The Coombs Family

For Shelby's first birthday we decided to get family pictures by our wedding photographer Randy Kepple. I love the pictures he takes and I figured it was time to leave it to the professional to get it done right. Here are a few of my favorites.

How quickly time goes by. Shelby had her first birthday party. My friend and I made her a little birthday hat and a shirt for eating her cake. Here we are before the party began. My friend Stephanie made her cakes and they were so cute, and delicious! She has a blog: the cake lady. Check her out, she does amazing work. We didn't have time to start singing to Shelby before she reached out and grabbed her cake. She was ready for this moment. The more of a mess she made, the more fun it became The floor was starting to get covered in cake. I even got some on me. It soon became a book party. Shelby loves to read, and she was in heaven. Thank you to everyone who helped make her day so special.

I decided to try running another full marathon for the second time in my life. The first time I nearly killed myself by the end. I ran it too fast and I could hardly walk for a week. I swore to myself that I would NEVER run another full marathon again. 26.2 miles is kind of far, right? Two years later, what do I do? I signed up for it again. It's like child birth, the longer you wait between, the easier it sounds. I ran the marathon this year with two of my co-workers Bill and Claudia. We had been training for months. Bill was on my Cascade Lakes Relay team and my Hood to Coast relay team this summer. Claudia and I have run together for years now and she is always very fast and pushes me more than I could ever do on my own. The weather was perfect this year. We allowed ourselves to stop for bathroom breaks (all four because of me), pictures, changed our socks, drank as much water as we could stomach, and we will finished in 4 hours and 38 minutes. Here are some pictures that captur...

Our family vacation to Sun River was exactly what we needed. I was able to run almost every day and I ended up with about 40 miles that week. Caleb and Shelby would ride the bike next to me and keep me company. We saw a lot of deer, duck, and other animals everywhere we went. I over ate and over slept, two of my favorite things. We stayed as long as we could and already want to go back again. Shelby LOVES the water. We never realized she was part fish. Now we know. The Hanson's came too and Shelby and Cooper became fast friends. Shelby was so glad to have another little person there to share toys with. Cooper was even nice enough to pee on her in the tub one night. That's a first for her. On one of our bike rides we stopped for some photos. We went to the falls to check them out, but soon realized the bike and trailer would not go on the trail, so we had to come back. Caleb tied flies on Sunday. It rained, and we didn't mind at all. I did a puzzle and Shelby ran around and ...

Last time I wrote Shelby was taking a few steps here and there and taking her time. Now she is pretty sure she's ready to start running with me. She walks everywhere and does not want to be picked up anymore and held because it slows her down and she wants to explore the world. It's so much fun watching her learn to balance, turn around, step on different types of flooring, wear shoes and go up and down hills. She has scratched up knees and hands, but it doesn't seem to slow the desire to walk. We tried to make her stop picking all the flowers and just smile for a picture. It didn't work very well. She was pretty pumped about picking the flowers and handing them to us. Now if I could just teach her to load the dishwasher, fold laundry and vacuum.

So much is going on in our house right now and I just haven't had the time to blog lately. What's new with us? I'll start with Shelby. Shelby is starting to walk now. She takes 1-2 steps pretty regularly, but won't venture out beyond that for now. Fine with me! I'm hoping she will stick to crawling a little bit longer before I have to worry about her walking. Caleb on the other hand is working with her in the evenings trying to get her to take more steps. She is eating all sorts of fun foods with summer here. Lots of fresh fruit and veggies from our friends gardens. She eats better than we do. Caleb has one more week of summer school and then he is off to Utah for a week. We will miss him dearly but he hasn't seen his family for awhile and will enjoy the trip. He's trying to convince me to let him fix his motorcycle, but he's not winning that battle yet. He took it apart and it's more damaged than he thought, which means more time and money to fix th...

We have taken Shelby to the beach a few times but the weather was never nice enough to let her play in the water. She was timid in the beginning and then we could not get her out of the water. She would cry if you picked her up or took her away from it. She also did not want to be held and wanted to crawl around in sand all day.

I am afraid Shelby's doctor has given her a complex about her weight. She is what we like to call "big boned". Now she won't even leave the house with out trying to squeeze into her size 12 month clothes. I keep telling her that it's OK to wear 18 month old clothes, even though she's only 8 months old. But she won't have it. I've caught her trying to spit up her food, pretending to swallow but really she's just filling her cheeks with food, and even doing squats and push ups multiple times a day. It all started with her 8 month check up. The doctor said, "Wow Shelby, you're weight is steadily increasing but your height is relatively the same". Then he tells me she really DOESN'T need to have middle of the night feedings. And how about her head- it's the average size of a 2 years old head. Here are the stats: Height: 17 inches, 47th percentile Weight: 21 pounds, 87th percentile Head: 18.5 inches, still off the chart Let me know...

Shelby has now decided that she must crawl all around the house and nothing is safe, especially her. She can climb up our stairs, and even better, she can quickly fall back down the stairs. She gets into the kitchen and pulls everything out of the cupboards and drawers that she can open. She pulls herself up to stand on everything and loves to chew things like a puppy. She loves to talk to her best friend in the mirror, kiss her, tell her funny jokes and do patty-cake She also falls asleep while randomly playing now, which is pretty cute. I was trying to get out the door to book club and put her in her crib with toys while I changed my clothes. Next thing I know, she's put herself under her blanket and used her bumper pads for a pillow.

I was working from home on Friday when I received a phone call from Caleb. "Renae, apparently I wrecked my motorcycle." I asked him where he was and what I needed to do, and his reply was, "Renae, apparently I wrecked my motorcycle." Then I asked him where he was and he had no idea. I heard someone talking in the background and I asked if I could speak to who he was with, and his reply was "Renae, apparently I wrecked my motorcycle." After about 20 of those responses I could hear the lady with Caleb saying she was taking him to St Vincent ER. That's all I needed to hear, I jumped in my car, just in time to sit in traffic. I wanted to get to the ER as fast as I could but Memorial weekend vacationers felt otherwise. By the time I got to the hospital Caleb was all checked in and had his room. His memory was about 10 seconds for the first hour and I proceeded to answer the same questions over, and over. "Renae, how long have you been here? Where am I?...

We were all pregnant at the same time and now we all have babies. Nobody is pregnant anymore and we are so glad! We got together for a party and took some pictures but not all of the girls could make it with their babies. Here are some of my favorite shots of the kids and the dads with their babies. Some of the dads ended up getting a lot of puke in their hair by the time the photo shoot was over, but it made it a lot more enjoyable for the moms.