Merry Christmas...

Wow, we're really bad about this, aren't we?

Well, reporting in for our holiday now. I guess it's better late than never.

Despite the hardships, Jeff and I had a good Christmas. The night before Christmas Eve, our home teacher came over and dropped off Christmas cookies that his wife (our Visiting Teacher, coincidentally) had made. They rocked! They inspired Jeff to do the same, but alas, they just weren't.

On Christmas Eve we did the usual: For as long as I could remember, the night of Christmas Eve always belonged to my parents. In hindsight, there is some wisdom to this, as that allowed my siblings and I to visit our in-laws on Christmas Day (more on that in a bit). It was a bit smaller this year, you will note in the pictures once Jeff uploads them: It was my parents, Jeff and I, my siblings and their families, and my grandma and cousin Jimmy: 15 people total. To some that seems like a lot, but we've had Christmas Eve's with EVERYONE over, and those days easily totaled over 40! But I personally enjoyed our small party. A few of us were sick though: My nephew William was just getting over a cold, as was my sister, Myra. Jeff got that pneumonia-type sickness he had a month or so ago, and I started getting really sick that night. Fortunately we cut out early and everyone had left my parents before 11, a record for us!

The next day we had planned on going to Oakley to Jeff's aunt and uncle's house (they just bought a new one) but that didn't happen. Between us both being sick (I got REALLY bad) and everything we just couldn't pull it off. We did call and talk to them a bunch of times during the day and yesterday too, so hopefully that made up for some of it.

Now we are on to New Year's! So far no resolutions aside from the usual (get healthier, work out more, become super-impressively rich :-) and the usual). But in all honesty, there are a few things we want to work on. Both of us want to refocus on school and saving up more money. Jeff, it appears, will be transferring to Colorado State University either this coming term or the next. Now, don't read into this: We aren't MOVING back to Colorado (darn it)! They offer a correspondence course online so he can get his bachelor's and that is likely the route he will be going.

As for me, I applied to Utah State University for a one-year Speech Pathology program that should have me done by next year. Working with the kids at Easter Seals helped me to realize that this field seems to be my calling in life: working with children with special needs. The only way to make it in this field, however, is to earn a graduate degree in some specialty like Speech-Path.

Well, that's enough of an update for now. I have to start dinner in a little bit. Hopefully I won't take so long next time to update you all on our going's-on!

Update

Yah, so much for that "Every Week We'll Update This" promise!

Well, I thought that, since I've got some downtime here (I'm at Stanford) I'd go ahead and give you guys a little bit of an update.

The good news: Jeff has a job! He is a logistics supervisor (Yah, I don't know what that is either... some kind of manager) at the Gap in NewPark Mall. He seems to really enjoy the job and the environment (I think anything is better than food service!) and his new supervisors are great.

The bad news: The house we put an "offer" on ended up getting sold to another family. So no lake house, no super-cool bath tub for me to soak in. Now we're not sure what to do: Extend our lease at the apartment or keep looking. We found two houses in Fremont that are in nice areas that are in our budget last night, so Jeff is going to follow up on that. Although I had wanted my own home by Christmas, it looks like that's not feasible, so if we can pull this off in the next few months, I'd be happy!

My biggest concern is room for the critters. The chinchillas need AC and Chris needs enough room to run around. Aside from that, everything else is not important; just desired.

Aside from that, everything's the same. Chris is rambunctious. The chinchillas are doing well, and we suspect one girl might be pregnant. Tomorrow morning she's going to the vet, so we'll find out then!

So we'll try to be better at keeping you up to date with stuff.

The First Day

Hi, everybody. After a lot of thought, we decided we would start a blog together. Both of us have MySpace and Facebook accounts, but 1) they've been individual accounts and 2) neither one has ALL the stuff we want (blogs, pictures easy to upload, stuff like that). So we're together on this blog thingy, and hopefully we can keep up with this at least once a week so you all know we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

The first act we wanted to do on our blog was apologize to the friends and family we haven't been keeping the greatest contact with. This past year has been insane. For a while there, we were hardly seeing each other, much less family and friends. Jen was juggling two jobs and working over 50 hours a week, all 7 days. And Jeff was working crazy shifts at Jamba Juice while trying to finish up with school.

But all that has changed, and we're still going through the changes.

At the end of the summer, Jen left behind most of her families and duties at Easter Seals and was hired on to work at Stanford University. There, she is a research assistant in the Pediatric Endocrinology department, doing research studying Type-1 (Juvenile) Diabetes. Starting summer 2009, after taking a nice long break from academia, she plans on enrolling online at Utah State University to get a second bachelor's degree in Speech Pathology, with the intent of getting her master's degree in 2010.

As for Jeff, he recently left Jamba Juice, and is currently seeking out other job opportunities. So far there have been plenty of interviews, and hopefully he will be accepting a new position in the next few weeks. Next semester he too will be giving the online educational world a shot and enrolling at a university. The school has not been decided, but once the acceptance into a program is finalized, we will let you know.

We also are in the middle of another potential move. After living in our apartment in Fremont for a year and a half, we have decided we've outgrown our apartment and want to move into a house. We are currently applying for a home in Newark in the Lake area, a nice 3-bedroom where we can settle in for a while that will accommodate our growing family.

Well, we have some more paperwork to fill out for school and work. Hope everything is going well for you all. Hopefully this weekend we will be adding some more photos and such to our blog so it's not so dull.

With much love, Jeff and Jen.