New Family Pics

Just got our new family photos. They will only be up through Wednesday, Nov. 18th. Hope you like them.

http://www.holdsworthphotography.com/zerr.exe

More updates...

So last we posted, we were on our way to our cruise. I will try to fill you in from that point on. First of all, the cruise was FABULOUS!!! I highly recommend everyone do it. The kids loved the kids club daily. We dropped them off at 9am. If we were "at sea" for the day we picked them up for lunch at about noon and took them back about 2pm. Picked them up again at 5pm and then dropped them back off at 7pm only to be picked up again at 10pm. If we were in port, we dropped them off at 9am and picked them up at 5pm. They loved every second of it, and let me tell you so did I. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, but they loved being with the staff and I loved being well, anywhere I wanted to be. Ryan caught up on a serious lack of sleep and got a little sun, while allowing a sprained ankle to heal. (sprain happened before the cruise).


So when we got back we were quickly into August. Brennan was on a wait list for a charter school in the area, and low and behold on the very first day of school they called and he got in. I was completely unprepared for that. I really didn't think he would get in for a month or two, but I headed to the local store and stocked up on lunch items and a lunch bag. I have to provide him with a lunch and 2 snacks every day as the school doesn't have a cafeteria. He started on Aug 11th.


Peyton also started going to pre-school two days a week this year. She loves it. She was quite distraught that her entertainment (Brennan) was going to be gone everyday without her. It has been an adjustment and she is still working on it, but getting better. She still misses him, but is loving her school.


Ryan's mom was able to come back to visit us in August for 2 weeks. It was great having her here. She was such a great help, as always, and she loved getting the kids their lunches packed and off to school everyday.


She and I took on the great task of cleaning the garage and putting the rest of our boxes away. WOW! What a chore.....and what a trooper. She was determined to get that thing done and it was a good thing because I never could have done it by myself. We can now park 3 cars in the garage if we want to. It is wonderful. The kids love to play in there now because it is so roomy and it's clean. :)


We also canned about 11 quarts of cherries, made flowers clips for the girls hair, cleaned a lot and just had a great time.


I had the fantastic experience of getting into a car wreck. I was on my way to pick up Brennan from school, luckily I was by myself. I was driving on a 4 lane highway, I was in the far right lane traveling North and a truck was in the far left lane traveling South when his back left tire came right off of his 3/4 ton truck and across the other Southbound lane hit the median and flew a good 50 or so feet in the air. I saw it at about 30 feet in the air coming right at me. I slowed down as much as I could an got over as much as I could without going off the highway, and well it smashed right into the front of my car, then (according to 2 witnesses ) flew about 60 feet in the air back over the other side of the highway where it layed to rest about 300 ft behind the truck it came off of. It was crazy. Luckily, no injuries no airbag deployments and about $5k worth of damage to my now undrivable car.





The whole thing was quite scary and I am blessed to have walked away scott free. It could have been so much worse. Two weeks later I finally got my car back and all is well.





Ryan celebrated a birthday, everyone came up to have dinner with us, which was so wonderful. We had 19 people here, and had a great time. Thanks everyone so much for coming. It meant so much to him that you all made that trip.

Happy Birthday Brennan!

Born on September 15, 2004. THE BIG 5!!!!!

Texas Roadhouse for dinner. He got to sit in the saddle while they all yelled really loud and we gave him a big "Yee Haw!"

Today, my "tiny boy" as we used to call, him turned 5 years old. It is amazing to me how time just flies. It seems like just yesterday I was so excited to be having a boy and getting everything ready for him. He has been just an absolute joy. I couldn't have asked for anything more. He has such personality and charm. He is just a riot. He makes us laugh everyday. He asked to go to Texas Roadhouse for his birthday dinner and got to sit on the saddle while they all yelled, YEE HAW! He thought that was a so much fun. He just loves to be the focal point of everything that is going on. Today I was able to take cupcakes into his class for school. He was excited to be able to share his day with his new friends at school.

He got 3 transformers and a remote control Optimus Prime. He also got an autobots laptop computer that will help him with his rhyming, spelling and numbers. He got a color wonder coloring set, some Cars pencils and a pencil sharpener. Which he asked Ryan if this was that stuff for your armpits. We both had to laugh out loud. We explained that he doesn't quite need that yet, so it was a pencil sharpener to go with his pencils.

Happy Birthday Brennan. We love you and are so blessed to have you in our family.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYSON!!

Happy Birthday Kys! We want you to know how great we think you are. You are a wonderful nephew and "bestest cousin" according to Brennan and he would also like to say "Clam It Sudsy!" Hope you have a great birthday. We Love Ya! Love, The Zerrs

June

June came and went so fast I just don't know where the time went. We had tons of fun with Gramma Sweetheart, who came June 22- July 4th, Grandma Cristi came for a few days and our good friends the Castleton's came for about 4 days. Gramma Sweetheart celebrated the big 60 while she was here. She is not a fan of desserts in general, but I picked a great one and she loved it. I made some Sour Cream Lemon Pies. Peyton was a ton of help with those. The kids had a wonderful time going on walks with Gramma Sweetheart everyday, watering the plants and learning to do all of their chores. Thanks Pam for that. They love to make their beds now, go figure.
We got a few days of "adult time" in this month. I had a chance to go to the play "Wicked"in Phoenix with some friends of mine. Ryan and I had the chance to go to LA to go to an Angels game. It wasn't just any Angels game, it was the Angels vs Yankees. About half of the stadium were Angels fans and the other half, Yankees fans. Angels won 10-6. The next day we met up with some long time friends we haven't seen in well....a long time. We had a great time with Jason and Jen in downtown Disney. We shopped and walked and visited and ate at Tortilla Joe's. According to Ryan and Jason, Tortilla Joe's may have the best fish tacos they have ever had. Now if you know Ryan, that is saying something and Jason, well he's had his fare share of fish tacos. We had a great time. Some of you may recognize Jason. Yes, he is the ever lovable Jackson from Hannah Montana! We like to say we knew him when....FYI Hannah Montana just got picked up for one more season. Enjoy the pictures and we are off on a cruise!!!!!

Finally.

I am trying to figure out just how to update the last 2 1/2 months in one post. I will just hit the highlights and then include a slideshow with pics from most of them.



Shortly after moving, Brennan had his Trike-A-Thon. His preschool holds one every year. We had to go around and let him collect donations for his event. I took him to Ryan's office and the Pharmacy next door and a few family members to gather some respectable donations. We didn't go all out, but we wanted to show some participation, so he did pretty well considering we didn't really go all out for donations. So the day came and wouldn't you know it, the winds were blowing a steady 20-30 MPH with gusts up to 70MPH. It was crazy. Bikes were blowing all over the place, but the kids didn't care. They rode around two courses that were set up for them and there were volunteers who would mark a paper that had been pinned to each child, as they went around. They kept good track of how many laps each kid had. Brennan won 4th place. (we were told later that he actually won that because he was 2nd in collecting the most money) He won a Tadpole Habitat.



We were so excited to have many visitors in the past couple of months. My cousin came to stay with us for a few days, we have had our good friends the Smith's twice, the Castleton's, and the cousins. I truly love having visitors. It's just one of those blessings that make my life richer. We have such great friends and we just don't get to spend enough time with them anymore. There is just something about having a house full of people. I love it!



Spring Break was spent partially here in Prescott and partially in Mesa. Our Mexico plans were botched after several warnings by the State Department about crossing the border. We had planned to go to Rocky Point. A trip we had planned for several months. Bummer, but we made the best of it and still had a great time with our friends the Smiths. We toured downtown and all the sites, and then a few days later we met them at the Phoenix Zoo. ***A very important side note here is that while the Smiths were here, Anne, Zoe, Maya and Allie, performed a miracle. They were able to potty train Peyton. Something I had been working on for months, off and on. I will be eternally grateful to all of them for their patience. They did a wonderful job!!!!!***



I was able to take a few days and go to Mesa to watch kids for a good friend. Again, LOVE IT! I love being able to help and we had such a great time. Our kids get along so well and it was just a fun time.

Unfortunately while I was there, my grandfather passed away. (my mom's dad) It was quite unexpected. We had just spent the past few weeks worrying about my Grandpa Denler (my dad's dad) who is 95 and has good days and bad. When my mom called I was completely caught off guard.

So off to California we went. I was able to caravan with my sister and her family. We had a great time, I must say. Once we got there, the good times rolled on. Fortunately for us we grew up very close to our cousins on that side of the family. We saw them often and are all great friends. So needless to say it was a great time, even though it was a funeral. Grandpa is back with Grandma now. We are blessed to know about eternal families. They were both converts, they joined the church when my mom was about 8 years old. If it weren't for them, well, our family wouldn't have been!!!! Seriously I thought about how that changed everything for them and for all of us down the line. If they hadn't joined the church, my mom certainly wouldn't have gone to BYU where she met my dad and well you see the pattern here. So a big THANKS to Grandpa and Grandma. We Love You both and will miss you so much until we see you both again.



Brennan also got to play T-Ball this year he was a Blue Badger. His season came and went so fast, his last game was yesterday. Did he improve? I'm not sure we can answer that. He did learn to balance his mit on his hat so it hangs over his face. He also loves to be an airplane as he goes around the bases. If nothing else this season was comical. A bunch of 4 and 5 year olds playing T-Ball can brighten your day. Bless their coach for his patience and great attitude!!!!



So now we are onto summer. Brennan is done with preschool for the year. Peyton gets to start with him next year. Unfortunately Brennan missed the cutoff for kindergarten, so he will be doing preschool again, but Peyton is so excited to be able to go with him. It will be great for both of them.



Our summer plans are minimal. Next up, we are excited to have Gramma Sweetheart come visit for a couple weeks, then we are off for a Mexican Cruise. This will be our 7th if I remember correctly, thanks to Grandma Cristi and Grandpa Steve.

Sorry for the Delay

I am apologizing for the delay in getting back to the blog. At first I couldn't find my camera cord to download my pictures to my blog, then I lost the camera for a while. But now all is well and we are somewhat settled in our new place. I will post pictures of that and many other things that have happened in the past 2 months. Thanks for your patience in our transition.

Moving Day!

So it has finally come......and gone. We have officially moved. Thank goodness for good friends and fabulous family. I seriously couldn't have handled another move without their help. We had friends and family travel over 90 miles to help us move, some more than once or twice. Thanks for the sacrifices! I would love to post pictures of this wonderful event, but of course, in the midst of it all I forgot to take pictures. I can post some pics of our garage full of boxes, and rooms full of "things" yet left to unpack, but I'm sure you can imagine that.

I am still sane, and starting to get settled. The kids seem to be getting there. P loves the new house and has no qualms about anything but her room, at night. She has come into our room to sleep in our bed every night since the move. I honestly am too exhausted to argue with her at 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. B however, loves sleeping in his bed and wakes up happy, but during the day continues to tell me how he hates the new house and really, really liked the old one. He has trouble with the adjustment. He did the same thing the last time we moved. At least he still goes to the same school and has some consistency with that and his friends. Hopefully his adjustment won't take long.

Because of the move, I can't think past tomorrow. Sometimes not past 10 minutes from now. We were scheduled to go to Mexico for Spring Break next week, but due to the issues with Mexico, we have cancelled our trip. I was so looking forward to a much needed vacation with our friends. I could use a lot of pool and beach time and just relaxing, I don't care where it is, anywhere would be fine.

So, I guess I get more time to unpack the house. :( yeah....
Hopefully we will have some visitors this next week to help us "break in" the new house.

Snow Day???

Tuesday night the forecast mentioned snow, we have had snow before, but no accumulation. I went to bed at about 10:45pm and looked out on the deck to find a good coating of snow. I thought oh well, it will melt quickly in the morning, but apparently it kept snowing most of the night. I woke up to snow covering everything. I had to scramble to find a note that was sent home over a month ago from B's preschool saying, "In case of snow we will follow the local school district policy for a SNOW DAY." After listening to the radio I found that all schools in this area were cancelled for the day. Now, I grew up in Utah and my husband in Montana. In my lifetime, school was NEVER cancelled. It didn't matter if we got 2 feet of snow, we still had to be at school, on time. R says he remembers school being cancelled once because it was like 30 degrees below zero and the electricity wasn't working at the school, however he also remembers that he walked to school found it was cancelled and then had to walk home.

Needless to say, we were surprised that about an inch or two of snow, in our area caused school to be cancelled. But we took advantage of it and had a great time in the snow while it was here.

As usual P wouldn't let me take any pics of her.

What a busy weekend...

So last week we had quite a good time. On Friday, we were able to go up into the mountains of Prescott and see all of our old friends from the Phoenix Baptist Family Medicine Residency. It was so great to see them. We got to meet the new and catch up with the old and some new additions to the families. It was a great time. Then we went to our friends house for dinner and a rousing game of "Ticket to Ride." Our new favorite board game. Even Ryan loves it, and he hates board games. It is a fun strategy game, that doesn't take days to play.

We then spent our Saturday getting ready for the Superbowl Party we were going to have. It started out with just 9 of us but by Saturday night we were expecting 25 people. It was so much fun. Our great friends from Mesa even came up and joined us for the day. It was just so fun to have them here. We ended up with 26 people and tons of food. Ryan told me on Saturday to make sure to remember to take pictures of the party, but I totally forgot. I was busy keeping up the food, and then the game was awesome, so of course pictures weren't the first thing on my mind. Too bad the Cardinals lost, but what a game. We are proud of them and how they played. Seriously, that was the best Superbowl I have seen in quite some time. Usually the only reason I even keep watching the game after the 3rd quarter is for the commercials, because often times it is a complete blowout.

For those of you who don't know, we are still looking for a new place up here in the Prescott area. I have spent many hours with my wonderful realtor looking at numerous houses. I would say I never get sick of looking at houses, but I'm almost to that point. Hopefully we find the right house soon, if I haven't already seen it. We would really like this to be our last move for at least 3 years. Keep us in your prayers. We can use all the help we can get.

Brennan is still loving preschool and I actually filled out the paperwork for him and Peyton to attend next year. I can't believe Peyton will now be going too. Too bad for me they will go on different days at different times. I am glad that she will get to go. She loves going to pick up Brennan and seeing all the fun stuff to do in his classroom and heaven only knows that she needs something to challenge her, I am amazed every day at how smart she is. We were driving last week to take Brennan to school and she kept saying, "look mom, there's a new one." I said, "a new what, Peyton?" She said kept pointing up and out of the window, I couldn't tell what she was pointing at so I said what is it? She said its a new one, pointing at a billboard. I said, are you sure? I had no idea what the billboard had looked like before, so I asked her, she said," the old one had a monies and a boy." So I asked Brennan, what did that billboard used to have on it, he said, "it had some cash and a man."

Brennan on the other hand has found his natural performing side to him. Lately, he has found things that make us or others laugh and he keeps doing them. When you tell him to stop, he says, "but it makes you laugh." He is quite a card! (no idea where he gets that from). He is a funny little guy with a great sense of humor.

25 Random Things, facts, habits, or goals about me

So, I was tagged on Facebook to do this, so I thought I would post it here too.

Rules:Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU.


1. I have a wonderful husband, Ryan and two kids, Brennan (4) and Peyton (2) whom I love very very much.
2. I love to sing in the car, but for some reason won't sing when my husband is with me.
3. Thinks cruising is the ideal vacation. No cooking , cleaning or activity planning.
4. Would love to learn sign language
5. Love spending time with my parents, from whom I am starting to learn that they were right and they make me laugh.
6. Have 8 nieces and nephews whom I love almost as much as my own children and would do anything for.
7. I love to play games, card, board or any other kind.
8. Love to spend time with my extended family. They are amazing people and extremely entertaining, we are never short on laughter when we are together.
9. I used to play the violin and actually liked it. I would love to play again someday.
10. Would love to take singing lessons.
11. Am very mechanical. I love to put things together, hook stuff up, or just fix stuff.
12. I am brilliant at creating run on sentences and creating grammatical errors, even though I always got A's in English.
13. Have a big brother, Devon, and a big sister, Chelsea whom I love very much.
14. Am wondering if people who are tagged for this are doing it because they think it is like a chain letter, if you don't forward it, bad luck will loom.
15. Would like to visit Paisley, Scotland sometime very soon.
16. Love to be surprised.
17. Love that my best friend in the whole world, besides my husband, is my cousin Lindsay. No matter how long it has been since we have been together, when we do see each other it is like we were never apart. I also love that if we tick each other off, we're related and there's not much we can do about that! :)
18. I love cars. I love to research them, look at them, buy them, drive them. I also can tell you what make of car is coming at me at night in the dark just from looking at the headlights. (It's something I have been able to do since I was little) weird huh?
19. I hate folding laundry.
20. I love to wake up to a clean kitchen.
21. Love my dad's philosophy for family vacations. "Anybody can do anything they want to do." This means that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. It makes for GREAT family vacations. I seriously suggest it.
22. I am amazed the lengths I will go to find a good deal. I hate paying full price for anything. That was ingrained in me by my dad, the "king of a good deal."
23. Would like to re-certify my EMT license and use it once again.
24. Love music of all kinds. Music is such a powerful medium, it has the power to heal, sooth, take you back to a specific time and place, trigger memory, make you smile, music really does kill pain, reduce stress, better our brains and basically change how we experience life. (really, it's proven science)
25. I am terrible at gauging time.

2009 Superbowl Countdown

More Countdown widgets here

Christmas

Instead of trying to detail our Christmas month, I put it into pictures for you in the posting below this one. Hope you enjoy it.

We had a fantastic Christmas, celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This time of year is always about family for us. We were blessed to have Gramma Sweetheart (Ryan's mom) here with us for 11 days. We were very sad to see her go. It is always so much fun for the kids and a huge help for me to have her around. Thanks Pam!!!! Paisley was busy with her new calling in the ward, Ward Music Director. Yeah, you read it right. I questioned them several times on whether they had the right person or not, but apparently they think they do. I taught and lead the musical number for the primary at the ward Christmas party. I also taught Brennan a solo for his performance in the Christmas Program for Sacrament meeting. I am the ward chorister, the choir director and the Primary Music Leader. Seriously!
I'm happy to serve and receive whatever blessings can come my way.
We had Grandma Crisit with us for a few days over Christmas. Grandpa Steve was chauffeur to his parents so they could come eat with us on Christmas Day. It was a great time as always.

We are now preparing for the new year, Brennan going back to pre-school, Peyton, potty-training, I hope and Ryan working harder than ever. I, myself need to find some creative outlet. I am going to look for something that I can really get into, just as soon as I find the time.

Daredevil video

Brennan was at play group today and found a big wheel. He thought it was the greatest thing. He quickly learned that the hill and the big wheel would be even better. So with just socks on he headed to the top of the hill and started down. He was going so fast. I can't believe how daring he was, I almost had a heart attack when I saw him do it, and I caught the 3rd run, not the first 2 he had done before it. I looked at the bottom of his feet, and the heels of his socks were gone, he wore both heels right out. I couldn't believe it. (The picture maybe a little fuzzy because I used my phone to take the movie. )