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------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------
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!
