We just bought a house!

Super Psyched! Never thought it would happen...well, at least not until I became a real adult, whatever that means. So, here we are (Susan and I), mostly moved in with only a few odds and ends left to organize and buy (hopefully all on craigslist) making this house our own.

Surprisingly, all our stuff from the apartment filled the house up pretty quickly so we don't really need to gather too much more stuff. Our nesting process in the house, it seems, is pretty casual compared to what I thought it would be. Yes, it took us all four days of our Thanksgiving Holiday to get everything moved in and clean up our old apartment but that seems super easy compared to what some people must have to go through with places twice, four or six time as big as ours.

For me, there are some big time benefits to living where we do now.

The house we got was in Cheshire, which is a nice, quiet neighborhood in the northwest part of the city and the closest neighborhood to the Dry Lake Hills (my favorite area to run trails in Flagstaff). In fact, our front door is less than a mile from the Schultz Creek Trailhead (the classic starting point for all trail runs and loops in the Dry Lake Hills area and beyond to The Peaks and Mt. Elden trails too). So, on the running, hiking, mountain biking front, we are literally as close as we can get to the most epic trails in Flagstaff. I feel very lucky.

My commute to work is great too. Yes, I can drive to work when needed but with so many trail options to reach my work place downtown, why drive? I can take the gravel urban trail directly to downtown (2.5 miles), take a detour off of the urban trail near Cheshire and follow the newly finished single track Flagstaff Loop Trail that goes up on Observatory Mesa and then hooks back into the urban trail near downtown (about 5.5 to 6 miles) or I can head over to the Dry Lake Hills and Mt. Elden for less direct ways to work. All in all, it is the best commute I could imagine. I mean...singletrack trail commute in the forest from my house to work? Sick.

Beyond the awesome running and active stuff from our front door we are also very fortunate to flat out find a great house that fits pretty much what both Susan and I look for. It's on the smaller side so we don't need to figure out how to fill it with a bunch of stuff we don't need which fits our values. Every room is useful to us. Also, it has a back yard that we love. It was fixed up before it was sold to us so even though it is an older house (built in the 70's) everything on the inside is pretty much new which was really nice. Ohhh...and did I mention the Aspens in the yard? ...BONUS! I could continue on with what we love about the house but you get the idea...it's simple and has a lot of aspects about it that we want in a house. Good stuff!

Well, I assume that most readers of this blog could care less about what my house looks like and probably stopped reading half way through this post as they got bored of house talk but ...my family has requested a photo tour of the house...so, here it is. Now all of you need to come and visit!

And...THANK YOU BIG TIME to everyone that helped us out along the way, from friends and family to our realtor. This was a huge learning lesson for us and we feel that without all of your help we would have never had such a smooth go of it. Everything seemed to just work out for the best every step of the way and we have you all to thank. Thank you!!!

(Front of house)

(Carport)

(Right side of house and gate to back yard)

(View of Dry Lake Hills and (when it's not about to snow like today...) a view of The Peaks form the carport and front yard)

(Living room with fireplace!)

(Kitchen)

(View from living room toward dining room and kitchen)

(View out window of living room. View of peaks is standard unless it's about to snow like today.)

(Hallway with light from back yard)

(Back yard view from our bed room. Not showing you our bedroom...that's nasty!)

(Bathroom attached to our bedroom.)

(Second bathroom)

(Guest room...in progress)

(Study and view out to back yard)

(Lots of Aspens in the back yard. Awesome.)

(Aspens!)

(Back yard)

(Back yard)

(Back yard and view of back of house)

Now time to go run in the Dry Lake Hills in the fresh snow!!! It just started falling...this is going to be an awesome run!  See ya...