Featured Family
The Zerr Family
Our family has grown from a single child to 7 in the last 4 years. We feel very blessed to share our lives with all our children. We are culturally diverse being made up of white, Native American, and African Americans. We decided to adopt because our children who we had fostered for several years were in the process of being reunified with family, and we were interested in having a sibling group placed permanently in our home. We spent many hours on AdoptUsKids.org looking for just the right group. Of course, little did we know our foster children would rejoin us and also become members of our family. Before we actually met the children in person, we would make a weekly phone call on Saturday morning. We live in South Dakota and the children were in Kansas so we could not have real visits. In April of 2005 we flew to Kansas to meet the children face to face. We were very nervous but also excited. We had a great visit and it was hard to leave them in Kansas and go back to South Dakota to wait for everything to be finalized so they could come home with us. In May, their foster family brought them to South Dakota for a Mother’s Day present to me. What a wonderful gift. And, of course, how sad it was when they left for Kansas again. We wanted them to be able to finish out the school year, so in June we rented a trailer and drove down to Kansas to pick them up.
Life with this many children can be a challenge. We run to basketball, volleyball, dance, church activities, school programs, and practice almost every evening. We have a wipe off calendar the size of a whole wall where we keep our very busy schedule. I cannot imagine life any other way. I guess I feel life is what happens while you are busy doing other things. We never planned to have 7 children, but God did. And so, we accept each day as a challenge and are thankful that we all have each other to help get through it.