We’ve been fans of LEGO and the creative process that they encourage for most of our lives! That’s why we try to pass on our enthusiasm for the process to the next generation!
Who is Happyakrz?
My nickname since middle school has been Happyakrz. With a last name like “Merrifield”, it was pretty common to hear creative manipulations of the name … Pleasant Pastures … Gay Meadows … etc., but Happy Acres stuck. In high school, I changed the spelling to mimic the ‘80s metal bands I loved so much, and I officially became Happyakrz.
During my professional career, I did everything from building custom, million-dollar yachts, to acting as the IT and Marketing Directors for a couple of companies, to being self-employed as a photographer. Most recently, I spent a year writing my first novel, and hope to continue working on the series well into the future. My wife has been a language arts teacher through it all, and because of her connection to the school and the students, I have had many opportunities to share my skills with the fresh young minds of the next generation.
In 2020, I was approached by a wonderful teacher at my wife’s school who was in charge of grant writing for after-school and extracurricular programs. Knowing that I love LEGO, she asked me what I thought about developing a LEGO program for the kids, and the rest is history!
Sometimes, my dog, Hopper, steals my glasses and fine-tunes my LEGO databases for a lark. :)
“Though the process is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, getting these kits to the students has been one of the most fulfilling, creative jobs of my life!”
Though we are not directly affiliated with the following companies/organizations,
without them, we’d have a very hard time producing our kits!