes:

Recently bought myself a new cookbook - Pioneer Woman Cooks - and had to try these potato skins.  They are one of our favorite things to order whenever we go out for a meal.  Sometimes when David comes to have lunch with me when I am working and we go out to eat they’re the only thing we eat.

Anyways these were SO good!  We don’t have to order them out any more!  I’m going to have to come up with a few variations just to make life interesting but for now, we’ll stick with these.  We even got John to eat a whole one!  He didn’t have sour cream on his, but ranch dressing.  That’s fine.  I’m always happy when he’ll try something new!

We just got back from a 3000 mile round trip down to Arizona.  Here are a few pictures…

We passed over the Hoover Dam, the slowest traffic of the whole journey.  We saw the huge new bridge they are in the process of building.  Talk about road works.  It went on for miles!

We saw beautiful mountains and ribbon roads that snaked off into the distance.  Every turn brought more of God’s awesome creation!

We heard quite a bit of snoring coming from the backseat.  When he wasn’t watching one of his films or munching on fruit snacks, John was sleeping.

We even got in a bit of geocaching, or looking for treasure, as John calls it.

But the best part of our trip was what was waiting for us IN Arizona!

Maria, Lyla, Harlow and Greg!!  I hadn’t seen the twins in person since they were born and David and John had not met them in person at all!  We had such a great time getting to know them, seeing them in their everyday environment, playing with them, just spending time with them.  They are as cute as they can be.  They both have the most expressive eyes and faces ever!  These are just a few of the 500 pictures we took of them!

Harlow - look at those beautiful baby browns.

Reading is one of their favorite activities!

John loved playing with his two nieces.  One of his questions was - when they grow up are they going to be sisters?  He just couldn’t fathom the idea that there were two girls who look alike and are the exact same age.  And of course, Lyla and Harlow liked the fact that John was close to their size.  They spent a lot of time just looking at each other!

Lyla is sporting a trendy black eye - neither twin is willing or able to tell us how she got it!

Lyla looked at us with the BIGGEST brown eyes, just staring.  WHO are you and what are you doing in MY house?  After a bit she would break into a smile.  Both babies are so smiley and happy, very vocal, and they love to play with each other, of course.  Built in best friends!

All too soon it was time to head back up to Idaho and freezing weather.  It was a very toasty 85 degrees in AZ.  No wonder so many people like to winter there!

oh my I do love this picture of two of my favorite people in the whole wide world.  John LOVES his big sister and Michelle LOVES her little brother!!  I love them both madly.

This little lady turned 1 1/2 today.  Eden smiles so much of the time.  Just recently has she starting closing her eyes when she grins like this.  Her hair is getting long and curly and she looks JUST like Michelle did when she was a baby although Michelle had very dark hair.  I love this one like crazy too.

This little girl turned one last week.  Guess she had fun with her birthday cake.  Apparently she managed to get some of it into her mouth.  Anna’s momma, Carrie, tells me that Anna crawls VERY fast and climbs up their stairs in lightning speed, especially when she hears her bath water being run.  I love this baby from a distance.  We are planning a trip back to MI next summer so I will get my fill of her for quite a few days.  I can’t wait.

The twins, you ask?  I’m waiting for current pictures of those two, who, by the way, turn one in a week and a half.  I’m loving them from a distance too!  One of these days, we’re gonna have to plan a HUGE family reunion!

We had such a good visit with David’s sister Andrea (Andy) and her son Rafi.  We had Michelle take some fun pics of the bunch of us and here are a few of my favorites!  They look like brother and sister, don’t they?

John was SO amused by Rafi, this grin says it all.  Rafi was energetic from the time he got up to the time he went to bed!  John loved having a live-in playmate for the week they were here.

“Smile, Rafi!”  This is what you got.  How funny is that?  This was Michelle’s version of his smile.

The Oakes Families - all smiling and looking pretty - a photo miracle in itself!

We went to Kohl’s the other day to shop their clearance racks.  This is the perfect time to get John summer clothes for NEXT year.  Imagine our surprise when we realized  the size fives we were trying on him fit him perfectly NOW.  So we bought a few size 6’s and 7’s for next year!  This is one of his favorite new shirts - Lego Star Wars.  He wears it one day, it gets laundered the next day and he wears it the following day.  Won’t last too long, this one.

Time for another haircut.  No more fussing these days from John.  Even he likes his hair neat and tidy.  He plays SO hard at daycare, gets so dirty and sweaty.  We’re back to nightly baths - for getting him clean and also for cooling him down!

This is a virtual picture of the hottub that David is currently building us.  It’s going to be more along the line of a Ofuro Japanese soaking tub.  No jets or sprays.  It will hold around 250 gallons of water and will be wood-fire heated.  It will only take a couple hours to heat that way.  We’ll use it a couple days/nights and then drain it, then fill it again.  I can’t wait!  It will be SO relaxing!

This is the box that our new tv came in.  The box has been sitting in our front room since the tv came out.  John loves to hide in it, makes it his fort, his special BIG place!  Blankets cover all the entrances, so unless you know he’s in there, you can’t really tell he’s in there.

Currently, the box is standing upright.  With the onset of warm weather, it is much too hot to play inside his fort.  But wait!  He’s discovered that he can perform puppet shows in it!  This is great fun for him, the puppeteer, and for us, the audience!  I am so glad we saved this box and didn’t toss it out.  It has provided hours of fun for our boy and will do so for quite a while.  It is also an interesting conversation piece! 

Michelle called a few weeks back and said her brakes were really sounding ‘grindy’.  She went to AutoZone, got the necessary items and came up to our house with Eden.  Michelle  and David got to work in the pole barn changing her brakes.   Yes, Michelle did MOST of the work.  Job well done, Michelle!

This is what they ended up with - DIRTY hands.  They came in a couple times to wash up, and get degreased.

Here’s how Michelle’s brakes looked when she got them off her car.  Pretty worn down, eh?  Can’t see very much of that pad at all!  No wonder her brakes were ‘grindy’ - metal to metal is what we think!

I, on the other hand, stayed indoors with this cheerful little lass!

The daycare John attends held a carnival today, the older kids gave one for the younger kids.  Six different activities - bobbing for gummy bears in whipped cream, not using your hands of course.  John said it was great fun, he apparently got whipped cream ALL over his face.  And face painting, simple stuff, mind, but the kids loved it.  Yummy treats and special little prizes, it was a great time for the kids!

The tee that John is wearing is tie-dyed, one he made with his teacher’s help at daycare a few weeks ago!  He has so much fun at his school.  The kids have gone on so many field trips this summer - to the beach, the sprinkler park, Cat Tales in Spokane, they’ve been to see two or three movies.  We are so blessed to have John in a facility that is so loving and such a positive environment for him!

David is an expert Lego builder - and John gives him some pretty big tasks.  Here you can see the ship that David built for Master Chief.  Chief is currently one of John’s favorite toys.  The other one is Arbiter, another character from Halo.  These two figurines are always close at hand - in the car with us on the way to daycare, on the supper table (or on the floor next to where John is sitting), on the sink when he goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth, or on the floor next to his bed all through the night!  John has a vivid imagination and loves to play with these two fellows!  We recently found a couple more from the series for his birthday - I just can’t wait to see the expression on his face when we give them to him.  I am trying SO hard to keep them hidden for the next month.  Sure do love you, little buddy!

Here are a couple more of John’s recent costumes, albeit very make shift.  Above is Darth Vader with his light saber and below is Master Chief from the Halo game, which is one of John’s favorite games to play on Xbox.  He has great fun dressing up in his own style!  He has a variety of weapons, ready to take on any and all of his character’s arch enemies.  He is one fun little boy with a very vivid imagination!

We have our square foot garden again this year, but are just growing a few things - cucumbers, zucchini, a variety of beans and lettuce.  John has decided he likes salads and beans are his favorite veggie, so we are growing things that will be very useful for us!  We have some herbs and peppers growing in another spot.  It’s one of John’s daily jobs to check his garden’s progress!