Garden

After several years of landscaping, we have a backyard that is now our haven! We have several fruit tree's, a vegetable garden and a pond to just name a few. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

our flower bed


The swing is one of my favorite spots


Cameron's place


Our messy shed, morning glory's run the entire side :O)


View toward the dining patio


My cute furniture covered in Cameron's toys


baby plums


Larry planting our vegetable garden


Our apricot tree


Baby apricots


Our pond


baby apples


Our grapevine


baby grapes


Tomato's


Making sure our soaker hose and quick connects work!


By our pond is a bench that came from a friend of ours when she moved. Next to it we put a really pretty cross that I had found at Tuesday Morning. The cross serves as a memorial for Jasmine, our puppy that died last year of parvo.

Spring has Sprung

Here are some pictures of Cameron from our Spring has Sprung Picture event.

As seen on aypnews.blogspot.com

I don't know if those of you who read this blog ever check in with my business blog, but if you'd like to the address is here
Anyway, our web designer Bryan set us up a YouTube account and has started posting mini videos of ours that Jessica makes. Here is the wedding one, I hope you enjoy it!

Tea Time

Do you know the street value of this mountain?

If you don't know where the title of this entry came from then stop reading this, immediately go and get yourself a copy of "Better off Dead" with John Cusack and watch it! Then you may come back and continue reading this entry. If you don't see the movie, I'm sure you'll understand what I'm talking about, but you won't know the joke behind it . . . so it will be your loss. Oh well, I digress . . .

One thing we don't see a whole of down here in sunny CA is snow. But this year we got some! It was the first time in about 3 or 4 years that we actually got a decent snow pack. It was a chilly February afternoon. We went to church and as we were leaving, it started to rain. Most people take this as a sign to go home and bundle up and get out of the bad weather. But us crazy Zay's and our need to be doing things, left us headed up to Oak Glen to see what the snow would be like. Larry is not a fan of driving to Idywild in the snow (considering we don't own chains) but figured the elevation of Oak Glen would be high enough to get snow, but low enough to not require chains. This is what I would also call a win win. Oak Glen had the BEST caramel apples. So after a stop at the candy store "downtown" we went up to Los Rios to play in the snow. The thing we found out though when we got there is they do not allow sledding. It's all private property and they don't want the liability. A little disappointed, we put our Chevy sled back into our Chevy truck and headed off on foot to a large field with lots of snow and hardly any people! We played for about a half hour before Cameron's words couldn't be understood through the chattering of teeth. When we got home we took HOT showers, moved our mattress into the living room, watched a movie together and then enjoyed the slow cooked ribs we had put in the crock pot before we left. It was a perfect Sunday!

Valentines Day 2009

Valentines day is not normally something that Larry's and I celebrate. We feel we should express all those warm and lovey feelings all year long and not just one day of year. So in normal form, Larry worked on Valentines Day. Might as well give someone who actually cares about being off, the opportunity to be off! And the financial bonus of working an overtime day for us! Valentines fell on a Saturday this year. I took Cameron to Lowes to do the Build and Grow craft, then dropped him off with my parents so I could meet an old friend for lunch. Later in the afternoon Jen brought the girls over to spend the evening with Cameron and I so she and Justin could go out for sushi and then go home and get things ready for Jessie's birthday party the next day. I had a very fun evening planned. They got to play outside, then I had a Valentine craft for them to do (foam picture frames). I made taco's for dinner and BIG cupcakes for dessert! I left the cupcakes "naked" so the kids could frost them and decorate them however they chose! Then we settled down to watch "Princess Diary's" All in all we had a fun night! It sure is different having four kids instead of just one!

Doing their craft




Those look like some good cupcakes!


Jenna


Cameron


Jessie


Jordan

WOW!!

So this morning after calling the bank, we got quite a shock to find out how big Larry's pay cut was going to be. Can you say OUCH! This of course put me in a right bad mood. I have never been one to worry about things especially money. It's always been either we have it or we don't. We share when God has blessed us. And we have always thought "it's only money, we can make more". Now those are easy thoughts to have when your income steadily rises (as ours has) But what happens when the state comes in and says "sorry, you get a pay cut, cause we can't manage our finances" We got frustrated . . . BIG TIME. But after throwing a little temper tantrum and being in a less than great mood, I sat down to do school work with Cameron (probably not a good time to start that either) and while he's working on his work, I thought I would give my Bible study a go . . . cause we meet in three day's and I have a crazy weekend (yes, I can be some what of a procrastinator). Anyway, we are going through First Peter and this week we are finishing the book. So I got my little "God is bigger than the boggy man kick-in-the-butt" First Peter 5:6 says "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all of your anxiety on Him, because he cares for you." Wow!!! Thanks God!!

My Baby is 5!

On February 22nd Cameron turned 5! I can't even believe that 5 years have passed since he was born. What a difference 5 years make! At birth Cameron weighed 8.5 lbs and was 20 inches long. At 5 years old he is 56.6 lbs and 46 inches tall! He can write, read some words, spell some words, count to 100, add simple number (up to a total of 10) and subtract. He officially started Kindergarten this week! We are home schooling him using Julian Charter school as his facilitator. We met with his facilitator Erin and I think that this is going to be a wonderful adventure!

Cameron at birth



Cameron at 1


Cameron at 2


Cameron at 3


Cameron at 4


Cameron Now!!

Oh, Disneyland how we missed you so!

On a very rainy Friday in February, three Zay's headed off to a very rainy Disneyland. . .

On Friday Feb. 6 we decided to kick off our "year of Disney". It was very wet day indeed. We prayed about safe travel and off we went. When we got to the park, it was drizzling on and off. I was actually surprised how many people were there on such a rainy day. But being that this is the year that Disneyland is giving you free admission on your birthday and the year they started a monthly payment option on their passes, it really wasn't all that surprising. Cameron was VERY excited about going to Disneyland. It had almost been a year since our last trip. The first three years of his life, we had passes so we went several times a month. So this was very exciting indeed. And even though he had been there hundreds of times, this was kind of like the first time. He is getting to the age, where he actually remembers things. And even though he had some memories of the trip we made to Disneyland last year, a lot of the park was new to him.




When we got to the park, we stopped at the ticket booth to get our passes. We decided to go into Disney's CA Adventure first. Because we have a Disney Visa, there are lots of things that are special just to Disney Visa card holders. One of which is a personal meet and great with Disney characters. You have to be a DV holder and you also get a FREE 5x7 picture! On that day, the characters were Chip and Dale. They spent several minutes with him looking at his autograph book and playing with his hair!


Because it was raining there wasn't many characters walking around. So we decided to go where they spend the most time, in the Animation building.


Cameron was very interested in the "Hollywood Back lot" mural, he liked how it looked like the road just kept going.


While walking from one place to the next, we did stumble across Goofy


We then went and rode, Tower of Terror, Cameron was not impressed! But when we were leaving that ride, we came across Mr. Incredible and him and Cameron compared muscles . . .


While they were comparing, Goofy found us! He wanted to be included in the comparison


I think I have a new favorite ride at Disneyland. It's Toy Story Mania, you get to wear these really fashionable glasses while you ride and play


After several wet hours at DCA we headed over to Disneyland and got our passport pictures (wonderful after 5 hours in the rain). We met up with the Heatherly women and went into Toon Town where we met up with Goofy at his house. He must have gotten wet and went home to change clothes


Jessie, Cameron, Goofy and Jordan


We went through Mickey's house and the kids took a break on his couch.
Jessie, Cameron and Jenna


After weaving our way through Mickey's house, we found him, dressed to the nines if you ask me!


We then went over to Minnie's house to see how she was doing. The kids all got together in one picture


Then it was Jen and I's turn


After our trip through Toon Town, we said good by to the Heatherly's for a while. They went to meet up with Justin and we headed off to do whatever it is you do at Disneyland. I think it started to rain again, because I don't have that many pictures in the evening. We left around 7, even though we had originally planned to close the park. But Larry had to work the next day and he had a long shift in front of him. But that was okay, because we know we will have lots of time to spend at Disneyland in the next year!