The Coombs Family

 Shelby is growing up faster than we care to admit this last year. Her face and body is changing really quickly and she no longer looks like a little kid to us. She couldn't wait for her 12th birthday for the promised and coveted cell phone that she desired. Since Rhoda's kids got cells phones at 12, my kids are pretty sure that's the age that the law requires parents to provide a phone. We have lost power here many times this summer with bad forest fires that came too close to our home so my usual Alexa phone calls failed me and I felt uncomfortable leaving my kids at home if they couldn't call me. So I gave in and she got a new Gabe phone. No apps or games, just text, call, pictures, music and gps. Seems like a great way to welcome her into teenager land since she goes to a lot of activities and needs rides and has to use other peoples phones a lot. We went to a local Brick and Mini-Figs here in town for a party. It was actually perfect because the kids didn't hav...

Rhoda and I planned a quick Utah trip to help take her daughter Paige to college and visit our cousins. Typically we get together for all of our birthdays in early August but this year with Covid we didn't think we could come at all. But by the time September rolled around the world was slightly more normal and toilet paper was available so we decided to join in the fun. We drove all day and stayed with Jocelyn's family in Highland Utah the whole time. We met up with Jessica's family almost every day we were there. They planned an awesome family reunion and we celebrated Isaac's birthday. He died five years ago now which is hard to believe. Jonah came and lifted with me a few times. Tony took us on a really beautiful hike. Jocelyn took all of us and the kids on another hike. We went to a butterfly museum and let butterflies land on us. We ate a ton of great food every day.  I love my cousins so much and they made us feel at home when in Oregon devastating wildfires came...

 Rhoda and I had no plans for our birthday this year with it being Covid weirdness and not sure if we can travel anywhere. Heather asked us if we wanted to go with her to Arizona to go see her son Britton who was doing kayak tours as a summer job. We decided to go and booked our trip without hesitation thinking it would be cancelled with everything else from Covid. But Arizona stayed open, our trip was a huge success and the whole Covid thing almost seemed irrelevant there. We were outside a lot and doing hikes, kayaking, boating, site seeing, and sometimes we had to put on a mask but not very often. A few things were closed that we couldn't go see, but for the most part we did everything we wanted to and now we want to go back again. Lake Powell was gorgeous, we loved horseshoe bend, we had not seen the Grand Canyon since we were kids together, and just being outside in the sunshine without kids was a nice break. Heather was the perfect person to go with us because she is just lik...

This summer was looking bleak to say the least. Homeschool was announced in March and every day that went by, it seemed more things were being cancelled. First school, then Caleb's office was closed down, the community pool we were members of for years, all sports and socializing. I was going nuts wondering what we would do all summer stuck at home without anywhere to go. I started a secret treehouse club with my two friends Stacia and Britni and we all decided we needed to buy cheap above ground pools this summer. As it turns out, we were not the first ones to decide this and most all the pools were sold out. We called every Costco in town, looked online, tried to find used ones, nothing was going to happen for us. So I went to a local pool store and found a nicer pool that you can put in ground, but it's still a liner pool so it cost a lot less. I came home and told Caleb what I was up to and asked him if he wanted a pool. He said he did like the idea of a pool but he didn...