Craters of the Moon

Geez, my blogging has gotten away from me. Our lives since we moved back to the States has consisted of home projects, home projects and more home projects. I think the theme of our current house could be "I can do that myself", and I don't mean us, I mean the previous owner(s). The problem with doing everything yourself is that you may or may not know what you're doing which can create problems for subsequent owners...am I complaining? I'm complaining. I'll stop now. On to brighter topics, like, visiting Craters of the Moon National Park over Labor Day. It was fabulous and slightly cold, but fabulous!

I mean, look at this place.

As you can tell, Avie made the appropriate shoe selection, her Sunday ballet flats. Sheesh, where we're you on that one Mom and Dad?

But really, who'd a thunk giant lava fields would be so pretty?!

Avie and my shadows saying hello.

My explorer Rayce.

And then there's the caves, well, lava tubes to be exact, whatever they are they're cool!

Craters of the Moon gets two thumbs up from the Nelsons!

New

We are back in the States about a month now, it's weird. I think I've had more culture shock moving back to the States than when we first moved to Japan!

Aside from feeling a little out of place I feel super grateful and fortunate. We are in a great place right now and it feels like the Lord is raining down blessings on us.

Here's what we've been up to the last month:

While we were waiting for our house to close we were able to go to Utah and stay with some fabulous friends from dental school and from Japan. It was so much fun!

We visited with grandma; we hadn't seen her stone yet so we stopped by the grave yard. It looks great, and so nice to have a place to visit.

We had a fabulous pool party courtesy of some wonderful friends in Salt Lake. I love these ladies, we always pick up where we left off.

Once we closed on our house we had to get new bikes, right?

We did a little swimming.

One of us made her freshman volleyball team, GO DANIELLE!!

We hiked!

We dug up many, many paver stones in our back yard to re purpose for a walkway (pictures to follow).

We've taken many walks and drives to get to know our new area.

We've spent the day at a beautiful nearby lake.

Last but not least, we attended a very unique parade with old style covered wagons and beautiful horses.
If living overseas has taught us anything it's to be a tourist in our own country. We're going to try!