The Coombs Family

 Ronin Dean has finally had his birthday and is officially four years old. He's been lying all year about his age, which he probably gets from his mother. He tells everyone he is either 100, 17 or 18. But he is never three years old. He has been riding his bike all over the place. He is in preschool and hates going to class every day, let's hope that changes when he gets older. He still thinks his dad is the coolest person alive. He is a boy through and through. He wants to shoot guns, jump off the furniture, go fast in cars, and he loves motorcycles. Caleb sold his motorcycle recently and Ronin asks for it all the time. This year we went to a pizza arcade place and let the kids play video games all night and eat lots of food.

 Shelby turned 10 years old this year and she did not want a party. She refused to invite friends over or do a traditional birthday party. She wanted to invite her cousin Kenady only to come hang out. She told me she is older now and she doesn't do little kid parties. She only wanted to go do girl stuff. So we picked up Kenady and the three of us went to the movie theaters and watched a movie together. The girls got a lot of food and the movie was A House With A Clock In Its Walls. Guess what.....the girls were scared to death. They hated the movie. They were freaking out the entire time and couldn't wait to get out of there. They talked about how creepy it was and how they were going to have nightmares the entire night. We went to get ice cream afterwards and go shopping for Shelby. When we got home she got to open presents and Kenady stayed the night. The next morning we went back to the movies and watched another one. Really because they were so scared after the first movie,...

Caleb and I have been searching for land since the year before we bought his dental office. We almost purchased a few houses, but never found the right one. Once we really prayed about it, we decided to buy a practice and forego our dream of land. Well, this year we decided to start looking again. By we, I mean me. I love to look for land and property. I found lots of small 1-2 acre parcels but the houses were all very expensive and terribly out of date. We would end up paying 700-800k for a house that I would want to gut. So we started looking for land we loved, but a house we wouldn't feel bad about tearing out. I found a property on Battle Creek Road that I feel in love with immediately. I was the first to contact the owners and we came and looked at the property the day after it was listed. As soon as Caleb and I came and saw the 10 acres, we had to have it. It has a small 1100 square foot house that is 50 years old and not updated. It has two bathrooms (one includes a washer a...

Calvin turned 8 this June and had a great birthday party with his friends. He wanted to have a Roblox party, which most kids did not have a clue what it was. It's some video game he likes to play that's getting more popular. We had a Battle Bots fight, played tag at our friends, ate lots of food, and enjoyed the day. He wanted to wait to get baptized until we had a plan with our family in Utah. He was very undecided if he should wait until we got to Utah again, or if he wanted to do it in Oregon. I was asked to attend Girls Camp this year with church and my in-laws agreed to come watch our kids while I took off for six days. Since they were in town, we decided it was the best time to do it. He's a lucky kid because he ended up getting his Aunt Jenny, Uncle Kurt, and cousins Keith and Kasen to come from Utah as well. His Uncle Phil and cousin Isaac made the trip too. We had a house full of cousins and my kids loved it. Calvin is turning into such a fun kid. He's deci...

Last day of school for these big kids. Our friends came up with these color bomb ideas to celebrate being out of school. The kids threw balloon looking sacks at each other and covered one another with chalk. It was a ginormous mess and lots of fun. Super glad we have fun creative friends who talk us into things like this. We are ready for summer!!

I finally made it to NYC! It's been a long time waiting and I knew I was going to go someday, but this was the perfect timing, the perfect trip and the perfect friends to go with. Stacia, Britni and I have talked about New York many times together. Stacia has been but not the rest of us. Our husbands were planning to go hunting in Texas together and while they were on the high of planning their trip, we suckered them into letting us go to New York together. It really was a very quick decision one night when Britni got a maybe yes from her husband, the last one to commit, we booked it.  I am not really one to make itineraries or travel plans but these two girls were on it. We had pre-trip meetings where Britni brought her laminated map of the city, and Stacia has about 50 notes on her phone of places she wanted to go see or eat. We were there for five days, and had about 5 weeks worth of stops to make. We flew out early in the morning on May 16 so we decided to go up to Portland o...

This year the Easter holiday was also April Fools day and General Conference weekend for church. It turned out to be a fun and relaxing weekend for all of us. The kids woke up to treats from the Easter Bunny. They ate candy for breakfast, and then helped me fill eggs with coins and candy to take to Granny and Papa's house later. After conference was over, we went to my parents for the big egg hunt. We just missed the rain, which was perfect. The kids ran around outside and got their eggs and money. Kids counting coins and eating candy Kenady and Calvin looking in the rocks Shelby found more in the trees where other kids didn't dare to go Porter and Ronin were side by side racing to see who could get more Easter Morning

This break I decided to kidnap Rhoda's youngest three girls, and cram my car to the rooftop with kids on our way to Utah. My kids were so excited to have extra cousins in the car for the ride. We left around 4 am, and they slept the first three hours because it was so dark and pouring down rain. I was the only driver, but it wasn't too bad since it's only 13 hours to Logan Utah where Caleb's sister Jenny lives. Rhoda's kids have not been there for years and every kid loves their house. They have tons of animals and the kids got to ride a pony, milk a cow, make butter, ride big horses, eat smores outside in the fire pit and play in the club house. It was so much fun! We went to my cousin Jocelyn's house for a couple of days and she kept us busy. Trampoline park, daily workouts, shopping, great food, and dance parties. We finished the trip back in Logan and then headed home. My kids are already asking when we get to go back again.

Our schedules are so crazy right now that we almost didn't make plans for our anniversary. Then I thought about it more and decided that we NEED to get out of town and do something. So I booked us a hotel in the Pearl District, and I scheduled us each a 90 minute massage next to our hotel. My mom is watching our kids and we went on a one-night getaway! We ate Thai food on NW 23rd, and then got dessert from Papa Haydn's and took it back to our hotel. Our hotel was really nice and had a great balcony on the top roof. We slept horribly at the hotel, but the dessert in bed was a big bonus. The next morning we stayed in bed, and had amazing massages! It was so relaxing and a great way to start the day. We went out for ice cream at Salt N' Straw, our favorite. Then we shopped all around Portland. Caleb even got a bunch of new clothes that were long overdue! We got home late on Saturday, went to 9 am church on Sunday. After church we volunteered at the Soup Kitchen downtown....

This guy has been so busy working on his practice and turning it into his dream job. We spend a lot of late nights working and staying up late in bed talking about the plans. It was great to take the night off and spend time with friends eating some amazing steak at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. They decorated the table form and even got him a card. The best part of the meal was their mac n cheese. It was amazing and I don't even like to eat that EVER! Happy birthday babe!