Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek of what we've been spending our weekends working on.

Adventures in Idaho

Here are some photos from places we've visited during our first few months in Idaho!

Shoshone Falls "Niagara of the West", near Twin Falls. Actually taller than Niagara Falls.

Bruneau Dunes State Park - The tallest single-structured sand dune in North America at 470 feet. These are only about 30 minutes from Mountain Home! Pretty crazy.

On our way to Bruneau Canyon...the road actually crosses through a part of the AF bombing range that MHAFB uses!

Used to be used for Native American human sacrifices!

Pink Flag (girls weekend) in McCall. Really pretty!

Craters of the Moon National Monument &Preserve in Arco. This place used to be used for astronaut training because it is similar to the moon's surface. The "mountains" are actually spatter cones (miniature volcanoes) and cinder cones (formed from erupted lava with high gas content). Most of the eruptions that have occurred in this area and across the Snake River Plain were not your typical volcanic eruption where lava spews from the top of the volcano. These eruptions occurred from the ground and lava flowed out as the earth's crust heated up.

On top of "Inferno Cone", 6181 ft. elevation. It was hard to breath as we hiked up this steep, half-mile cinder cone.

 

Joe & Wanda were visiting!

It was so windy! This was probably right before we got dirt in our mouth.

Grant the explorer...haha! We hiked around the Broken Top Cinder Cone Trail Loop. Broken Top is a result of the most recent eruption, occurring 2,000 years ago. Geologists believe that future eruptions in the area are likely. So cool!

Those are flowers on the side of the hill. They grew randomly out of the hardened lava and cinder.

Grant in one of the caves, actually called a "Lava Tube," formed by a lava flow that cools on the outside with hot lava flowing within.

I explored the cave all by myself! Everyone else was too scared. I crawled through the space in the picture below and came out where the light is shining through. :)

One side of the Broken Top Cinder Cone was covered in trees and shrubs, while the other side was basically all lava and cinder ash! Very cool to hike around.

He picked me a flower.

This last photo is the actual volcano! As I said earlier, the mountainous cones are not the volcanoes. The volcanoes were in the ground and the cinder cones were formed as "frothy, molten rock was sprayed high into the air from linear eruptive fissures like this one" (from my Broken Top Loop Trail Guide). When the cinders fell back down to the earth, they piled up forming cinder cones.

We also floated down the Boise River in a 4 person tube while Wanda and Joe were here. The water was freezing, but it was a nice 6 mile float that took a little less than 2 hours! I'd love to do it again!

We bought a house!!

That's right, we bought a house! When we found out we were going to be moving to Idaho, we decided that we were tired of living on base and wanted to start making our money count! So we I  had been looking at houses on the internet for quite some time. Grant didn't start seriously looking until early March. When we arrived in Mountain Home, we arranged to see as many houses as possible with our real estate agent (who was awesome!) over the next few days. We spent two days looking at houses and put an offer on one at the end of the 2nd day. After about a week of negotiating back and forth, we were officially under contract!

We had a tentative closing date for May 4th, so we spent the month of April in the TLF (hotel) on base. We were super excited to get the keys and have the movers deliver our stuff. So we've been in the house since May 4th (movers came on the 5th), and yes, I've been slacking that long to write this post. I realize many of you have been waiting for this, and I do apologize. I had every intention to do this on the 4th. I even took the pictures that day! Obviously, we have been making some changes and updating some things, so I will post those as we finish those projects. We just got new furniture for our bedroom and side tables and entertainment center for our living room today!! LOVE!

So anyway, here are a few pictures from the day we got the keys. Enjoy! :)

(This picture is from earlier in the month, after we were under contract. I had to get a picture of the sign....SALE PENDING!!)

This bedroom is off the left of the hallway as you come in the front of the house.

This bedroom is off the right of the hallway.

Extra full bathroom next to the bedroom in the last picture.

Living room looking in from the hallway.

Living room looking from the dining room/kitchen area.

Dining room, which is off the right of the kitchen.

Office "nook" that is in the hallway leading back to the Master bedroom. You can sort of see it in the picture of the dining room.

The laundry room and door to the garage are off the same hallway, directly across from the "nook."

Master Bedroom, looking in from the door.

Master Bedroom Closet, which is off the bottom right in the last picture. It has two top shelves on the other side and one rod to hang clothes. It's pretty good size!

Master Bathroom, which is off the left side of the room as you come in the door, opposite of the windows. Full size shower, with 2 benches!

Double sinks!

Patio...entrance is off the dining room.

Patio and deck

This side of the house faces east. The windows are the Master Bedroom. Not sure what/where the large stones came from.

North side of the house. Door goes into the garage.

Uhh...this is how our stuff came the morning of the delivery. Kinda scary?

This mountain of paper came out of ONE box!

Think I have too much kitchen stuff? ;)

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Hopefully we can get some before/after pictures up soon. :)