The Coombs Family

This year we were able to go to the Oregon Gardens and sit with Santa. We saw the lights and my boys got super nervous about talking to Santa. Calvin came up to me right before and asked me if I thought he was good and if he could ask Santa for a VR game. I told him to go ahead. Ronin sat with him for awhile and was super embarrassed. He said he made a video for our elf and he would have to find out what he wanted for gifts from our elf Skyter. Ronin's list was pretty funny this year. He also made a note to capture his requests. He said on his note to Santa that he was 8 years old, even though he is only 6. He also wanted a VR and he heard you had to be 8 before you could own one. All Shelby wanted was legos, lots and lots of legos. We went to the mountain and went sledding on Christmas Eve like we did last year. There was so much powder we could barely use our sleds. We mostly just played in the snow and took a few runs with the sleds. It was really fun and just what we needed. Sh...

This year we decided to go to Sunriver with our friends the Binghams. We get a long great with their family and we rented a house with them to get out of town. It was the perfect escape. We went to the village, went on bike rides, played a ton of games every day, played football in the snow, made a traditional dinner on Thanksgiving day, and finished the weekend off with a rented VR game the kids stayed up all night playing. It was awesome to get out of town and just relax without chores and tons of people. We love Sunriver anyway and going with a new family is always awesome.

  Shelby is in seventh grade and we just celebrated her 13th birthday. She wanted to go to iFly, which is a sky diving simulator. We took her cousin Kenady, and her close friend Olivia. The rest of us did it with her too and all the kids did really well. It was so fun and felt pretty cool. We each got to go twice, the second time was a higher experience than the first. Shelby is changing a lot right now. She doesn't look like a little kid anymore and is definitely getting her teenager attitude. She is a little more feisty, but still very easy to get a long with. She loves to watch movies and quote them with her dad. She spends many hours a day drawing and creating cats, Pokemon and lots of funny comics. She draws on her iPad and likes to create anything she can. She is still playing the cello and is getting pretty good. She runs outside for an hour or more each day and is very strong. She has amazing legs. Everyone tells her she is lucky because her hair is always adorable but she ...

We finally got to go back to the Starbucks property and go camping this year. We only have been here once and this year they had the water slide working. This is the perfect property to camp. There is a big lake that the kids can swim in all day to cool off. There is a zipline that goes over the water and they can drop into the lake as they get closer to the bottom. There is a big ramp for riding bikes into the lake, but the kids just jumped in from there. They also have a super fun swing that goes out really far over the lake. Caleb took the kids out night hunting for bullfrogs. The kids were all hilarious trying to get them. They made their own frog gigs and tried to stab them without falling into the lake in the canoe. The canoe was so overloaded with kids that it was tippy for sure. There were coyotes near that were howling all night and that made the dogs also go crazy. So sleep wasn't as relaxing as we wanted it to be. But we stayed up playing games, soaking up the sun, and h...

Calvin wanted to have a go kart party this year, so we took a bunch of boys up to Portland to go race. We ended up all racing a couple of times and it was super fun. I had no idea how much they would like it or be able to understand the steering, but everyone did great. Calvin is such a good kid. He is absolutely the most helpful of all my children. He is very empathetic and if anyone is hurt or sick, he is the first one to worry about them and help. He does chores without complaining most of the time. He is a great student and all his teachers love him. He has surprised us this past year and he is way more daring than he used to be. He is really good at riding his bike and is going off big jumps and getting some good air. He loves to ride our quads and pushes it harder than I ever thought he would. His friends all love him and parents do too. He is polite and sincere and just the best. This year he will be in 6th grade which is middle school. He is nervous, especially with last year h...

 Caleb and I decided to celebrate our anniversary the exact same way we did last year. We started with a day in Portland. We shopped for our new house. We looked at furniture, lighting, appliances, you name it. So fun to get to build and come up with our new home style and feel. We ran into my cousin Cara and she recommended a place to eat. Oh man was the food amazing. We ate some great stuff and of course in a tent but it had lots of heaters so we were not cold. We went to a bar after and hung with one of his old dental student friends and caught up. Then we drove to the mountain and stayed up by Mt Hood. We woke up early and went to Mt Hood Meadows. Because of covid we had to get to the parking lot early and we were there by 7:15 and we were still able to park in the main lot kind of towards the front. Then we just hung out and waited for the mountain to open at 9. You can't even get your tickets redeemed until 8:30 so we just ate in the car and chilled. The sky was blue, there w...

We heard there was going to be freezing rain but Caleb had already scheduled to work in Medford over the weekend for a good friend. He had to leave early Friday and get down there to work all day Saturday which had been in the works for a month. So when they predicted a storm we figured they would be wrong as usual anyway. Caleb left and it was already starting to get pretty icy but the storm was coming from the North so we figured he would be fine. At around 10 pm that Friday night, the major ice started. It was positively frigid outside and we started hearing branches breaking all around our house. We live under hundreds of trees it feels like. We have white oak trees everywhere and there are two huge ones that tower over our tiny house. Shelby came into my room with me and we could not sleep because of the storm. It was so loud and things kept hitting our house and it was starting to get a little scary. Shelby finally fell asleep at 2:00 am and went to her own bed. The boys were bot...