What To Do In Utah When You Only Have Three Days There

Last summer, we had considered coming to Utah in May. Jen's graduation from her program was the first weekend in May, and we thought it would be fun for her to walk with some of her classmates. However, with work and school commitments getting in the way, we decided not to go in May. Fortunately, not long after the decision was made, Jen got an email to take part in a summer seminar at Utah State, and so we decided to go to the campus for the seminar.

While we were there, we decided to walk around the campus. Although we had been to Logan before, we didn't spend too much time there before. This time, we were here for about three days, and really loved the area. It reminded us of Jen's undergrad days in Fort Collins, CO, but a little more spread out. As you can see, Logan is surrounded by mountains and is a beautiful campus. While we were there, we got a few USU-themed items, including Jen's tassle. Now we just have to wait for her diploma to come in the mail!



Not satisfied with just staying in Logan, we also went down to the Hill Aerospace Museum. They have about 100 different airplanes to look at, from a recreation of the Wright flyer to stealth airplanes. Although Jeff had gone when he was younger, Jen had never been, so they decided to take some time to look at the cool airplanes.


While we were there, they were preparing for a retirement party, so we thought Stanley would enjoy being a part of the festivities!!!

We also went into Salt Lake City one night to meet up with our friends, the Crosbys. We met them when they served their missions in our area, and we haven't seen them in a few years, after they had gotten married. They've since had a little boy, and we had a blast going to dinner with them and walking through the mall. There is a picture of the five of us out there, but we still haven't found a copy, so hopefully we can add it soon!

Before we left, we walked around Logan one more time. Outside of the tabernacle, there was a small fair with handcrafted knickknacks that were so cool to look at, like paintings, carvings and photos. We really wanted to bring some things home, but worried about airport security and keeping our things safe, so perhaps next time, we'll make an allowance for that!

Such a short trip, but so much fun! We are definitely planning on going back to visit again, since we enjoyed the area so much.

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Now we are totally caught up with our adventures! Just in time too: next week we'll have a lot more to blog about. We plan on celebrating the 4th of July here, setting off fireworks (since Newark STILL hasn't outlawed them!) and then, off to Denver for Jen's last work trip of the summer (we think!) It will be nice to have more to blog about that ISN'T under the "June" banner, although I think we broke a record for most blogs in a month on here!

Alla prossima!

A Short Update Tonight...

Good evening, all!

Hope you all enjoyed our vacation photos and adventures in the East! Right now, we're winding down the night, but wanted to post another brief update before delving into the Utah trip.

This morning, Jeff had the opportunity to talk in our ward. It was a pretty great talk on sacrifice, and he managed to keep people's attention for almost 20 minutes! It was actually a great and informative talk, and several of the church members approached us afterwords and said what parts they enjoyed. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay for the whole three-hour block, because Jen was in the back of the church, trying hard not to cough very loudly. It appears that the cough is fine for now, and she should be going to work tomorrow, but she still gets a few coughing fits.


Also, today Jen finished her first class in her program. Not only did she finish the first class, but she got an A! Tomorrow we hope to head out for a little treat to celebrate, but then it's back to the books for Jen. She already is halfway through her second class (which ends in the end of July) and starts another class tomorrow. It'll be like this for the next three years, except for breaks in December for Christmas, and another break every May.

The plan is, this week, to go over what we did in Utah, hopefully in one post since it was only three days, unlike the 10 for Philadelphia, and that this gets done before we enjoy the 4th of July and our last trip to Denver.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend, and we will be posting more later!

It's Up To You, New York (or Tales From Back East #3)

Jen wanted a photo of this street in New York City because, as she said, "It looked like the scene from the Cosby Show!"

Hello, blog-world!

So time to update our blog with the last part of our East Coast trip before catching everyone up with the general updates and the goings-on in Utah.

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Jen's conference ended Wednesday, and rather than fly home that day, we decided to extend the stay through Sunday. So, on Thursday we checked out of Philadelphia and drove up to Newark, NJ, where we stayed right across the street from New York City. Neither of us had ever been to New York, so we were really looking forward to it. After checking into the hotel, we decided to drive into the city, and Jen thought it was best to see the World Trade Center first.



It was a very somber and moving place to visit. While we walked the perimeter of the construction, it was warm, but when we looked through the fence, we could feel a chill on the other side. There were lots of people out walking, even though it was starting to get dark.


This is a photo of one of the WTC buildings, and the first to be operational. After 9/11, the seven buildings had to be reconstructed, and this one, 7 WTC, is the first one that was completed and operational. It was interesting and right by the PATH station we took later on to get into the city.


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One of the main attractions we wanted to see was the Harry Potter exhibit. We are both huge fans of the movies, and the exhibit had a lot of the props, costumes and set items from the movie. It has toured North America for the past few years, and New York is the last stop here, but as of this posting, we don't know where it's going next.


Although we couldn't take any photos inside of the exhibit, we did get quite a few inside the gift shop. Sounds kind of silly, but they had some awesome stuff for sale, like wands and toy props and replicas of the set items. Jen also bought a book that showed everything from the exhibit, so if anyone wants to borrow it, give her a call!


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After the Potter exhibit, we decided to walk around the city. The exhibit was not far from Times Square, so we got to look around at the mayhem that was there. It was incredibly crowded, since we happened to be there for Fleet Week. There were quite a few men and women in uniform around the city, and there were a few exhibitions of them displaying things like how their military dogs were trained. Hard to get photos of this, since there were too many people to get a good shot, but it was pretty cool to see so many great people.




We actually had to come back to Times Square later in the trip, to do some shopping for souvenirs and to get a feel for it when it was slightly cooler and less crowded! We did see quite a few crews recording what we guessed were movies and TV shows but couldn't figure out what they were filming throughout the city. The one we DID figure out, however, we got a few good photos of. The Travel Channel puts on a television show, Sand Masters, and while we were in NYC, we stumbled upon them doing their sand castles in the middle of the city. As you can see, they are incredibly detailed, and while we were taking photos, one of their crews took photos of us, so we will see if we end up on TV!

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After our first trip to Times Square, we decided to go visit Dylan's Candy Bar. Dylan's is owned by Dylan Lauren, Ralph Lauren's daughter, and is the world's largest candy store. It was a ton of fun going around the candy store, looking at all the great candy (and bringing home a few treats for ourselves)! Jeff bought some house-made fudge, and we split a SlushPuppy after we got there because it was pretty warm outside. We got a lot of little trinkets from there, and could have spent hours looking around, because each time we went back to a spot, we found something new. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to go visit something fun and different in NYC.


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The last place we visited was Central Park, and Jen wanted to see The Dakota and Strawberry Fields. For those who do not know, The Dakota was the residence of John Lennon, and he was killed just outside. Strawberry Fields was the memorial Yoko Ono dedicated across the street from The Dakota in Central Park. In fact, the photo of the building was taken from Strawberry Fields. Again, lots of tourists there, but it was such a beautiful park, with flowers around the Imagine marker in the middle.

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Well, that is pretty much this vacation in a nutshell. We had tons of fun, and wish we could go back tomorrow, but we will have to wait before going back. There are a ton of places we want to see, and our traveling experiences are just continuing. Although we are down to one more trip (Jen's trip to Denver in July) we are already planning on more vacations, including going back to New York.

Hope all is well with you all, and we hope you enjoyed our adventures!

A Quick Little Update

Hi, all!!

So we made it back in one piece (sort of) from Utah. Jen's conference was a success and we came back with a few souvenirs to boot! The one downside, aside from the trip being relatively short, is that Jen caught a cold Sunday before our flight. She's still pretty sick, and trying to rest and take it easy, or at least as much as she can while still doing homework.

To whet your appetite before our update after next, since we DID skip over the all-important NYC portion of our East Coast trip, the photos we took in Utah are now posted on the blog! Enjoy!

Tales from Back East #2

Since we went back east, we decided to go visit some friends of Jeff's. Jeff served his mission in New Jersey, and we thought, hey, since we're out there, we'll stop and look around.

One place we spent a lot of time at was Wall, NJ. As you can see, it is near the ocean. Even though it was a pretty cold and gray day, we decided to stop and hang out on the beach for a little bit. Despite it being cold out, the water was still warmer than the Pacific!



There were a ton of these little shells all over the beach. Although it's hard to tell in this picture, there were little tiny baby shells inside of this one.

We also had dinner with the Mason-O'Connors-Mohamed-Loxton (had to make sure everyone was covered!) family. Jeff had met the mom, Laurie, and her children, David, Thomas and Victoria, on his mission, and they were kind enough to invite us over to their house for dinner. Laurie was nice enough to BBQ for us, and we had chicken and lamb in grape leaves. YUM!

From left to right: David, Mustafa, Laurie, Thomas, Jeff, Jen, and Victoria (Oldest daughter Christina wasn't able to come, and dad Jeff was taking the picture!)

It was a nice break to have food that didn't come from a drive-thru, and we were all able to catch
up. Hard to believe the last time Jeff was there was 7 years ago. We're hoping to go back again soon, and if not, at least not to wait 7 years before our next visit!

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Another part of New Jersey that we enjoyed visiting was Princeton. Jen was dying to go (although she kept making jokes about John Nash and the Whiffenpoofs).

While there, we met with Jeff's friend, William Sotovando. Since Jeff last saw William, he got married, had a little boy, and they are expecting another baby this summer. They were kind enough to take us on a tour of the university. If you flip through our photo albums, you'll see lots of pictures we took, especially of the Hogwarts-like library.

Jeff with the Sotovando family.

We didn't find John Nash but we got cool pictures of ourselves outside the buildings!

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And that covers the chunk of our trip that was New Jersey! Hopefully we can catch up with our blog before we leave again. On Monday, we plan on heading to Logan, Utah, for a speech-pathology conference for Jen (and, yeah, another mini-break). Hope you've been enjoying our photo album, and now that we've kind of figured it out, we should have more photos up from our next trips!

Tales from Back East #1

So, rather than be productive and clean the house or do homework, instead, now is the time to recall some of the misadventures of our trip to Philadelphia, NYC and New Jersey. Rather than bore you with some of Jen's work stuff, we'll just keep it to the vacation parts itself!

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Originally we had planned on staying at the hotel Jen's conference was located. However, that really didn't go over too well with us when we found out how pricey it would be to do so. Trying to be a little money-conscientious, Jen searched online and found The Rittenhouse. The Rittenhouse is a small little boutique hotel, kind of like a bed and breakfast. Jen liked it because it was an older building near Rittenhouse Square, a park that Jen was able to walk through while Jeff was in New Jersey and play with some local dogs (Jen was very homesick for our pooches). During the evenings they had little mingling groups, and the staff was very helpful at telling us where things were, like late-night diners and the banks. It was also pretty close to the downtown area in Philadelphia, so we were close enough to Jen's conference (less than a mile away) and still close enough to do some sight seeing!

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Here you see the backs of several people. You're probably wondering why we only got this. That would be Jeff's fault ;-)

While touring the monuments of Philadelphia, outside of Independence Hall, we noticed there were several groups of young college kids running around. Some had numbers like a runner in a marathon would wear, others had weird shirts. While we were taking photos, the guy with the #20 shirt approached Jen and asked if she was a local or a tourist. She said we were from California, and he took her over to the group. It turns out that all these people were there for a scavenger hunt, and there task was to find someone from out of state to take a photo with them. The pose they did was from the movie, Rocky, and everyone did the pose with their hands over their heads. Unfortunately, the downside of this was that, after Jeff had taken everyone else's pictures, he forgot to take one with OUR camera. But we did get this of them walking away from us (possibly slightly inebriated). So if anyone recognizes these people's backsides, let me know; I want a copy of the photo!


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We had quite a few more adventures in Philadelphia. It took us a few visits before we saw everything in the historic portion, because the hours were limited and clashed with Jen's conferences. We did manage to go through Independence Hall, but they limit the number of people that go in, so you have to go to the information center, get tickets and then take your tour. We also got to see some of the older buildings, see where the Declaration of Independence was written as well as the Constitution, and check out the Liberty Bell (the photos on the right should be up now, and should show you what we got to see there!).

Philadelphia is also where we had our "big dinner". Usually on vacation, we'll treat ourselves to a nicer dinner than the typical vacation food we pick up on the road or at a quick pit-stop. In Philadelphia, we decided to go to Fogo de Chao. It's a Brazilian churrascaria steakhouse, were servers bring out your food to you. If you've never had Brazilian churrascaria, basically they roast different meats on long swords, just like the gauchos do, and carve off your portions for you. It's a lot of meat, and it's very simply seasoned, but it was delicious! At this particular restaurant, they were very quick to keep the drinks topped off, keep offering us food, and to clean up to prepare for the next customers but still were very friendly. Jen actually timed it; it took 45 seconds for them to remove the dishes, linens and change the place settings on a table!

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Well, that's one bit of our big vacation. Hopefully by the end of the week we can get everything shared, because next week we're off again for another much shorter trip!

Take care, all!

One Trip Down...

Hello, everyone!

We just got back from the first of the three planned trips this summer (and definitely the longest!) Jen's work offered her the chance to go to Philadelphia for a conference. The conference ran from Sunday through Wednesday, but since it was so close to Jeff's mission (New Jersey, Cherry Hill, which we found was combined with others and technically doesn't exist anymore), and we both wanted to go to New York, we decided to make a vacation out of it. We flew out of Oakland and landed in Philadelphia Friday night, stayed in Philly until Thursday, and then stayed the rest of the trip in Newark, New Jersey, which was close enough to where we wanted to visit.

Eventually some of the wacky adventures we went on will be posted on here (probably when Jen finishes her homework projects she's behind on) but we did manage to put some pictures on the blog. Now, to the right, there are new Picasa pictures; one from our trip to Disneyland last January, and then all the photos of what we saw back east.

As a small update to whet your appetite, here are some of the other goings-on in the Perry household.

Jeff completed his Spring semester of school, and did well in his classes. He is now working on getting his practicum going. For his degree, there is a three-part series of classes he needs to take in order to get his degree: the practicum, the externship, and the grants project. The practicum involves volunteering for about 30 hours over the course of a term at a child care facility, giving direct assistance to the children and writing up observations. Then, after he completes this, he must complete an externship with another site, like a day care or a hospital, for a set number of hours, depending on how many units he wants, and do more write-ups and observations. The last portion, the grant writing project, involves doing research and creating a presentation for a fictional agency, requesting funds from various sources to accomplish the agency's mission. They have to be taken sequentially, each one a semester's worth of work, along with his regular coursework as well. Slowly but surely, though, he's plugging away.

On the plus side, work is going better for him. A few people that were not working out left, and now he is back to hiring staff. Despite being short-staffed, all appears to be going well for now, so keep your fingers crossed that he'll find great employees!

As for Jen, coming back to work on Tuesday was a little tough. Without going into details, one of the projects she was working on hit a huge roadblock with the budgets, and at first it seemed impossible to get everything done in order to treat the patients and continue the study. But, with a lot of perseverance and work (and TONS of phone calls and emails!) everything came together this afternoon, in time for her patient's visit on Monday and Tuesday. So for now everything is set, and hopefully there won't be any more hiccups!

School is going well for Jen as well. The bad news is, because of our travels, her schoolwork fell behind a little. Fortunately it's a self-paced course, so she didn't miss any deadlines or anything. And on her physiology exam for that class (a tough topic for her) she managed to score 88%, so she is still in range for an A!

Well, it is starting to get late, so we will wrap it up here for now. Stay tuned for some of our stories!