Thursday, March 26, 2009

Changes...

So after only 8 months of being in existence, my blog "The Newest Ropers" is no longer available. . . . .


I know you're freaking out, thinking that I'm no longer going to be blogging about my oh-so-exciting life, but no need to worry! I'm not going anywhere! ;-P

That title is now taken by my Bro-in-law Landon and his new wifey Jessica. They just got married over the weekend and are now The Newest Ropers.
*sniff sniff* sad I know


And so now it's time to reName my beautiful blog, to something more creative, more amazing, more catchy and cool.....

WELCOME TO...
"josh & jen"
I know I know, I'm SOOOOO creative. lol
But HEY! At least I made a new header pic!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Grass grass grass

Yesterday was the first day in a week and a half that I didn't have to shovel any dirt or work in the yard at all! I was pretty happy with that :)
Tomorrow we are Finally laying our grass!! Yay!

Monday, March 16, 2009

The COOKIE MONSTER

So we have discovered there is a COOKIE MONSTER living in our house!
Our dog Bentley, has apparently discovered that she can reach stuff on the kitchen counters now. Because on Saturday she decided to help herself to 4 DOZEN of the 5 dozen chocolate chip cookies I made that morning! UGHHHH!

The only thing that kept me from strangling her was the fact that she was thoughtful enough to leave one dozen of them for Josh and myself to enjoy.

Friday, March 13, 2009

A Busy Week

I meant to post on Monday, but my week was busy-dirty-sore all rolled up into one. So now it is Friday and I finally have a free moment.


Last Saturday Josh and I planted our garden. We had a good time doing it and met some more people in our ward. The weather was nice at about 70 degrees or so (I froze my butt off). We ended up planting tomatoes (2 kinds), red peppers, stawberries, peas, radishes, cucumber, zucchini, squash, watermelon and cantalope. I know when they start to produce we are going to have WAY to much of everything! But I dont care, I'm excited to be able to make BLTs and zuccini bread and to eat fresh melons etc! Another thing I'm excited about is that they planted a big corn field and when those are ready we can have a dozen ears for $1! Yummy!

The conversion to Grass.....
After we were done planting the garden we headed home to start work on our backyard sprinkler system and drip system. Bleh! It was tough stuff! We had to use a pick to break through the rock hard dirt and then shovel everything out.... I was SO sore for the next several days! We did end up getting the whole drip system done and working and half of the back sprinklers installed.
Then this week Josh started work on the front yard. Every day of this week as soon as I get home I get recruited to help with the shoveling. I have never used a shovel so much in my life (except for maybe when I rode horses and had to clean stalls in exchange for lessons....)
It has been a lot of work, and Josh has done most of it. But we can see the light at the end of the tunnel getting closer.
-Wednesday we finished the sprinkler system, AND EVERYTHING WORKS!!!
-Yesterday we started moving the landscape rocks.
-Tonight we will hopefully finish moving the rocks.
-Tomorrow we are getting dirt delivered to our house to level out the yard and make it possible for the grass to grow.
-Tuesday we are getting concrete curbing installed around where we are putting the grass.
-Wednesday we are having the grass/sod delivered.
-Thursday we are laying the sod.
Phew!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Sisters

Last weekend I had two of my sisters in town. Melanie lives in New Mexico and was picking up a puppy from Phoenix. She stopped by my families house up in Taylor and picked up Rebecca to keep her company. They stayed with Josh and I for a couple of days and we got to spend some time together, shopping, eating and just hanging out. Here are some pictures from when we went bowling.
Here are the 3 of us sisters at the bowling alley....
We tried to squish Melanie out of this picture, but she still got her big thumb in there ;P
Me and Melanie...

This picture below is my favorite, for obvious reasons :)

Vegtable Plants

I went and got my Tomato, Red Pepper and Strawberry plants yesterday.
I know that we are going to have WAY to many tomatoes, along with everything else, but especially the tomatoes, but I don't care :) We can always give them away to people.
Josh surprised me and told me today that he took the day off tomorrow so he can help me plant! Yay! He said "Did you really think I wouldn't be there for our first garden together?" awww! That made me pretty happy :):)
Today I got some seeds for other things we will be growing. To bad we have to wait a couple of months for most of them to actually produce.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Gardening

Family Gardens
Our church Stake has a goal to become Self-Reliant, and part of that is to maintain a family garden. When they told us this, I knew I couldn't do it because we have no where to put a garden! And when they did a relief society activity to help "improve our gardening skills", I didn't go because I can't have a garden.
Well.... it turns out that I wish I would have gone to that activity, because now I CAN have a garden! Apparently there is a family in our stake that has a large farm out here in Maricopa and they are making plots of land available to people in the stake to have their own gardens. (how cool is that?!) Each family can have about a 12'x20' peice of land to grow what they please.
I was kind of excited when I heard about this because I wished that I could have a garden. There is no cost for doing it, and they're offering to sell seeds for extremely cheap if you don't have your own, they even water the land. The only requirement is that we weed our gardens at least once a week. It's such a generous thing for those people to do! They are even farming a stake welfare plot and will be donating all of the food from that to the local food bank.
I'm pretty sure Josh thinks I am a little crazy, seeing as how I have a hard time keeping our plants at home alive. But I think it will be fun, and a good thing for me to learn. It'll also give me something constructive to do on Saturdays while Josh is working. :)
SO, this saturday I get to go out and plant our garden..... lol
I guess I should figure out what I'm planting.....