The Christmas Blog

Merry Christmas, One and All!!

This has been a crazy year, to say the least. It is even ending in a rush! So up front, we apologize for not mailing out any Christmas cards or newsletters. We have been fortunate enough to get quite a few, and thank you all for them, as well as your thoughts and Christmas greetings.

Thinking back to last year, we couldn't imagine how our lives would have turned out. We have accomplished a lot in the last twelve months. It's hard to believe everything we have done, and want to just give a few of the highlights.

In March we moved to a house in Newark. Not sure how long it'll last (we had planned on purchasing the house, but right now we aren't so sure). It's been the first house that we've had, and enjoyed our time here. We settled in so fast, we even added a new addition to our family. Jeff's friend Kati found a husky puppy wandering the streets, and after staying with us for a week, Fox ended up becoming a permanent fixture in our home. She can be zany at times (As this is being typed, she's opening our sliding back door to get inside!) but is a great addition to our house and a wonderful accomplice friend to Christopher.

We've both been progressing through school and work. Jeff again found a new job, and is currently the general manager at Starbucks in Fremont. It's nice that, after having to commute to Los Gatos, Brentwood, and Los Gatos AGAIN, his drive time is cut down considerably. He has been plugging away at school and is excited to work on his Spring semester in a few weeks. The end of his undergrad is near!

As for Jen, she has had some changes in work and school as well. After being a temp employee, this past summer she became a permanent fixture in her department. As of right now she is 75% time, but this spring she will go for being full-time. In addition to moving up in the work world, Jen has also finished her second bachelor's degree! So this last week, without work or school, she has been resting and recovering a little more, trying to heal her back and finish up any other holiday preparations.

Even though this has been a roller-coaster year, we have made it through again. We have managed to make it through six years of marriage, and are excited to see what the future brings to us: More school, (Jeff finishing his degree, and Jen in grad school), more work (literally!) and more travel (for sure, southern California, Pennsylvania, and Orlando have been planned), which means more adventures!

We do feel very blessed for what we have received and that, regardless of whatever challenges we have faced, we have and are getting through them together. We are both so grateful for our friends and family, and wish you all health and happiness, especially during this time of year.

And as Jen loves to say, "Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, yet dignified Ramadan".

Love, Jeff and Jen Perry

Okay, Really, Three MONTHS??

I can't believe it's taken three months to update our blog. It has been a crazy time here, but let's see if we can catch you up to speed with everything:

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In September, we had (drumroll please) SEVEN dogs under one roof. The Trapps, friends of ours that were kind enough to take in our chinchillas during our move, asked us if we would watch over their pets while they went to Europe, Morocco, on a Trans-Atlantic Disney cruise and then spent a week in Florida. All in all, the Trapp dogs were with us for an entire month! It was pretty interesting having so many dogs, but we made it work and everyone did pretty well. So in addition to Chris, Fox and Mason, we had Sabrina, a 14-year old Italian Greyhound, Arrow, the 12-year old Shepherd, Loki, an 18-month old Pomeranian, and his little sister, Freya, who was about 8 months old. In addition, we watched their home, where there were still three cats, a tank of fish, 2 sugar gliders and about 45 chinchillas! A lot of fun, and the house seemed really empty when the other dogs left, but we will see them again soon, I am sure!

Six of the seven hounds. Fox wouldn't fit in this one!

It's sideways but they're all there!

Fox with Mason

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Halloween weekend was a rare treat. Jeff actually got the whole weekend off, which is something that NEVER happens. To celebrate, we thought we would go and have some fun!

We got to pick out pumpkins at the Ardenwood Pumpkin Patch, which is just down the street from us. Even though it wasn't the greatest weather (it started to rain pretty hard when we left, and it was cold) we managed to get a few pumpkins.

Jeff got to pull the cart. :-)

Loading in our prized pumpkins!

Jeff performing the lobotomy.

Jen drew the outlines freehand

Pumpkin #1: Pirate

Pumpkin #2: Spider in a web

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Further taking advantage of our free weekend, we decided to go to the Oakland Museum of California. From now until the beginning of the year, they have an exhibit devoted to Pixar Animation! For those that don't know, we are huge fans of the movies and artwork, so we thought we ought to go. We took Jen's sister Myra with us, and had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we couldn't take a lot of pictures inside, but the ones we did get were outside the exhibition.

Myra, Jen and Jeff

The mural outside of the exhibit in the shop

The glass bowl isn't the focus; Jen kept taking photos of the blond lady, a clerk at the store, because she reminded her of Edna from The Incredibles and this was the best shot we got of her!

Edna eating lunch! But we really wanted a picture of the mural behind her

We actually have quite a few more photos, but to make this blog a little easier, we'll probably make a slideshow of them soon!

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Compared to October, November was pretty slow. We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on the 17th, but because Jen still has physical therapy, there wasn't too much to do. We just a nice quiet dinner, and did some shopping. And we made a splurge purchase:


Originally, we weren't going to get one until after the holidays. But, Jeff felt bad that Jen was having a hard go at PT (more on that in a bit), and since it was a combination anniversary/graduation/Christmas present for both of us, we decided to not wait until after the holidays, and cashed in our gift cards and what-not now. We've already had a ton of fun on it, and we're still uploading all of the free digital copies of movies that we have onto iTunes, so it'll have a lot of use!

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Jen is still going to PT. Originally, she was going to be done around our anniversary. However, the doctors thought that, since her neck is still not in the greatest shape, she should keep going for another six weeks, which puts us past the New Year.

Not only were we not happy about paying for more PT, this last session she didn't have the greatest time. As we said, her neck is still giving her trouble, and so the therapist tried putting her neck in traction. It worked... for about 45 minutes. And this was this past Wednesday, and she's still stiff and achy from it. Wednesday and Thursday were the worst, because she was actually very dizzy from it (which gave her headaches and made her queasy. For those that don't know, when Jen gets really dizzy, she gets motion sick. Not a fun time at all for her!) She ended up missing more days from work from it, but on the plus side, she has caught up.

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Another notable achievement for the month of November: Jen wrote a book.

Seriously. She wrote something.

Jen found out through a friend on Facebook about National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. (http://www.nanowrimo.org) and decided to give it a go. The goal was to write 50,000 words of a book, so just under 1700 words/day, and although there were some struggles, the last weekend she pulled it together and cleared 65ooo! She still has quite a bit to go (apparently, she's very wordy!) and will likely be taking winter break to finish it up entirely.

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A brief blurb about school: It's still going. Jen is still waiting to hear back from CSU Northridge, but will be finishing her last classes for her second degree in TWO WEEKS!! And Jeff is wrapping up another semester through Colorado State. We've been plugging away at our classes, so hopefully our grades will reflect that!

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On the work front, there have been some developments for us both. Jen's coworker left in October, and Jen took on two of her active studies as well as acted as contact for two others. In addition, she helped do submissions for two other studies, and is backup for a few more. All this has kept Jen pretty busy (hence the no blogging) but now that the dust has settled, she is really enjoying her studies and her work.

As for Jeff, after many weeks of training, he finally is a general manager of his own store! He found out the afternoon before that he would be going to the store on Mission Blvd to fill a shift, and an hour after showing up, his district manager arrived at the store and pulled him to the back to inform him that it would be his store. The downside of this store was that the previous manager didn't take great care of the store. A lot of housekeeping problems, as well as untrained staff, were some of the things he had to clear up. He has been there for about four weeks now, and the store is really starting to turn around. Jeff actually just got recognized for sales in the past few days, and he has been complimented on how great the store is starting to run. This makes the holidays a little chaotic for us, but we'll get through it.

Well, that's enough of a recap for now. Next time we can actually try and keep up with this. Hope you are all doing well!

The Good, The Bad, And The Rest

Hello, all

It's been a while, and a lot has happened in the last few weeks, so let's go ahead and jump right on into it!

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Jen has been busy with work. When she was given her layoff papers last fall, we were worried about her not getting a job right away. But, as luck would have it, she had her final day with the Diabetes group on November 30th (a Monday) and by the following Monday, she was back to work at Stanford in another department. Now, as of September 1st, she is an official salaried employee back at Stanford! It's a total win-win with her. She isn't 100% time, but she brings in about as much as she did in her previous position, so she can still go to school and get some volunteer work in!She's really enjoyed the job, and has even been able to take Fox into work with her. Here are a few pics of her cubicle, and her "guard dog" protecting her from the others in the office.

Is someone coming??

No, I guess not.

Wow, this is hard work!!

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Although we were complaining about the "cool" summer we were having, we were then hit with a pretty good heat wave. Newark actually hit the high 90s and bordered 100 degrees, which is pretty rare in the summer in general! To beat the heat, we had to figure something out for us and the dogs. We all got plenty to drink, but we had to be more creative fr the dogs, since they don't sweat. We ended up putting all of our fans in the living room and dressing the dogs in large soaking towels. The smell wasn't the most pleasant (Who likes the smell of wet dogs??) but at least everyone was comfortable.

Chris was not a huge fan, but kept it on...

Mason opted to sit right in the middle of the fans... in Jen's beanbag chair!!

And Fox just sat there while we made her take funny pictures.

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We have also gotten really into getting fresh veggies at the Farmer's Market. It's not as large as most, but still lots of fun. Whenever she can, Jen and her sister go to the little street market right in the middle of Fremont and they pick out all sorts of fresh produce. Although they have to go Saturday mornings, they've enjoyed seeing the different vendors and we've been eating pretty well because of it!

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Now some of the bad news. Last Wednesday, Jen was driving in Fremont when she got rear-ended by a driver from behind. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. There were three cars involved in the accident; Jen was in the front, and hit by the van in the picture. After that, a third car hit the van, and Jen was hit twice. Everyone was overall okay, although the passenger in the van did go to the hospital because she was having some chest pain, but we found out she was okay, just really upset by the accident.


As for Jen, she's got a lot of soreness. Although her knees and stomach were aching, right now most of her pain is in her neck from the whiplash (although she didn't go forward and hit anything in front, she hit her head on her headrest twice). She's also got some pain in her left shoulder and her right hip, roughly where the belt was. Although she'll be on the mend for a while, we're grateful that she's otherwise fine!!

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This past Sunday was Jeff's birthday. He turned 25 (again) and so we had to celebrate. Our plans had been changed greatly by the car accident, because originally we had planned on BBQing at home and Jen making all the dinner, but that was changed. We went to church, but Jen only stayed for about 30 minutes before going home to rest, and after Jeff came home, we decided to just go out and eat. Jeff decided to go to La Piñata in Newark for dinner, and Jeff got to enjoy chicken enchilladas with mole. Jeff's been craving mole sauce (a chocolate-based sauce) for a while now, so it was good that his cravings were curbed a little!

After dinner, we also went to Neptune Aquatics, where we continued to add more fish to our tank. Jeff finally cleaned out the 29-gallon tank, and we've been slowly adding fish to it. Right now, we've got 2 bleeding heart tetras, 2 striped danios, 3 German blue rams, 5 neon tetras, 5 Rasboras, and 2 water frogs (well, one we can find... we always can only find one!!) As soon as everything's settled, you can all expect to see more pics of our critters!

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Aside from the adventures we've had, life is continuing as usual. Both of us are back in school. Jeff is taking 3 classes this term. Originally he had planned on four, with one being a volunteer practicum, but since a site wasn't set up, he had to drop it. Jen is finishing her last semester through Utah State's program, and is taking the last 5 classes, plus an extra one-credit independent study course, but more on that next time.

We hope you are all well and cannot wait to hear how everyone else is doing!

Give and Get is Here!

Give and Get is Here!: "Enjoy 30% off from August 26-29 at Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy and we'll donate 5% of what you spend to a non-profit."

Summertime, And The Living Is… Well, Not EXACTLY Easy…

Hello, everyone!

Sorry it’s been such a long time without an update. As always, life has a way of taking over and just getting away with time!

First off, let’s post some long-overdue photos. We finally found some of our house… well, before we moved in, anyway! So here are a few befores:

 

Our yard, before the rain killed all of our grass :-(

Either side of our kitchen area

 

Our master bedroom… we have 3 rooms, but this one is the biggest (And it has a vanity in one corner)

Eventually we will get some photos of after it’s been put together. Despite us being here for 4 months now, because of all the work that has been done, we never managed to finish unpacking!

Despite the mess, though, our dogs have been enjoying the house and the yard. After we were hit with so much rain, our green grass went to pot, and so if they tear up the yard, no one cares. Eventually we will fix it and it’ll have grass again, someday!

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In June we were able to celebrate our niece’s high school graduation. Sarah will be going off to college in the fall, to Sonoma State in Rohnert Park, far enough to be able to live on campus, but only an hour and a half away, so able to come for a visit if needed.

L to R:  Jen’s brother, John, Jeff, Sarah and Jen

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The last bit was the 4th of July. We had a lot of fun celebrating. Not that we’re really patriotic; we just love setting things on fire! There were quite a few fireworks going on, and everyone was  decked out for the festivities. The night before, Jen put together some scarves for the dogs, and the next night, we had fun setting off fireworks! Here are some more photos for your enjoyment:

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As for general updates, there have been a few good developments for us. Jeff finished his semester with some good grades, and we are happy for that! Originally he had planned on taking a course of summer school, either through the community college or through CSU, but we want to tighten our belts a little and save some money, and there weren’t classes that he needed to take available, so it looks like a working summer!

Jen’s still plugging away and doing pretty well, with two classes that look like solid As and two on the border. After this, she’ll have one more term before graduating. Right now she has to start looking at grad schools. One of the programs she is looking at, CSU Northdridge, has an application deadline of September 1st, so she has to finish taking her GREs and getting her application together. Fortunately the other schools she is looking at have much later deadlines, so she can continue to work on her resume and background.

After being temporary status, Jen is also being offered a permanent position on September 1st! This will mean the return of her benefits and PTO, so hopefully we will be able to make it out to Utah this winter when she graduates. The best part is that the job will give her some flexibility, so she can volunteer with the newborn hearing screening program this summer. Although her focus academically is speech pathology, she is also interested in audiology, and this will provide her some more experience.

Well, that looks like it for now. We hope you are all well and will update you again soon!

Is It Summer YET???

Normally around this time of year, we are experiencing some nice, slightly warmer weather as a sign for what is to come this summer. Well, it hasn’t quite gotten there yet, at least not in Newark! It has been rainy and wet (in fact, it was raining just yesterday). Normally it’s not too much of a problem, but it is just a small setback for us.

For those who don’t know, our house had to be tented for termites. After the tenting and spraying, the roof needed to be redone. It has been difficult to get this done, because the weather does not allow work to be done on the roof. To add to the difficulty, City of Newark came by and noticed that the roof was not up to code, because there were too many layers to it, so now, instead of juts replacing what was going on with the garage (which was Termite Central) the whole roof is going to be replaced! The contractor, for now, has the roof at least covered, so we’re not in too bad of shape.

Unfortunately, Fox did not take to the people on the roof. Last Wednesday, when I got home from work, Fox was not in the yard. It turns out she escaped from our yard and was picked up by the city, so I had to drive into Fremont to go pick her up. After bailing her out, we decided to try to fix the fence where she escaped so we would not have the same problem later. However, this past weekend, she broke out not once, but TWICE from the same spot! While we were at my niece’s confirmation, Fox managed to get through the fence in the same spot. Jeff had placed several boards over the hole, but she was able to move them. Fortunately our neighbors noticed her, and took her back into our yard. When they saw where she got out, they replaced the boards and added several large blocks to keep her from escaping. But, alas, little can prevent Fox from roaming, and the blocks were moved out of the way and she escaped again. So our neighbors on the other side “loaned” her a chain, and she was tied to our front porch when we got home that day!

Since the week had been traumatic enough, on Friday, Jen actually opted to bring Fox to Stanford with her, since she was working in the office and did not have any appointments. Her team and the other department really enjoyed having Fox in the office, and even considered making her part of the office. She did do a good job of scaring squirrels and raccoons away from the large window by Jen’s desk, so she might have a future with Stanford security.

The new plan with Fox for now is to train her to go into a crate, but we’ll see how that works out, since neither of us have ever crate-trained a dog. It’ll be a new adventure!

School has ended for Jen and is wrapping up this week for Jeff. So far, everything is still going well, with the grades being posted soon. The plan now is for Jen to finish in the summer, and Jeff will probably take this summer off before starting again in the fall. Unfortunately, Jen’s summer “break” is only 10 days long, so she will be back at school starting next Monday!

The jobs are starting to work out as well. Jen has been talking with her boss, and it looks like she will be placed on a permanent salary by the end of the summer! Although it’s nice to have a pretty free schedule for her, to have some more stability and a little more money isn’t bad either. Jeff is still doing great at Banana in Los Gatos, and is looking at side jobs for extra money. So far, he’s been offered a job with Farmer’s Insurance, and his uncle is sending him information and stuff from HerbalLife, so we will have to see what happens next.

Well, that’s it for now. We know we’re constantly promising pictures, but our computer (the desktop) died with a lot of our most recent photos on it. We’re taking the hard drive in this week to recover them. And then, you will get to actually see some of the insanity that is our life!

Fun With The Puppy and Other Adventures

For those who didn’t know, we recently acquired another dog. Fox was found roaming by Jeff’s friend, Kati, and no one ended up claiming her, so we decided to take her into our house. I mean, seriously, what’s one more animal in the house? Currently we’ve got 4 parakeets, 10 freshwater fish, one Beta, who knows how many saltwater critters, Chris, and now 12 chinchillas, plus 7 we are fostering. What’s one more dog, really?

Apparently, it’s a lot.

Now, a little background: Jen has had pets growing up. She took in the feral cats in the neighborhood and saw oodles of fish and birds in my house. In fact, her first job was a volunteer position feeding baby animals at a nature preserve. However, Chris is her first dog, and we’ve only had him for 2 years. Those that know our adventures with Chris know that he wasn’t (and still isn’t) your garden-variety dog, When we adopted him, we were told he was almost three, but the vet thought he was between 12-18 months, so almost out of the puppy stages.

 

Fox is a different story. Although she is very sweet and extremely smart, she often bores easily and has gotten into the habit of destroying and chewing things. Here is a small example of her habits:

Foxy….

… plus her toy, a clearance-priced toy bought last weekend at Petsmart…

  

… equals a few hours of fun, and 15 minutes of sheer horror!

 

This was one of the many things this pup has gotten into. We have holes in our yard, chew marks on our door frames and several broken leashes and knickknacks to prove this fact. We just have to endure it a little longer, though. Right now she is kept away from Chris and Mason because she was fixed, and we don’t want her popping her stitches, so until Thursday, we’ll have a bored lonely pup on our hands.

Aside from our dog-adventures, everything is going well here. We had a nice Easter. Jen’s folks decided to come over here to check out the new place and visit together. We thought it was going to be hard to “host”. After all, we’ve helped to plan the last few holidays, but this time the two of us pretty much did it all. It was a little tough getting things together (in particular the house being clean!) but it was still a fun day. We didn’t take any pictures, but Jen will have to steal her sisters’ cameras to see if they’ve got any photos to share!

School and work are still insanely crazy. Jeff is doing pretty well in his courses, and his grades are showing it. He did drop one class due to a missed assignment that came up in the middle of the move, but he plans on taking it again this summer. Jeff’s first term should be over by mid-May, so just a few more weeks left! Also, he started his first week at his new store in Los Gatos, not far from one of his previous stores. Jeff had been commuting from Fremont (and then Newark) to Brentwood since September because we had gotten a house in July, but when that fell through and we moved in here, he asked for a transfer. Originally we thought he would have to go to the Gap in Los Gatos (his 2nd store) but we were pleasantly surprised that he could go to the Banana Republic a few storefronts down! Now the commute is almost reasonable!

Jen’s toward the end of her classes, with the finals starting the last week of April. After this she has one more term, and then she’ll have a second bachelor’s! The plan after that is to take off a year from school to work more, build up her resume a little, and then take her GRE this summer and start applying in the fall. All of the programs she is looking at only want fall applicants, and since she might not be done in time to start, we figured this might be the best for everyone. Work is also going crazy for her as well. She is still in charge of an oncology study, but on top of that, she is also helping read over grant applications for her department. The grants are for studies that are meant to focus on child health, and normally they receive about 25 grant applications for this round of funding (roughly $35,000 each grant). This year they received a total of 44 applications, and so Jen, with her team, is having to go through the applications to check for completion, create spreadsheets of the information, and send out packets to reviewers (both online and in paper) to determine recipients. Doing clerical/admin work was never Jen’s intention, but she figured, hey, I’d get some more hours/money, I’m sure I can help out! So this will be bringing in quite a bit extra for the next few months, until she gets another study or another position.

So that’s enough for this update. We have more stuff going on, but we’ll have to bore you with it all later on!

What we’ve accomplished

Hello, world!

We are taking a minor break from unloading boxes to give you an update on us. Who would’ve thought that it’s so much work to pack and unpack??

We have been here for about 3 weeks now, and so far we’re adjusting well. There are still plenty of boxes to unpack, but we’re slowly but surely getting there. Plus some of the new “toys” like the washer and dryer are making opening all the boxes a little more worth it. :-)

So far, the living room is almost decent, and the kitchen has it’s moments of being clean and then not so much. Our bedroom set is up, but we still have plenty of laundry to clean in piles to be washed. Our library/office/guest room has most of the books set up, with a few random boxes in the room. Then the last room, where the pets and their things go, was set up last night. We stayed up until 3 putting things together like cages, an A/C unit, and all sorts of other stuff. Who would’ve thought pets were so difficult?

Speaking of pets, it looks like we are acquiring a new friend! Jeff volunteered us to babysit a friend’s dog, and she has been here ever since. Fox is a white husky who was found out in Bethel Island by Jeff’s friend, Kati. She took Fox in, but couldn’t keep her, so Jeff graciously accepted her into our family. She’s still pretty young, we think maybe 10 months, but is super smart and very playful. Chris and Mason get along with her great, but we are keeping her away from our other critters. She likes to chase birds and squirrels, we found out, and don’t think she would do well if left alone with our chinchillas and parakeets.

We also got our chinchillas back this weekend! After 6 months, they are finally back under our roof, and we are ecstatic over it all. It is a little bittersweet, as Brian was not able to come home with everyone else, but he will forever be home in our hearts. So far they have all made the adjustment well, although it’s clear that Scout, Brian’s son, does appear to be missing his daddy and cage mate, so we may have to find someone for him to hang out with. Our other boys are either already in pairs or they are too ornery to be with others.

School is slowly plugging away for us all. Jen should be done by the end of next month and Jeff will be finishing this semester around mid May. In the meantime, we are both looking at volunteer opportunities. This week, Jen is volunteering at a speech-language pathology clinic for a few weeks and then doing an observation at Lucille Packard, and both of us are looking into volunteering at the hospital in the summer.

Jeff is also looking for more job opportunities closer to home. Although he loves his work now, commuting to Brentwood is difficult in terms of time, energy, and car wear and tear. So far he has been offered a similar position at the Banana Republic in Los Gatos, and is waiting to hear on some other positions as well.

We hope you are all well, and hope to have you over as soon as our house is more habitable!

So Much Information, So Little Time…

So, it is kind of late at night (around midnight) on a Sunday. I’ve got a late day at work, and Jeff’s off, so we thought we’d toss out all that has been going on.

First off, we have been plugging away at school. This term we have managed to keep up with the homework and assignments, and now Jen has to add observation hours to one of her classes. She is trying to see if anyone at Stanford would be willing to let her help out and let her sit in, and she is waiting to hear back from some people she has met at Packard.

February was a pretty nice month for us. For Valentine’s Day (well, the day before) we took our three nieces and Jen’s older sister, Myra, to the San Francisco Creamery (which, oddly enough, is actually in Walnut Creek). Before that, though, the 6 of us went to the movies to see (surprise) Valentine’s Day, which turned out to be a pretty funny movie. After the movie, we raided the creamery and ordered a sundae known as The Kitchen Sink. We saw this sundae on the TV show, Man Vs. Food, a favorite of Jen’s, and thought we would attempt it!

This thing is a lot bigger in real life than this picture shows. It consists of 8 types of ice cream, 8 toppings, whipped cream, and cherries. Ours had a ton of toppings, including gummy bears, M&Ms, and, much to Sarah’s delight, a cookie. We only managed to get about 2/3 of the thing eaten, and yes, we’ve still got some in the fridge!

That Monday we did some volunteer work with the rescue that is currently housing our chinchillas. So we headed to Adobe Animal Hospital in Los Altos, CA to help them out for the day. In addition to getting out little pals taken care of, we helped check in and answered questions for the families. Although we had the most at 12, there were many who had multiple chinchillas, and the rescue even brought in 8 of their own, and their partners brought in another 2 dozen! Overall, we ended up having the doctors see approximately 135 chinchillas in an 8-hour day, of which only one had been slightly ill (but treatable) and our guys came out with a clean bill of health: great teeth, good weight, no heart murmurs and NO SURPRISE PREGNANCIES THIS YEAR!!

The next big thing: both of us are looking at moving up in our jobs. Jen’s assignment with CHRP technically ends this week, but they have not said one way or another if they plan on keeping her on. They have made more accommodations for her, like giving  her a real desk and talking about her taking on more studies, but nothing official has been said by her team or her temp agency, so she interviewed with two more research teams at Stanford, both in cardiovascular departments, but for two different teams. If none of these positions pan out, the temp agency has stated they will find her another temp position, but of course we are hoping for a more permanent spot.

Jeff is also looking at new positions. The commute to Brentwood has been hard on both of us, Jeff’s school work and our cars, so Jeff is considering a transfer in the company. He has applied to both GAP and Banana Republic stores closer to Newark, and has had a few phone interviews so far, so again, we are very hopeful. It doesn’t hurt that the GAP manager that he is going through is the same one he had when he was working in Los Gatos!

You’re probably wondering why we keep talking about being closer to “home”. Well, after a long hunt, we FINALLY found a home!

We are moving… down the street in Newark!

We tried our hardest to buy or rent a home in Tracy, but nothing panned out. We were outbid, someone else rented the house before us, some people drove through the garage (that was the house we almost bought!) and so we thought we’d try again to see if something panned out in Newark, and with one try, success! It is a cute little 3-bedroom home with a nice yard and everything is pretty much new (the rugs, windows, paint, etc) so little to nothing has to be fixed. We have to put in an air conditioner for the chinchillas, but aside from that nothing! It is not too far from the lake – cross the street and we are there – so that’s a definite perk for Chris. We got the keys on Friday and are slowly moving in our stuff, so hopefully by next week we should be pretty well moved in.

So that’s the latest from us. Hopefully as we start packing we’ll snap pics (I know, promises promises!!) and we will keep you posted.

And if you never hear from us again, it’s because we’re buried under boxes, DVDs and chinchillas!

Back to School

Hey everyone! I hope you are all having a great Sunday night!

 

WOW!! We didn’t go more than a few weeks without an update. Yay, us! We hope you’ve all had a good holiday, and that you transitioned back to “non-holiday time” easily enough.

 

Christmas was spent here in Newark. On Christmas Eve, we stayed here and had all of Jen’s family over for the holidays. It actually was a pretty quiet night, even though there were 16 here in the house, and the next day, we had Christmas dinner with Jen’s mom, sister, and Jeff’s parents. We got quite a few nice things from our family, including Jeff’s XBox and the photographs of Chris. We also got some gift certificates and gift cards, and Jen’s sister even got them passes for the de Young Museum to see their King Tut exhibit, which is our plan for this coming weekend.

 

There was also a new addition to the family. Just before New Year’s Eve, Jen’s sister decided to adopt a dog. Mason’s had a bit of a rough start. His previous owner moved in with her dad who did not take to Mason, and so, one day, while trying to “shoo” Mason away, he inadvertently hit Mason in the mouth and scraped up his hand.  The man was so angry, he grabbed a gun and tried to shoot Mason, but fortunately missed. Unfortunately, he’ll likely always have the scar, which looks like a part in his head, for the rest of his life.

 

Mason was put on quarantine and not allowed to be held at the shelter because he had a record (the old man decided to charge him with biting) and the family could not take him back because the old man threatened to shoot him again.  So Officer Kristen, the same woman who saved Chris for us, helped Mason to find a home, and he is now the newest Borgen! At first he was a bit shy around us, but not so much anymore. Chris has become his best buddy, so that helps a lot. He’s teaching Mason the ropes… the good AND the bad!

 

Recently Jeff’s been having a bit of bad luck. Just after New Year’s, Jeff came down with a cold. Luckily, Jen didn’t catch it, because it still is lingering. Then last week, while driving home, the tire on our Civic blew out. Fortunately, there wasn’t any damage to Jeff or the car, but it was a little nerve-racking to say the least!

 

The next few weeks are going to be interesting for us. Tomorrow Jen is going to Stanford for some work and is also starting her second semester of school. Originally this was going to be her last term before moving onto her master’s degree, but because of her migraines, she had to drop some of her classes, which pushed her graduation to the summer.

 

Next week it will be Jeff’s turn to return back to school. Luckily, this semester he will be able to get at least 4 classes taken care of. The past few semesters, he has only been able to get into one or two classes, so this will be a big step for both of us: two full-time students working full-time!!

 

Well, we wanted to post some new pics for you, but our older camera appears to be AWOL, and we haven’t started to use the newest one yet! So next week (hopefully) we will get them up for you.

 

Hope you are all having a great week!!