The Roper Family

Okay, so Jacki hasn’t written anything on here since February 2009.  (Maybe she hasn’t looked at it since February 2009?)  So, I’m taking over.  We’ll see if she even notices.

I might even get rid of the cute wordpress theme she’s got installed.  In the meanwhile, it looks like over the past two years I have 209 comments to moderate.

I’ve been working real hard on my newest website, itscheese.com.  Unlike 90% of the websites I build, this one is for me and not for a client.  Pretty much the website is an experiment to see if I can make money from online advertising with google ads.

I started by making a list of 100 things I’m interested in.  I only got about 62 things on the list before I ran out of things.  It’s a lot harder making a list of 100 things that your interested in than I thought it would be.  Of those 62 things, I narrowed it down to 3: vermiculture, cheese, and learning languages.   I started building a vermiculture website, but didn’t get too far.  (I haven’t given up, though.  I’ll probably buy some worms for my worm bin this fall.)  Not sure why I picked cheese over languages.  I think it was because I thought there were too many language learning websites out there already.

I started work on the site June 30th.  I had the site up on the internet on July 11th.

Then it happened.  On the evening of July 29th, my site made its first 18 cents.  I was so excited, I called up Jacki, who was scrapbooking at a friends house.  She was very kind and pretended to be excited with me.

So, I’m not rich yet.  The site was live for 19 days before it made its first 18 cents.  That’s about 3 and a half bucks a year I’m going to make at this rate, but maybe if I’m lucky the site will earn money more quickly.  We’ll see.  My initial goal is to work real hard at it until the end of October.  At that point I will re-evaluate the site to see if it’s worth continuing to work real hard at.

It has been fun reading about cheese.  I now know about 10 times more about cheese from what I’ve learned in the last month or so.  Right now I have 32 different cheeses in my cheese guide, and I’m adding a few more cheeses every week.   And I have one cheese review.  Jacki and I had some friends over and we tried the imported Afuega’l Pitu that I ordered online.  It was good stuff.  It was also the most expensive cheese I have ever bought, but I bought it with my business checking account so I can write it off at the end of the year.  It was good stuff.  I wrote a review about it on my website.

Many of you have told me I need to update.  I know, I know I do.

Be warned though that this is four months of updates.

Here we go!

 
 

November and December went by way too quickly.  And of course, I didn’t have enough time for anything.

 

For Thanksgiving, my sister Jessica and her family came to California.  We had fun playing games and watching all the cousins play. The Thanksgiving dinner was awesome too!   Thanks Jess for coming out.  Grandma Buchanan was also here for Thanksgiving.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving, all of the adults went to a Dinner Theater together.  The girls had the most fun, but it was nice to get away.  Jacki also turned 31 this month.  yeah for me!

 

December was a mess.  Kent was gone almost every night for tithing settlement, which meant I was home with the kids all the time.  Christmas shopping was difficult this year with Kent being gone so much, so I was glad I got most of the presents on Black Friday.  yeah me!  The Christmas tree didn’t even get put up until a week before Christmas and of course, no letters went out either.  I hope I will be better prepared next year!  Atleast, I will know what to expect.  We did have a good Christmas though.  The boys asked for pretty inexpensive thing this year and Santa was happy with that.  The Friday after Christmas we caravaned with Kent’s sister, Teri, up to Washington to visit Kent’s other sisters, Dawn and Cami.  Most of the siblings were there and we had a good time playing games and hanging out.  The cousins even played school!  We were worried about the drive up there, but we didn’t have really bad weather until Vancouver.  They had been dumped on  and our rental van didn’t like it too much.  Next time we will get a 4X4.  We came home that next Monday.  Such a short trip, but we enjoyed seeing family!

 

 

January started off good.  We spent New Year’s Eve celebrating my dad’s birthday and then just hanging out with my sister, Juli, and her kids.  They all got along so well and all five kids were up past midnight.  Fun times!  I found out the first week of January that by the end of the month I would have no daycare kids.  It was crazy to even think about.  I have had daycare kids in my house for seven years straight.  I have had vacations and breaks, but always knew I would have daycare kids coming back.  So this was a little weird.  We also had to think about finances.    We were happy to see that we had saved some of the daycare money from previous months.  This made the loss of income a lot easier to handle.

 

The boys were off track for the month of January and a little of February.  This was good and bad.  They had a total of 7 weeks off.  Crazy huh?!  I thought I would go crazy, but it wasn’t too bad.  They had their Christmas toys to occupy their time.  We also went to the bounce house on the last day I would have Maddy and Bella.  They had a blast and were exhausted by lunch time.  Kent also turned 32 in January, so he can no longer be called a 31 year old Bishop. Last Monday we spent the day in Redding, CA. We went to The Turtle Bay Exploration Park and saw lots of geckos. It wasn’t busy at all, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We were a little sad that their water center was turned off, that was the boys favorite part last time we came. We were glad to spend the day together as a family.

 
Okay, We are updated. It’s not as in depth as I would like, but now you know what has been happening at the Roper house. Check back after Valentine’s Day though. Kent’s Band is playing at our Valentine’s Dance and I will HAVE to post about that. Thanks all of you who check back so often. I promise to post more often, not as often as Heather, but often! Luv you all and hope you have an enjoyable New Year!

Here are the rules:
1. go to your my document/my pictures
2. go to your sixth file
3. go to your sixth picture
4. blog about it
5. tag six people

So this is from August 2006.  Long time ago!  We took the boys to Fairytale Town.  We all had a lot of fun.  I can’t believe how the boys have grown.  Jacob was a year and a half in this picture.  He will turn four next month.  Crazy!

The Roper house has been a little stressful the past three weeks because of a “secret”. Yesterday it was announced so it’s okay for me to tell. Kent was called as the Bishop of the Florin Ward. Crazy, I know. It doesn’t seem possible, he’s only 31! I have thought and thought about this for the past three weeks and found out yesterday that it wasn’t a dream. It still hasn’t sunk in yet, but I’m sure it will with Kent being gone a lot. Yesterday was the beginning. I only saw him for a couple of hours. I am thankful for family and friends who support us in all we do. For those who are willing to help out whenever needed. You guys are awesome. Thank you for those of you who came from near and far, to support us. I don’t know how life will be from now on, but I know that Kent was called by the Lord. We are so blessed! Hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather. I’m loving it.

Rules: Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours and then tag 6 fellow bloggers

Quirk #1 I am the Q-tip queen. I have to use Q-Tips to clean out my ears after every shower and sometimes a couple times a day. I can not stand to have water in my ears or to have my ears ichy. I also hate it when my kids have stuff in their ears. Hopefully I don’t pass my obsession down to them.

Quirk #2 I am anal about the dishes in the dishwasher. First, they have to be rinsed off. No chunks of food on them. Second, there is a certain place where I put the dishes. Thirdly, I organize so well that I can fit tons of dishes in with room to spare. This I pride myself on. Retarded huh?! It is so hard for me to let anyone else do the dishes, but I am getting better.
Quirk #3 Any house work, has to be done right if its done at all. Vacuuming: Everything needs to be picked up, not vacuumed around. If you clean your room: Everything must be cleaned, not just your bed.

Quirk #4 When I sleep at night, I have to have one foot out of the covers or I get overheated. I hear I get this from my grandpa.

Quirk #5 In the shower, I have a certain order in way of cleaning. If I get distracted or just zone out, I usually miss something.

Quirk #6 I am not a big fan of phones. I don’t mind talking, but I don’t do well at calling people. And it is not because I don’t care. I think of people all the time, but have this problem with the phone. Sorry to all my friends that don’t get called enough.

There you have it & now I tag……Juli, Jessica, JaNae, Cami, Kristi,Kendall and anyone else who want to do it.