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!