Laws of Nature

What goes in, must eventually come out.

Koper is being potty trained...

Can I pull anyone's heart strings tonight?

I'm working on a project with Trav's karate school to help raise money for one of my former Haitian students. This is the poster (with slightly better formatting in real life) that we're putting up. What think ye?

Educating Haiti

There is a man with a dream to help educate his people. He believes that only through education, will his country, the poorest in the western hemisphere, be able to crawl out of poverty.

This is Moise Aspervil (the man on the left). He comes from a city of 15,000 on the south east side of Haiti called Jacmel. Jacmel is a beautiful city with only 2 technical schools (a school that teaches practical skills like electronics, refrigeration, computer science, etc). One of these schools belongs to Moise.

Twenty years ago, his school (called Centre d’Etudes les Gentils et les Mormons de Jacmel – The center of Studies for Gentiles and Mormons in Jacmel) was an elementary school. Today, Moise offers classes in electronics, refrigeration, electrician studies, bus driving, computer skills and repair, and English. Most students of his students will graduate with useful, employable skills in less than 20 months.

But during the earthquake in February, most of Haiti was destroyed, especially areas in and around Port-au-Prince and Jacmel. Through what can only be called a miracle, Moise’ family was safe. You see, usually Moise’ three year old daughter sleeps in her own bed. But the night before the earthquake she simply insisted that she sleep with her parents. Imagine their shock when they awoke with the shaking earth and watched the wall and roof over where she slept cave in, raining down large pieces of cement on her bed.

In Jacmel, most buildings were damaged or destroyed. Moise’ school remains standing, but has suffered severe damage, preventing him from re-opening his school. The engineers tell him that it will cost $16,000 USD to repair the building, plus Moise needs a $1500 generator to compensate for the ever-failing electricity in Haiti. There’s no way he can possibly do all this on his own.

This is where we can help.

Donate what you can.

Re-open a school.

Educate a nation.

Let's play a game.

Guess who's teeth these are?

O fine, you win. They are Mr. Trent's teeth.

Pictures from the kids.

Here are the boys' latest Lego inventions. Kanyon's "Work Sled." The roof folds up so you can put tools and supplies inside.

The office "water cooler."

The newly renovated work trailer. The tailgate lifts off.

Video camera w/ view finder. We shot some home movies this afternoon of the kids dancing.

Debt!!!!!!!

I wish I'd have found this a couple of years ago so I could have used it as a 5th Sunday lesson. There were a few families in my ward that could have used the concept.

5 1/2 Months

Just so you remember what it looks like!

When Uncle Eugene came out in October, we let him use the Ranger to get around and take Grandpa where he wanted to go. When he returned it, he had gassed it up. Yesterday, I had to gas it up again. That is 5 1/2 months on one tank. Not bad on the old wallet.

Yesterday was beautiful. I mowed the lawn and worked in the garage, then called Lacey to see if Weston, Koper, and Ivan could come over and play. They came over and spent the afternoon. We were outside all day and got rid of a bunch of energy. We visited with all the neighbors and remembered why we love living in this neighborhood. But alas, Joe and Sandi finally sold their house. The new owners came by yesterday to show it to their mother. It is a family of four. Parents (she works for Moscow Family Medicine and he works for Facilities at the University of Idaho) and two boys, ages 12 & 6. They sign the papers in about 3 weeks. The old neighborhood just won't be the same. Joe and Sandi have found an apartment where they will live until their new house is built. They don't even have a contractor yet. Just some verbal commitments and an estimate on cost.

Hope you are all ready for spring.

The Reveal

- New plywood sides that are 4 feet high again
- New wire and lights including orange clearance lights
- New "Dad's Standard Touch-Up" flat black paint on trailer box and sides

Brant

Extreme Makeover: Trailer Edition

Before. Brant can post an "after" picture and describe the transformation.

What do cupcakes, towers and bricks have in common?

Nothing. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Next time you see Lisa, you can ask her how she made these cupcakes.

Sorry Erik, I chose not to stack up several tables for my tower. Do you like the embelishment that Lisa's curtains add to the sides of the tower. (I've helped decorate for too many wedding receptions).

Landscapers turned brick masons. Sorry I don't have a picture of the final product, my battery ran out. We'll take more pictures this week.

Green Eggs and Ran

She did it again. Here is a picture of Leslie and one of her friends from the ward. Three of them ran the 5K St. Patrick's Day race at Highlands Ranch on Saturday. As you can tell, it was a cold 19 degrees. It was also a little trecherous running in the snow. A lady in front of Leslie went down, and then quickly popped back up and kept running as if nothing happened. Leslie is pretty sore today and is limping around the house. She said that she had to use her running muscles and balancing muscles.

Here are Ty and Aimee balancing eggs during the Vernal Equinox on Saturday.

Brant

Happy Birthday to Me

My Birthday Card from Martha
Me and my cake

Lacey made BYU Mint Brownies

How about that hair!!!!

We had a good time on our little vacation Tuesday and Wednesday and then had to return to reality. Saturday morning while Mom worked on the inside of the house, I worked in the yard. It was a beautiful day. I trimmed, raked bark, cut of some grass clumps that overwintered, washed cars, and started my walking routine for 2010. I bought a new pair of walking shoes about 6 months ago and had never worn them. I put them on and proceeded to walk two miles. I do not advise that. My feet didn't hurt too bad but two miles for my first walk was a little excessive. I need to ease in a little more gradual.

I had a nice birthday. Almost everyone called (those who did not know who you are). Seth, Lacey and family and Grandpa Zirker came over. Mom did an excellent job on dinner. I got several books. Mom gave me several things and books related to early mining in Idaho.

Seth and Lacey gave me a Vandal T-shirt. Grandpa gave me some money. Aunt Tami gave me a book about WWII. I went down to the used bookstore in the morning and bought the last two Louis L'Amour books I didn't have. They cost me 53 cents total.

Today was church and it is raining. Spring is here but don't get too excited yet.

Hope you all had a good week and got home safely.

We love you all.

Richmond, VA

We're in Richmond, VA today for Kelly's brother's wedding. The festivities don't start until tomorrow night, so we took advantage of the weather and went for a walk around town.
We're staying about four blocks for the Capitol builing, which I think was also the capital of the Conferderacy. We asked a lady at the tourist desk for a few suggestions on sites to see and got a 20 minute monlogue on what to do in Richmond. I tried to politely cut her off a few times, but she wasn't going to be cut off until she had circled every last block on our tourist map with her trusty highlighter. When I asked her if the Union troops had done any damage to the city of Richmond itself, she put on her best Southern accent (with a hint of condesencion and pride) and said, "oh, they didn't burn Our Capitol." She then told us that they did in fact burn half of the city, just not the Capitol itself.

Old City Hall

Inside Old City Hall, I think the painter had a real imagination

Spring Break

Cataldo Mission - oldest in Idaho

Sign at the Wallace Visitors Center
Mining display at Wallace Visitors Center
Historic Monument sign
Memorial to 91 miners that died in 1972

We had all kinds of plans for spring break but none seemed to work out. I had a Physical Facilities meeting in Spokane on Tuesday so Mom rode up with me. The meeting lasted 9 hours. It was one of those corporate meetings where they hire a company to come in and tell you what your talents are. It was good but long. Mom did school work in the foyer of the stake center where we met and then read a Clive Cussler novel while she waited.

After the meeting we drove to Matt and Kimbre's. We had pizza and visited with Matt until he left for his night shift. A few minutes later Kimbre got home and we visited with her. We met and visited with their new dog too. This morning we got up and visited with both of them briefly and then left on our day-trip. We drove out to the Cataldo Mission (it wasn't open to tourists yet this spring), then on to Wallace. We had been there before but I wanted to go back and buy an Idaho Silver Dollar from that area and snoop around more. We visited a couple of antique stores and finally found a museum that had silver coins for sale. I bought one that turned out not to be an actual dollar but rather a commemorative silver coin made of Idaho Silver Valley silver, 99.99% pure silver, 1.0 troy ounce. We spent some time in the museum and viewed a video of the development of the Silver Valley. They had lots of interesting items. We could have spent hours just looking and reading.

We left and on the way back toward Coeur d'Alene stopped at the Sunshine Mine Disaster monument off the side of the freeway. We had passed it several times but never stopped. We stopped and took some pictures. We then continued west again and then turned south and took Highway 3 to St. Maries, and then on to Moscow.

It was a nice trip, short, pretty scenery, interesting places, home again.

Back to work tomorrow. Mom will continue her spring break.

Happy Birthday Lacey

Hope it is/was a good one. From Kevin, Lisa, Braxton, Kanyon, Raya and Adria.

Pictures too.

Boingity, boingity, boingity!

Lisa took the girls to a birthday party hosted at a local gymnastics gymnasium. She said they had a great time going down this long trampoline time and time again.

Sorry, no pictures of us washing our cars. But we did vacuum out the van. I have since banned Fruit Loops and pencils from being consumed in the vehicle.

Work has picked up for Brant and me. The thought came to me today that landscaping is a lot like agriculture. Winters are slow and you wonder if you'll ever have work again. But then the sun comes out and along with it landscaping contracts. Dad, we shouldn't starve for at least a couple more months. I said a prayer of thanks after signing a good contract this last Thursday.

The primary asked me to play the role of King Benjamin this upcoming Saturday. Any good ideas on how to build a 30' tower in the cultural hall? Well, it doesn't have to be that tall, but I do need to build a tower. Should I use poles, ladders, pallets, boxes, scaffolding, banquet tables?

We Had a Party!!!

Ivan being held by Grandma Jones

Lunch after church. Martha sets a pretty good spread.
The cook in the kitchen

Visiting after lunch

The Zirker side of the bunch

Today we all went to the student ward for Ivan's blessing. Three of Seth's brothers and their families and his parents came over from the Seattle area. Aunt Brenda, Uncle Chuck, Tara and Grandpa came from Moscow. Seth gave a nice blessing. Because it is the front weekend of spring break there weren't many at church. If it weren't for us they would have canceled the meetings. After church we all went to the community center where Seth and Lacey live and had lunch. Mom did a super job of putting on a delicious lunch. Currently the women are upstairs talking and all of the men are asleep (I just woke up).

The weather has been great. It snowed a couple of inches Friday night but it melted Saturday and today was beautiful.

Mom is off work all week so she is going with me to my meeting in Spokane on Tuesday and then we will probably go to the temple and do a little sight-seeing in northern Idaho and then head home.

Enjoy your week

We did this yesterday...

So it rained and snowed all day today!

Aimee-Fireflies

Aimee's favorite song is "Fireflies." After listening to it a million times, she came up with this dance. I think she gets it from her dad.

Brant

I'd like to post a post but there hasn't been a whole lot to post about.

Sorry.

What Is This???

It's that time of year again
We went to Rainey Park in Pullman yesterday to play and there were some college guys working on this car. It looked like it may be an engineering project. It also looked like fun.

The weather has been great so we have been outside more this week. Yesterday I helped the high priests cook crepes for the Relief Society Visiting Teaching "thing". We had lots of fun in the kitchen and it was fun to work with all the old and some new brethren. After that, we did some shopping, washed the Explorer, and came home. I worked on the Ranger, getting it back in shape from the winter (washed, scrubbed, detailed, painted the windshield wipers, etc.). I fertilized the lawn last week (much to the dismay of the neighbors - it's always a race to see who will be first). After all that, Mom and I decided to go for a ride. We were headed to Kamiak Butte when Lacey called and said she and the boys were at our house and were very bored. We turned around and went home, picked them up and went to Rainey Park in Pullman. It seems we weren't the only ones that were bored. Weston and Koper played on the equipment, we flew balsa wood planes (I say them at the hardware store in Kamiah last week and just had to buy a couple). While we were at the park there were several college buys in the parking lot running this little car. It looked like an engineering project but was still fun to watch.

The weather has been great but there is a chance of snow this week - don't get too excited for spring or Mother Nature will get you.

Have a good week.

We just got back from seeing Invictus. I highly recommend it. Three thumbs up.


Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley

The Eagle Has Landed

First Day of March

I had a lucky break in my schedule this week and the weather has been just a touch unseasonable. With the afternoon off I took Kya out to Hauser Lake. For those of you not familiar with the finer points of Kootenai County, Hauser Lake is just northwest of Post Falls on the border of Idaho and Washington.

Her previous owners told us she loves the water, but I wasn't sure how she would handle it. I definitely did not want to be THAT GUY who had to swim out and retrieve her toy myself. After a few short throws in the shallows I committed to the big one and she never looked back. We're not quite ready for the Dock Dogs competitions yet, but we're getting there.







This is an older video (December'ish) of her doing what she does best.