My latest project that needs help...

I entered this, my finished project into a felt food photo contest. WIll you please go vote for me!

http://www.buggabugs.blogspot.com/ Click the #13 bubble on the left side. Sorry if you're hearing this twice but I could really use the votes. I could win free patterns to make more felt food. it's an obsession right now!--Lisa

Who'll Break the Ice?

This blog has been a little inactive for the last month so I thought we would post. Anyone out there aware that today is Lacey's b-day? I would have called her but I fell asleep on the bed around 8:30. Sorry Lacey.

Here are a few pictures.
This first one is of the new Ochre Hills temple in Herriman (or Riverton), Utah. We were out there last Sunday for Lisa's grandmother's funeral.


Braxton in the tree in our front yard.

Raya either smelled something funny or did something smelly.

Adria eating a cupcake at the school carnival.

Kanyon doing the same.

Take care ya'alls.

Just Some News

How do you announce that you are going to have #6? We are looking for any suggestions. I guess you could post it on a family blog for all to read.

Our family is looking forward to welcoming a new addition in July.

Las Vegas

The winter weather here in Provo sent us to Las Vegas last weekend in search for some sun. We went with cousin Amanda stayed with Brandon and Michelle. We did end up having one sunny day and we used it to take a look at the Hoover Dam (surprisingly enough we didn't find the Allspark, but we did find one very posh men's room in one of the towers on top of the dam). We did the usual, spitting off the dam and laughing at t-shirts with dam jokes on them. Brandon and Michelle were excellent hosts and we would recommend their very cold pool and very warm hot tub to anyone.

Hi from Moscow!

I am really bad at this and the last time I tried to post to a blog I couldn't get a picture to load, so we will see how this goes. We had an awesome Christmas with our three daughters here and no sons. No, I don't mean that it was awesome because our two sons weren't here--I mean it was awesome because our three daughters were, but it would have been better if the sons had been here also. Anyway, it was a fun week full of baking gingerbread houses . . .


Christmas pageants that included stray animals such as tigers . . .


Playing with grandpa's new toys . . .


And meeting new friends . . .


Yes, Amanda brought Mat Taylor home for us to meet and as you can see we really made good use of him. He is a great babysitter and, as the kids learned, slightly ticklish. We thought he was great and can't wait to bring him back to Moscow when the weather is slightly less snowy. All in all it was a great holiday, and I have been sad to see it end. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter as much as we are. North Idaho was hit pretty good the week before Christmas, and it hasn't let up much since.

Here is my patrol car after some of my co-workers got jealous on Christmas night when I wasn't working and they were.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Wichita

Kevin Zirker Family Christmas Letter

We're opting for electronic distribution of our Christmas letter this year. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas! [double-click on pages to view a larger image]

Family History

Yesterday all the Provo cousins got together and made a trip to the temple to do some Zirker family sealings. Grandpa did all research (the hard work), Amanda orchestrated our schedules, and the rest of us showed up to be proxies. We spent about 2 hours doing work for family members from the 1600s to a 1920s Sagers relative. We all had a good time- Thanks to Grandpa for getting everything ready for those who have been waiting so long to become eternally linked together.

I'm sure Grandpa has piles more names if anyone's interested...

Tiz the Season...

Kori makes a break for it, while Katie prays that it will soon be over!

Hambrick Kiddos!

Here are the best of the best I could get of all the four kids. They were THRILLED to be posing for yet, another Christmas card!

Vote

Don't forget to vote tomorrow. If you already have, good for you.

Grand Prize Winner

Thank you family, friends and bloggers. Because of your votes, Jaden was the grand prize winner. His art will be put on a billboard next week. We are so proud of him and his talent. They told us that he had over 500 votes and that the next closest to him was 280. You guys rock the house. Thanks for your support. We love and miss you all. I'm so grateful to know that whenever we are in need, for something, anything, that we can rely on our family and they will always come through. I'm not worried now if we ever had a catastrophe, because if we stick together----we are large in numbers. Thanks again.

The Next Time You're in Byers, Colorado. . .

. . . stop by May Farms. Our family went there this weekend and had a great time. I enjoyed it because it brought back some of the Zirker roots. We went through a corn maze, on a hay ride, rode on the colored carts (below), picked pumpkins, and had a great day.

A long line of these carts were pulled by a tractor (oh the smell of diesel).

Throwing rocks at the ducks (we didn't have any bread).

At this moment Adria is sitting on a bunch of thorns (check out the bottom of her shoes). Pampers do more than just hold jive.

Do our kids look like rural rugrats? The farm's pumpkin prices were a little high so we setttled for the small ones. We'll get "real" ones at Wal-Mart this week.

The end of a long day.

Jaden needs your vote!!

Hello my fellow bloggers. I am in need of some voting power from all of you. My son Jaden entered an art contest and is in the top 3 out of all of 7th and 8th graders here in Omaha. But now it is up to you, the voters, to make him a winner. If he wins, he gets his drawing on a BILLBOARD (WOW) and $200.00. Please take a few moments and click on the link below to vote for Jaden. Thanks everyone! Here's the link: http://www.ketv.com/news/17662379/detail.html#*Tell your friends and family and anyone who is 18 or older. You can vote only once from a single e-mail address---so If you have more than one e-mail, make him a winner!

facebook and family history?

About 1 year ago, I received a random friend request on facebook from a dude by the name of Steve Zirker. Usually I don't accept friend requests from people I don't know, but since this guy was British, I had to accept (I have an affinity for foreigners). Aside from occasionally sending me facebook junk, he never said anything to me...Until 3 days ago. And interestingly enough, he wanted to know about the Zirker family geneology. His grandfather moved from Germany right before WWII and originated from around the same general area that our Zirker family did. But both of us want to find out if we're really related (him because he wants to know about his family history, and me because I want to know if we have relatives, aside from Michelle's family, where we can stay for free in England).

Who would have thought that facebook would lead to discovering one's family history?

Cruisin' the Cougar Directory

Buddy and I were just updating our information for the BYU Alumni Association (you know, should anyone be dying to find out what ever happened to the Richards in the five months it's been since we left Provo). With Buddy sitting beside me, naturally it turned into a search fest for everyone we've ever known or would like to have known (he spends a good portion of his time on Wikipedia & IMDB doing the same).

FACT: We are related to at least 51% of all Zirkers listed in the Alumni Directory.
FACT: Such was not the case with the Richards side.
FACT: Buddy is listed as Pre-Med, which hasn't been the case in over 3 years (incidentally it changed shortly after we began dating and I had told my father he was Pre-Med).
FACT: Steve Young is very difficult to track down.
FACT: We know the current location of this guy:

(whichever you know him best as)

And by "current location" I really mean an obscure address where he may or may not have lived at one time or another - there is a phone number if anyone wants to find out for sure.

To end the post on a slightly less creepy note: GO COUGS!If you're asking yourself if that's a mini BYU football helmet signed by Bronco Mendenhall himself, you'd be right. If you're also asking whether, based on our girth, this picture is outdated by about 3 years...you'd be right again.

Kent Zirker Family Reunion - Provo, Utah

Grandma brought out all kinds of fun stuff
Our T-Shirts, Raya (Kevin & Lisa) and Weston (Seth & Lacey). The three stripes have every one's names written in smaller writing

The crew just before starting the hike to Timp Cave

Lunch in American Fork Canyon

A Couple of Bowling Pros

Brant, Leslie and family

Erik, Jamie and family (they couldn't make the reunion so they are modeling their shirts from Denver)

Kevin, Lisa and family

Travis and Kelly

Matt and Kimbre

Seth, Lacey and family

Big boys teaching small boys (and girls) to shoot 2 liter bottles of water up into the trees at Liberty Park in Salt Lake
Is this Heaven? No, its Promontory Point

Hope you didn't get bored with all the pictures. We had a great time, visited lots of sights, and ate way too much. Erik had to work and the kids had just started school so they couldn't be with us. We thought about them a lot.

It was fun to be in Provo, everyone had met their spouse at BYU. There were lots of memories and stories to go around. Most of the guys, except Grandpa, climbed to the Y one night about mid-night. Reunions and grandkids are great.

A break at the beach

This month has been family packed so far with both the Kent Zirker reuinion (which I'm hoping someone else will post about because I missed half of the events due to the end of semester finals and grading and graduation and such at UVU) and Hill family vacation at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was a blast and I thought I'd post a few pictures.

Riding the waves with my sister and cousin.


T-rav kickin' in it the sun...or rather in the shade.


A view from the top of Currituck Lighthouse.

Baby #2

About 6 months from now I am going to look like this:

That's what I am hoping for anyway. Baby #2 is expected to arrive around January 12th. Jamieson is hoping it comes 2 weeks early for the tax break, but we already played that game once. Noёlle is excited...we promise.