The Coombs Family

We unveiled the treehouse to the kids at Christmas and it was a shell of the house. They were excited of course, but had no idea how we would finish it out. It's now super cozy, has tons of detail, and is nicer than the house we live in. If it had a toilet and a refrigerator, our kids would never come back inside. It's not completely done but it's pretty close. Here's some of the details of what we did. Door we found at an antique shop, side windows are from friends, and the top window we bought. Corbels everywhere. Lantern lights, cedar shake up top and siding. The awning we added above the door to help with rain. Bookshelves added in the loft upstairs for storage. The ceiling is rusted out corrugated metal that we washed and sealed. Added some wainscoting by the front door to stop muddy shoes and boots from hitting the walls. Caleb made the railing and ladder himself. We stained the inside, added fairy lights to the ceiling.  Carpet is upstairs...

Caleb and I decided to get out of town and head to the mountain, just the two of us. We had no idea when we booked the weekend away that the entire world would be shutting down at the same time. We have the coronavirus right now spreading across America and when we booked it, it was only in Asia and not a huge concern. But as the weekend approached, people in the US were starting to get it in California. We decided to still get out of town. We stayed up at the mountain, went snowboarding two days in a row at Mt Hood Meadows. The first day was fresh powder, about 7", sunshine, no wind. We went along the boarder and could see Timberline Lodge, and the most beautiful scenery. We had so much fun and went all day. We came back to the hotel and barely convinced ourselves to go out to dinner. We drove around Government Camp area and came back and ate right next to our hotel. The food was good and we loved it. We stayed in our room making out, and woke up the next morning to super hig...

We stayed in Sunriver four days and nights with Rhoda's family and went to the mountain one day to take everyone to lessons. Our kids and her kids did great. It's so much easier to learn as a kid. And guess what, the adults weren't too bad either. I thought I had forgotten how to snowboard and Rhoda was sure she couldn't ski, but after a couple of runs it came back and was so much fun. We brought tons of food, stayed up playing games every day. We went swimming, tubing, car racing, ice skating, hot tubbing and had so much fun. My family is the best. I want to come back and do this every year from now on. This was our gift instead of wrapping gifts to everyone and it was so much better making memories than getting some new socks. The best trip we've ever taken together for sure.

This year we did something different, and boy did our kids think we were terrible. We decided this year was about experiences and not physical gifts. We told the kids that we would let Santa still bring them a gift, but mom and dad were not going to traditionally wrap gifts and have things under the tree this year. We told grandparents and family, please do not buy our kids gifts. You can send them tickets or passes or books but nothing else. And everyone actually paid attention! This was one of the best Christmas days we can remember. It was so much fun telling the kids what we had scheduled for them to do and have trips to look forward to. We also had a scavenger hunt on Christmas day after they opened Santa gifts. We told them that we had to build another shop for a water storage tank for the new house. We told them it had to be high off the ground so that gravity would help the water get to our new house. We just built a huge shed for this a few months back and have water tanks, ...