Our First Irrigation in Pictures

Today was our very first experience with irrigating our own property. For those of you who don't know what irrigation is... it is basically flooding your yard with water. Here in the desert we don't get much rain, definitely not enough to keep grass green. Some yards don't have grass at all. People with smaller yards that do have grass use sprinkler systems to water their lawns, but in order to water a large yard like ours you have to irrigate to get the grass green.

We asked at the local irrigation department what the previous owners did and then ordered ourselves one hour of irrigation. Irrigation is measured in time not an amount. You sign up on a paper in front of the office and then wait until the schedule comes out. You don't get to choose your time so when the schedule came out I was happy to see that we were scheduled for Sunday at 4pm. A weekend afternoon start meant Jerry would be home to open the valves and that it would be daylight so we could watch. Not looking forward to getting a schedule with an irrigation start time of 2am!

We all watched the clock waiting for 4pm. When the time finally came we all headed out and Jerry opened the first valve.

Hayden's on the run. I think he was expecting a faster flood! The boys quickly ditched their shoes and socks for flip flops so they could splash around.

At first the water was just gently bubbling and we weren't getting water out of the last two valves. So Jerry went in and called our Zanjero (which is Spanish for water master - I had to look that up!). He said things were running a bit behind and that we'd see a surge in a minute. And sure enough a minute later they were gushing!! See the difference between the photo above and the one below?

A few minutes after the water really started gushing our zanjero pulled up in his truck. Turns out he's a really nice guy named Vance. He chatted with us a bit, explaining a few things us newbies didn't know, and making sure things were running smoothly. One interesting thing we learned was the water coming out of our well comes out at about 86 degrees (year round). It is one of the "cooler" ones. Another one in our district has water that comes out at 98 degrees (year round). Vance said it steams when it comes out in the winter months!

We have seven valves in the front where the water comes out so the front floods first. Then the side yards fill with water through little culverts and a tube that runs under the driveway. (The first time we flushed out that tube under the driveway a skunk came out. Thankfully, he/she must have moved on!)

This is what the valves look like when they aren't gushing water.

We interrupt this irrigation to... hose down the children. Eli tripped at some point and came up covered in mud (you can't really see but he's crying in this picture). JD, on the other hand, thought getting muddy and being sprayed with the hose was fun.

Jerry stayed out supervising the whole time. We had to pull a few grass clogs out here and there but overall the water went were it was supposed to. (See the mountains? We have such a nice view!)

We could have used a bit more in the way back by the front of the guest house and a little less on the west side. Next time we'll mess around with the valves a bit to balance it out.

The birds noticed what we were doing right away. They came by for a free meal! All kinds of bugs came crawling out as the water moved through the grass. We were wondering what kind of creatures would come out when their homes were flooded. We didn't see anything too crazy. One gopher for sure. The boys saw another furry friend of some kind but no adult was able to view and identify it. Justus insists in was a wombat. :) Wesley says it was a rat. We're guessing maybe a mole. Wesley came running and screaming when he saw it. He flipped out again when we accidentally cornered the gopher between us and the water. The kid has pet gerbils so you would think small furry creatures wouldn't scare him!

Alas, our hour was up and it was time to close the valves. Jerry, once again, did the honors.

Within an hour it was already doing it's thing... soaking in! Here's to greener grass in the days ahead!

Regular Evening

to be added

Desert Plants

The other day I took the camera and walked around the new yard to take photos of the trees and plants. I posted them on Facebook and asked our Arizona friends to help me identify them. Here is what we came up with:

Red Mexican Bird of Paradise

Orange Jubilee

Desert Fern or Feather Bush

Torch Glow Bougainvillea

Yellow Bird of Paradise

Oleander - White

Texas Sage

Oleander - Pink

Grape of unknown variety

Fig tree

Palo Verde Tree

Cottonwood

Pigmy Palm

This little flower is Annabeth (Sweet Variety)

Jerry's Birthday

Just a simple birthday celebration for Jerry this year. I better start planning for next year though… it's going to be a BIG one! Enjoy the last year of your 30's!

If a tree falls...

If a tree falls in a forest in your front yard and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Yesterday's strong winds caused our front tree to lose a big branch. On the bright side, I'm guessing mesquite will make some nice fire wood.

The New Run

This year instead of the Bellin, Jerry ran in Pat's Run. [For those of you who don't know, Pat Tillman was an NFL player who put his football career on hold to join the Army after 9/11 and he died while serving.]

The course winds around in Tempe and ends in Sun Devil Stadium. The boys and I didn't go to sit on the sidelines to cheer. It was just too hard with the baby and just moving and the half hour drive. Makes us miss the good ol' days of the Bellin in Green Bay just a few minutes from home.

Since we weren't there, these photos are courtesy of the official photographers.

Easter 2012

Every family does holidays a bit different. We try to keep Jesus the focus of our Easter celebration. We don't "do" the Easter bunny or hide and hunt eggs although we usually color them. This year we just ran out of time and didn't even do that. No one seemed to complain too much. Since her Spring Break didn't fall over Easter, Roz was in Wisconsin and not able to be with us. I got the boys matching shirts to wear to church and Annabeth had on a cute springy dress. They looked pretty good all cleaned up and ready to go!

We did find a little Easter surprise by our front door on Saturday. The boys got a big kick out of it! The Easter bouquet was from the neighbor boys down the street, but our gang enjoyed the mystery of an anonymous gift and had a good time trying to figure out who it was until we found out. 

Model City

My Uncle Matt (my mom's youngest brother) builds architectural scale models for a living in Atlanta, Georgia. (Check out his work here!) After seeing a video of a model in action Hayden, with a little help from his brothers, decided to build this "model" city.

You can see a construction site off to the lower right above and a bridge towards the top. There is a skyscraper in there too. As a courtesy, I sent these photos to my Uncle Matt so he was aware of his competition in Arizona! :)

New Carpet and Paint

The house is coming along. The painting is (finally!) done and the new carpet was installed.

We ripped up the tile in the closets and in a small section of the living room before the carpet was installed. That turned out very nice. I'm not sure why they had the bedrooms carpeted and the closets tile before anyway. We also removed the mirrored closet doors. We will be replacing them with regular doors that match the existing doors in the rest of the house.

As long as they were removed for the painting, we gave every single light switch plate and outlet cover a good washing, the heating/AC vents too. I'm working on cleaning every chance I get and soon we'll be moved in! We can't wait!

Wesley's Diorama

For some reason this small box that once contained plastic forks struck Wesley as the perfect box to make a diorama. The clear plastic became a window. He drew in some features (rug, bookshelf, door) with markers. I helped him make a few of the other items (curtain, table, chair, mirror).

He had a lot of fun with it and turned out pretty good! I told him we could take a few pictures to help us remember it!