So if a hamster escapes...

where would you look first if you don't know when it got out? Funny huh? Well it happened Tuesday morning sometime. The first place we check? All around the dryer thanks to Grandma Zirker's gerbil story. While I am searching the house before school, the boys are setting up a little "camp" in their room just in case she gets hungry and thirsty. They taped a water bottle to the wall and set out a little food dish hoping to lure her back home. In my mind I'm preparing them for the worst. I'm getting slightly panicked because this morning I have 5 four year old girls coming over for preschool and I could only imagine how they would react to seeing a small rodent loose in the house.
With a prayer in my heart we're checking in shoes, the dirty clothes, under the bed, and then I wander over to the hall closet, open it up and there she was just sitting there like we were playing hide and seek. I calmly tell the boys to get the hamster ball to catch her in, QUICKLY! She' s a fast little thing and I wasn't really up for a chase. It was a challenge to get her into the ball, she kept squishing farther back into the blankets but there was no way we were going to lose this battle! We got her and promptly put her into a bucket where there was no chance of escaping. Bummer for her! So luckily this story has a happy ending! Hooray! **This story was for you Grammy and grandpa since you witnessed the first escape**

Aly

Guess who likes to pull herself up in her crib.

Bath time!

Brant

Another week has come and gone here in the Commonwealth. Like Dad said in his post, not much exciting has happened here, but we're still moving along. We've had two different sets of friends in town last weekend and this weekend. We've made the rounds of the local monuments and memorials and walked about 20 miles around town. Friday night Kelly's uncle took us to an Ethiopian restaurant and last night our visiting friends took us to Lebanese food. I think we've had our international fill for the week and we didn't even have to pay for it.

The weather is still warm here, but a little cooler. One or two of the trees have started to change color and I'm waiting to experience my first taste of East Coast Fall colors (Kelly has been telling me about them since I met her).

Kevin and I were discussing Stompers last night on the phone, so I thought I would post a picture. I always appreciated the two sets of tires so you could get the best traction wherever you happened to be.

Odds and Ends

Knott's Berry Farm California - December 1973

Not much exciting this week- just a bunch of stuff:

• Larry hasn't showed to cut the shrubs out of the backyard yet.


• Temperature on Saturday was 93 (a record).


• Temperature today was 70.


• Dan - neighbor to the south is rebuilding part of his camp trailer, there are pieces of Styrofoam all over our back yard.


• We hosted the missionaries for dinner last night.


• We went to the cannery Friday night - 4 more cases of food storage.


• We're headed to Leavenworth for the weekend. We'll think about you'all (maybe).


• I've been doing Eagle Scout Boards of Review. Got another one Tuesday night.


• The Vandals lost yesterday


• The Bears are 4-0, including Clarkston and Pullman.

Have a good week.

New Ratio

The new ratio of boys to girls in our family, including Seth's siblings, my siblings and our children.

Conquering Mountains

While we haven't hiked or conquered any of the beautiful mountains you all have,

I have conquered the mountain of laundry that seems to build up on a daily basis around here...

that should count for something, right?

Here are some random pictures from our life...

The boys watching Seth weed eat and mow the lawn. 

Ivan is getting huge. 

Having all boys I never thought I would get to play 'Hair Salon.'

Turns out we don't play hair salon, but rather 'Barber Shop.'

Complete with face painting instead of make-up.

I loved the concentration as Koper attempted to keep Weston from moving.

I made these from a recipe I found on Pinterest (an addicting site of creative ideas...)

You add a large can of pumpkin to a yellow cake mix,

bake at 350 for 15-17 minutes and bam, pumpkin cupcakes.

I was hoping they would be a little more pumpkin breadish, but the kids loved them!

I did these for the MHS cheerleaders this past week.

Vinyling a cone is more difficult than you would expect.

At first, I tried to use math to figure out the dimensions of each letter for the names.

In the end, I eyeballed it.

The kids had their faces painted at the fair on Friday.

Weston tried to keep his on but in the morning, he looked like he had rolled around in ashes.

Koper's didn't last past the first two minutes in the tub.

They keep asking me to go online and buy face paint.

The lady who painted their faces said you can't get the paint anywhere but online.

I'm kind of wondering what 'going online' means to them...

That's about it.

Shooting Campout

This weekend was Tyler's Shooting Campout. It was held at gun range down south that was closer to Kansas than Denver. We arrived Friday night and were promptly greeted by about 4000 mosquitoes. It took about 3 layers of bug spray, but we finally got them off us. We set up our tent, stood around the fire for a bit and then called it a night.

The next morning, the fun began. We rotated around several stations through out the day. Our first station was shotguns. Tyler shot a 12-guage and even hit one of his clay pigeons!

We then visited the muzzle loading staion. We cast our own lead balls. We then loaded our guns with gunpowder, a patch and the ball and rammed it down with our ram rods. We got to shoot twice and they were loud with lots of smoke. "I love the smell of gun powder in the morning!"
We then went to archery. I think the leaders had more fun than the boys. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see a styrofoam coyote. If you hit is just right, the head falls off.

We finished the day, by shooting four shots through our camp patch with a .22. You could cover my shots with a quarter, so that makes me pretty amazing (and humble!)

Brant

One Last Look

For some reason this year several of the evergreens in the back yard started dying. A couple of the lower leaves on the spruce tree and the one mugo pine that you can see in this picture. I contacted Larry a couple of weeks ago and he came a gave me an estimate of $400 to take everything out and limb the tree up about 7-8 feet. He will probably do it this week or next. Then next spring we will replant with some "dwarf" variety evergreens and ornamental grasses.

This week was the Latah Count Fair. Mom and I went down and had dinner Friday night (fair food is the greatest). We visited, viewed, and then say and listened to two bands, one country and one 50's and 60's. Both were very good.

The weather is cooler and fall is in the air. We had a high priest social at Tom and Arlene Millers last night.

Matt, the pics are great. Hope everyone has a great week.

Eagle Cap Wilderness Hike

All summer I have been looking forward to taking a week off and doing some real camping/backpacking. My brother in-law Jayson from Portland set up this hike with two of his brothers and I was invited to tag along. We hiked in the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area near Lostine, OR (northeast corner of Oregon). It was a four day trip with a long hike in the first day, two day hikes to mountain summits, and then a long hike out. We set up our main base camp with the tents and heavy packs at Mirror Lake approximately 7 miles in from the trail head.

This is Mirror Lake with the reflection of Eagle Cap Mountain overlooking it. This was taken right at our camp site.

On our first day hike our goal was to summit the Matterhorn. It's the white granite peak in the background of the picture above. We did some technical scrambling/climbing up the boulders of the spine in the foreground with the idea of working our way out there along the ridge tops. After a few hours we were up to the ridge but at a dead end of cliffs and drop offs. We had to drop down the back side to an amazing remote lake where we had lunch, took a swim, and hiked back to camp.



Day Two. We hiked to the summit of Eagle Cap Mountain. There was a well established trail to the top but it was steep switchbacks the whole way up. Once on top the view was amazing in all directions. This is me standing at about 9,595 feet, with a pretty big drop to my right. The lake down and to my left is Glacier Lake (a well deserved name).


Here's the four of us on the summit of Eagle Cap Mountain. Left --> Right: Josh Rowley, Jayson Rowley (bro in-law), Me, and Shane Rowley.


After hitting the summit to Eagle Cap, we dropped down the back side and had to navigate our way down this snowfield. They chose to use their jackets as sleds, but I took the more cautious approach of kicking steps the whole way down. It was much steeper than the picture looks with big rocks at the bottom. Once past the snowfield we crossed some rocks and run off streams and made it to Glacier Lake for another ice cold swim. The run off water from these snowfields was cold, clear, and tasted great.

After our two days of day hikes we loaded everything up on Saturday morning and hiked back out with our packs a few pounds lighter. We stopped for an amazing burger at the Lostine Tavern and drove five hours back to Portland to rejoin civilization.

We hiked the Y too!

And watched "Spy Kids" in 3D at 1:30 in the morning.

We hiked the Y !

While we were all out in Utah, we met up and hiked the Y. Ty and Braxton are now part of this exclusive club. The bottom shot shows them walking down to the bottom of the Y. Ty is in the center of the picture and Braxton is lower then him and to the right.

Brant

How did it get to this...

I passed this the other day going down I-25. What series of events went wrong, that this was the result?

Brant

It's Hot

Our summer has been very nice and not to hot but it is now catching up. This week has been in the ninety's and yesterday in Spokane the car thermometer said 104 degrees. I'm not sure that is accurate but it was hot. It was our stakes turn to attend the temple so lots of ward and stake people were there. Mom and I decided to take a late session so we signed up for the 5:00 pm session. It was only about 1/2 full and was kind of nice. We didn't see any deer on the way home just one big dog standing in the middle of the road that gave us a start when he lit up in the headlights.

This week we had house guests. Keith Anderson, a friend from my mission and an old friend of Terry Evanson from Canada (they live in the Denver area and he works with Terry) called and said that his daughter and son-in-law were coming to the U of I to scope it out for grad school next year. He was wondering if they could stay with us for a couple of days. They arrive Wednesday evening, spent all day Thursday at the university, stayed Thursday night and left for Rexburg Friday morning. They had a 6 month old baby with them. They were very nice and we enjoyed visiting with them. Jamie and Erik, they seemed to know your family quite well. They could name all your kids from the picture on our wall. Her name is Cassandra and she is the youngest of Keith's kids. They liked what they saw and will be attending the U of I next year doing a masters in accounting.

We understand Travis made it to Virgina safely. Good luck job hunting, keep us posted.

Labor Day Weekend

No pictures right now, but we had a good Labor Day weekend. We drove out to Utah and attended a temple session at both Oquirrh Mountain and Salt Lake. We were also able to see Lisa's sisters, Angie and Christine, and my brothers, Brant and Travis. I told Lisa we would probably see someone we knew while attending the temple and I was right. We saw Shawn and Annie and family on Temple Square. We hadn't seen them since the week they moved in, even though they live less than 10 minutes from us. But, drive over 500 miles and we cross paths; same day, same time, same place.

My lunch menu

I visited some friends from Nepal today and here's what we had for lunch:

Rice

Lentils

Chopped up bits of goat (heart, liver, and intestines) that had been fried in oil, goat blood, and goat fat and mixed with some herbs and spices.

I know you are now all jealous. It was actually pretty good.

Happy Holiday

Walla Walla Camel

I see this camel in a pasture on the way to Walla Walla whenever I go down there. There are also several horses, a donkey and a couple of goats.

We are enjoying the Labor day weekend. I worked in the yard yesterday doing a little trimming. Several lower branches on the pine tree had died and I removed them. Also one "lower" branch on the crab apple that always hits me in the head when I mow the lawn. While doing it I had an epiphany, I am going to contact Larry on Tuesday and have him give me an estimate to remove two large golden arborvitae, two large mugo pines, and limb one pine tree up at least 8 feet. I have been talking about doing it for several years and I'm just too old and tired.

I watered the lawn on the south side of the house all day yesterday. You are supposed to turn the water off at 10:00 am but I watered all day. I keep waiting for the water police to come haul me off to jail. The neighbors park their new camp trailer right against the lawn and I hate to water and get it all wet. They are camping this week so I'm watering while they are gone.

Mom and I helped clean the church yesterday morning, worked around the house, did a little shopping in Pullman then stopped at Subway and Arbys for some food and drove up to Laird Park. It was packed so we ate at the day use tables and came home. There were lots of motorcycles, four wheelers, beer, cigarettes, etc. Not my kind of neighborhood. We were planning to camp there next weekend but the weather is supposed to be up in the mid-ninety's so we will probably go to the temple instead.

Count me out Travis, my 1994 Ranger still works although it has the same worn spot on the edge of the driver's seat. Hope you find a buyer. Send a picture of the new wheels if you have a camera.

We also stopped by the hospital to visit Aunt Brenda. She had her right knee replaced on Friday. We visited for a while and Mom looked at the picture of the knee all opened up. I declined the offer. All went well and she should go home on Monday. Then comes the months of rehab. I guess her knee was in pretty bad shape. President Pennington, the stake president, did the surgery (he's also an orthopedic surgeon).

Hope you all enjoy the holiday (if you get one)).

1994 Ranger for sale

I though I'd put a post on here early on Sunday morning so everyone will see it today. The time has come for me to sell my truck and I was just wondering if anyone in the family is interested in it. Here's some info on it:

Good:
Runs great
4 brand new tires (courtesy of the local neighborhood hooligans)
Brand new front 4x4 hubs (same as above)
Towing package
Inside in good shape (small wear starting to show on edge of driver seat)

Not as good:
Will need new clutch soon (drives around town, but I probably wouldn't drive it to another state without first replacing the clutch)
Clear coat on roof peeling
Trailer dent on rear driver's side (I pushed it out so it doesn't look too bad)
Needs new front lower ball joint on passenger side (I have the part)

Overall:
V6 4.0L engine
175,000ish miles
You've probably all driven it and it runs about the same, just a little older
Looking to sell it for $1800ish
If no one is interested, that's great. I just wanted to offer it to family first.