Moving- Part 3- Boise and Beyond!

Well, I left off our last blog with us ending our road trip in Boise, Idaho. We have been staying here with Dan's sister Kristina while continuing to search for a house. 

Our first weekend in Idaho, Dan and I continued on to Washington so that we could meet our realtor, look at some houses in person, and get a feel for the different areas we had been looking at houses. We drove out Thursday and left the area on Sunday. 

One of the first things we did in Washington was go out to dinner with our good friends Joe and Amy! The Bennett family were our good friends in Colorado and we're super excited to be at the same duty station again!

Amy took us down by one of the many waterfronts to search for crabs and creatures. We'll have to come back when it's low tide, but this is something the kids will love!

That's the puget sound behind us! There may be a lot of traffic, but it is beautiful

This may not be worth two pictures to anyone else, but it's worth like a thousand to me. Way back when, skittles decided to change lime to green apple and it's gross! A few years ago they had a limited release of skittles the way they used to be, but they only had them available for so long. This summer they said they were going to release packages of all lime skittles but we never found any until we were at the PX in Washington! I was so excited I bought all 15 packages they had at the store.... I mean, they were only 75cents too, how could I not!?

Eating skittles the way they were meant to be eaten!

Friday we spent a lot of time in the car and a little bit of time in houses. We drove through Lacey, Olympia, Yelm, Roy and the housing on base. We fell in love with the town of Yelm, and saw that they were having a Jazz in the Park night. We came back to Yelm that evening and had a wonderful night enjoying live music, having homemade kettlecorn, a local pizzeria and browsing some local shops. 

We also realized the the Ft. Lewis army band would be playing at the Jazz night so we had to catch their set! Of course Dan knew like half the soldiers and one of them was even one he had put into the army during his recruiting period! Now he'll be working with him, talk about full circle!

Friday evening we realized that there had been a miscommunication with our realtor and his search parameters had only been showing us houses up to a certain price, but we had room in our budget to go up a bit more. So, probably much to our realtor's dismay, we scheduled 6 more houses to look at with him and 1 rental that could possibly work out as well. (Also, I have to add that we looked at some rental homes on AHRN which is meant for military families, and both houses we were interested in turned out to be terrible experiences. One was a scam where they wanted us to pay the application fee before seeing the place and fill out this word document of questions including our SSN and other sensitive info. The second house, the lady was extremely put off by the fact that we were touring houses to buy and to rent. She waffled back and forth all day as to whether we could come and see the property or not. In the end we never saw the property because we decided we wouldn't want her as our landlord if it was this hard just to work out a showing.)

Saturday was a looooong day spent looking at those houses. We found a few we liked in yelm and one in lacey, but all them needed some work. It's hard to already think about paying this much for a house and have it not be move-in ready, but we also recognize the investment opportunity if we fix it up. We talked with Joe and Amy about it over dinner at their house on Saturday night and decided on Sunday to make an offer on what we call the "Blue Box".

Long story short, our offer was accepted, rescinded and then resubmitted at a lower price, and then the sellers countered with something in between our two offers, which we accepted. We are officially under contract! Earnest money has been paid, inspection is on the 18th and loads of paperwork has been signed already just to get things moving. Closing date is set for September 8th, but since the house is already vacant we're hoping to get in a little bit sooner since that's right when school starts.

And did I mention the house is in Yelm? We're excited to be a little bit out of the busy parts of WA and have that small town feel. And after putting in offers on 8 houses, and spending the last two months working with our realtor, we are so relieved to be taking the next steps in the housing process.

That means we'll be spending a few more weeks here in Boise with family, and we've been making sure to create good memories with them. We're also super stoked to only be 8 hours away from them for visits while we're stationed in WA.

We've been swimming in their backyard pool and hot tub...

Getting acquainted with their family pets- this is their cat pancake. Look how close Carson got!

Dan took all the kids up to Kirkham hot springs. They had a blast!

Alex's allergies were acting up so I had him take a Zyrtec before leaving- maybe not the best idea

Don't worry, they're not dead, lol

Steam coming off the rocks

Think they were a little worn out afterwards?

Motorcycle rides... before said motorcycle was taken away by the insurance!

Celebrating Nana Dee's 84th birthday!

She put the cakes together so she had a better shot at getting all the candles blown out- and she did it!

And getting pedicures!

Transitions are hard. This has been our hardest PCS in our military career, and we know we're not done yet. I would love to fast forward to Thanksgiving our Christmas when all the boxes are unpacked, kids are settled in school, Dan in his unit at work and me... well I'll keep figuring that out. I hope to continue as an accompanist and do some piano lessons as well. Gotta keep up with that cost of living in WA!

Thanks for all the prayers for us to find a home, we are stoked to make this home ours. We'll be painting and carpeting as soon as we close! Anyone wanna help? :)

 

Moving, Part 2- Road Trip!

After all the packing and goodbyes, it was time to hit the road! I'm not going to lie, I was so done with all the moving stuff that I was really looking forward to the simplicity of a good ol' road trip.

Cade and I took my VW, and Dan and Alex took the Xterra which was trailing a UHaul enclosed trailer with our stuff. Cade did an AWESOME job on his first cross country trip!

Day one was traveling from San Antonio to Santa Fe. 

Cade was always intrigued by these long stretches of road that seem to meet up with the sky

The reason we stopped in Santa Fe was to make a second visit (3rd for Dan) to Meow Wolf! This is an immersive, interactive art installation that defies reason. It's so much fun to explore and immerse yourself in the story line and try to let the place reveal more and more information to you. I try not to take too many pictures inside so as not to give away any secrets, but here's a few for you!

All 3 boys smiling?? Yay!!

That evening we spent a little time walking around downtown Santa Fe.

What even is this mode of transportation?!

This was supposedly one of the oldest, if not THE oldest cathedral in the US!

Just outside the cathedral is a beautiful statue of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American woman to be beatified and canonized- and she is the patron saint of Nature and Beauty.

You can't always just pose next to a statue, pose with it!

Day two was from Santa Fe to Las Vegas! This meant going through AZ.

Dan and Alex made an extra little stop at a Mormon Battalion historical marker :)

Dan messaged me and asked if I was interested in making a detour at the Grand Canyon. My initial though was no way, but after taking a look at the route and how much of a detour it would be we decided to go for it. The last time we were at the Grand Canyon was in 2012, 9 years ago! The boys certainly didn't remember just how impressive it is in person.

Puppy at the grand canyon!

Elk!

Part of our adventure at the grand canyon included the weather. I had dan take a picture of us from this angle, and then the second picture shows what was coming as we arrived there. 

We got pretty wet, but the storm allowed us to visit without lingering too long! After our detour we finished out our drive towards Las Vegas.

Remember Meow Wolf in Sante Fe? Well the reason we were in Vegas was to visit the 2nd Meow Wolf location! It just opened up this year and is a completely different, yet awesome experience.

One of our souvenirs from Meow Wolf was the experience tube. If you line it up just right you can see each other's faces!

We also took the opportunity to visit a good friend of Dan's from the army. Sammy and his family treated us to some delicious Korean fried chicken, good conversation and games! What an awesome family :)

The next morning we made the rest of our trek up to Boise, Idaho. Dan left early to get a headstart while Cade, Alex and I took a detour at Valley of Fire State park. It was a scenic drive into the park and we drove to a trail that had a slot canyon to explore. However, when we got out of the car to hike the trail, it was SO hot. We couldn't leave pup in the car, but the trail was all sand which was very hot for puppy feet. So instead we found some shade for Carson and the boys did what they do best, climb the rocks!

That's Cade way up there!

Panting puppies look like they're smiling, but he's just really hot!

After our detour it sure took awhile to make it up to the Idaho border. Maybe it's because we knew we were nearing the end of all the driving for a bit, but that was a long day! I think it was 11pm before we made it to Brett and Kristina's house!

Dan beat us to Idaho!

So after a little bit of vacation we had arrived in Idaho to stay with Dan's family until we knew more about our future in Washington. I'll write up Part 3 when we have more on that front to share!