Happy Christmas

Hi, people!

The title this year is one of Jen's favorite Christmas songs, Happy Christmas (War is Over). If you haven't heard it, it's sung by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the version she has played lately was actually sung by Maroon 5.

We wanted to do our yearly update on the blog instead of putting it in our Christmas card, so that everyone can have access to it, so here we go with our wrap up of 2012!

We have had an interesting year to say the least, with a lot of ups and downs. Early this year Jen lost her cousin, Jimmy, very suddenly, and the family has felt his loss very much. When we celebrated with the Borgen side of the family yesterday, as we goofed around and played video games (We all played Dance Central together) thoughts of Jimmy did come to our minds, but we know he's watching us all act up together.

Starting in February, Jen has had some medical issues. She began to have headaches and dizzy spells, and while she has had migraines before, these were something very different, often leaving her bedridden for several days. She began to go to the doctor's office, as well as visit an ENT and a neurologist. She went on a medical leave from Stanford and it wasn't until the summer that we got some sort of diagnosis. We had thought she suffered from vertigo, but as it turns out, she has vestibular migraines. In Jen's case, when she is feeling ill, not able to properly sleep, or undergoing a lot of stress, she begins to feel dizzy as her "aura" prior to having a large migraine. We have been able to curtail a lot of the migraines as of late, and made some changes to help her cope (more to come later) and she seems to be on the mend for the most part.

This summer there was a bit of upheaval as well. Jeff was let go from his position at Starbucks and Jen was on medical leave from Stanford, so although funds were tight, we were able to spend a lot of time together. During the summer, someone from our church got Jeff in touch with New York Life, an insurance company, and they had him test to be a life agent. After some studying and training, Jeff passed his test and is now licensed to sell life insurance, as well as help with long-term care insurance, financial planning and retirement planning along with other things. He started out with a license in California but now covers Utah as well, and is looking at going into other states as well. If anyone out there has any questions or wants insurance, be sure to come our way!

As for Jen, after all of the medical issues and a lot of discussion, it was decided that she leave Stanford University after working there for 4.5 years, and almost 3 in her last position. It was sad to leave such a well known place, but someone must have been looking out for us, because she was offered a job at Easter Seals Bay Area. Presently, Jen works as a Behavior Interventionist, and goes into families' homes to work with children on the autism spectrum working on a variety of life skills. This has been a huge blessing for us, because she is able to work from home part time with data entry, her travel/commute is shorter (most of her kids are close to home) and because the hours are generally later in the day (a plus when you don't get enough sleep). She currently works about 35 hours/week, and has a Tuesday-Saturday schedule, which she enjoys because Mondays are always hard for her. And some days she is able to come home for a little bit before seeing her next case. Her "siesta" as she calls it, is long enough to get a quick nap and a good lunch in, both of which help with her migraines. Plus, it is less stressful than research, as she basically gets paid to play with her little guys, most around 4-5 years of age, and one older elementary age boy.

In animal news, we have had a lot of changes as well. Two of Jen's beloved chinchillas passed away this year. Hobbes, one of the first chinchillas she adopted, passed away earlier this year. Scout, her very first baby chinchilla (and the only boy we've raised since birth) also passed away after getting injured in his cage. While we miss our little furries a great deal, we have also had the addition of Kandi, Jeff's parents' dog. They recently moved and were unable to keep Kandi, a 14-year old German shepherd/rottweiler with them, so she joined the Perry Pack. Despite her old age, Kandi tries very hard to keep up with our dogs, Chris, Fox, and Jacob, who continue to grow and get into mischief. We definitely have some troublemaker funny pups!

As we continue on through the end of this holiday season, we are looking forward to everything that the new year may bring us. We hope that you also had a wonderful holiday season and love to hear from you as well, and hope nothing but the best for you all.

With love,
Jeffery and Jennifer Perry

Life Moves Pretty Fast...

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. - The Gospel according to Ferris Bueller

Hi, friends and family.

Who would've thought so much could change in a matter of weeks? All of it seems to be pretty good, but just so much in such a short time!

After putting in a lot of thought, we both came to the conclusion that the positions we had (Jen at Stanford, Jeff at Gap) weren't really what we should be doing. Between weird schedules, illnesses and just general drama, we both submitted our resignations. The first week of October Jen left Stanford after having been with them for four years, and although she misses the people she met, she was quickly snatched up by another great organization. Before Jen went on medical leave, her boss wanted her to secure an externship for school before she would offer her more hours. This wasn't really in the plans, as the externship wouldn't start until January, but while searching for an externship, she was offered a position at Easter Seals. When Jen decided to leave Stanford, she pursued a position with Easter Seals and is now a Behavior Interventionist. We did worry about her hours and the finances, but Jen quickly picked up hours. She is not quite full-time (by choice for now; we still want to make sure the migraines subside) but she has five clients she currently works with. Three of them are in Fremont and pretty close to home, one in Hayward and one in Oakland. The company also gave her a laptop so she could work from home when doing data entry and paperwork, and they do pay her mileage when she travels which helps a lot!

Jeff was also offered a new opportunity. Through church someone recommended he look into working for New York Life, and he has done well with his training and networking with the more seasoned agents to learn the ropes. Although he hasn't been putting in the full-time hours, he has still brought in enough money that we decided he should leave Gap. Jeff had been offered an assistant manager position and had taken it, which is why he couldn't devote so much time to New York Life. For a while, he was working over 60-70 hours a week between trainings, appointments, and his regular shifts, and we hardly saw each other during that time. However, the time is now, and Jeff resigned from his post. His last day is this Tuesday, so only two more days. We aren't sure how we are going to celebrate, but we will both have to do something fun!

Since we brought up his insurance, here's a shameless plug. If you have any questions about life insurance, annuities, finances or anything along those lines, please feel free to contact Jeff and also "LIKE" his Facebook page. Here is the link to Jeff's page on Facebook.

The biggest blessing is that we will have a somewhat set schedule. Because one of us has always worked a weird schedule, things have at times been tough. We can't do things together as a family, and (especially when Jeff worked both jobs) we did not even see each other. But with these jobs, we can actually have some freedom. Jeff sets his own schedule with appointments for prospective clients, and Jen's schedule is set for Tuesdays through Saturdays. During the week she doesn't start until early afternoon and would be home by 7, and on Saturdays she has two kiddos but is home by 5:30 and has a 2-hour gap between sessions to come home, eat and relax. Our plan is to try to generally save Sundays and Mondays to run errands or to go out to places together on those days. Because we have had such a hectic few months, there is a small list of places we want to get to, like the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and The Tech Museum in San Jose to see the Mythbusters exhibit.

There are a few other posts that need to be put up, so we will end the big announcement here. Hope all of you are doing well.

And PS: Go Giants!

The First Pictures

Earlier today we started to work on our Christmas photos. Last year we actually had professional photos done of the two of us, and took photos of the three dogs at the lake down the street from our house. This year, though, we wanted a different site to take photos. Since we were by water for the photos, we thought about going for something more old-fashioned.

The photos with the door in the background were part of a farmhouse in Fremont that Jen found after looking at other local photographers and their shoots. Since we have four dogs this year (Jeff's parents' dog, Kandie, now resides with us) and the three dogs last year were tough to shoot, we opted to do split sessions. Today we thought we would get the photos of just the dogs by themselves. Next weekend we will hopefully be able to pull off a group photo.

These are just a few of the pics we ended up taking. We took quite a few. Some were not great, a few were so-so, there were a lot of good ones and a few really great ones. Here are a few to sample until the card is finalized.

Jacob

Jakey and Kandie waiting patiently

A really big beautiful tree. We were thinking of posing there next weekend.

Fox

Kandie

Christopher

The Dirty 30!

Jeff celebrated his 30th birthday this year, but did not want to go all out for a party. Instead, we opted to celebrate it twice. The Saturday before his birthday, we got the family together and went to Patxi's, a deep-dish pizza place in Campbell. About 16 people showed up for pizza, hanging out, and celebrating the great Jeff!

The birthday boy, with his bright-green lei and green copilot.

Opening the presents

Jeff's actual birthday this year fell on a Wednesday, so we decided to ditch work and go out. We spent the day going to the San Jose Museum of Art and get our membership passes (a Groupon purchase that gets us into other museums as well. WOO HOO!!) We also went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse in Union City, but Jeff doesn't want the photos of him eating posted. BOO!

The Green Monkey looking at the entrance of the museum.

Falling Off Of The Face Of The Earth

You would think we did fall off the face of the earth, having not updated out blog in FOREVER (Okay, really, like four months). Well, a lot has happened, and yet nothing has happened at the same time. But now that equilibrium is being achieved, let's start from the beginning.

With Jen's health, she ended up taking a leave from work and school in June. The downside is that they had to push her graduation back to 2015, but at least she gets a break until next January, when she starts back up again. Her leave was pretty lengthy from work: about 10 weeks total. She is just now getting back to Stanford, but at a reduced shift. She also was offered a job at Easter Seals in Oakland providing ABA therapy for several clients in the bay area. It's slow starting that job, and she is considering leaving Stanford for this new position, so we will see how things go.

So, what did Jen end up having? It turns out it wasn't vertigo, which is sort of good news, because treatment for vertigo is not easy to work with. Instead, she was diagnosed with vestibular migraines, a type of migraine that deals with motion and dizziness. They put her through the ringer with tests, including an MRI, hearing test, and motion testing to rule out other conditions like Meniere's disease and vertigo. Although VM is not an official diagnosis, the three doctors she has seen (her regular doctor, a neurologist and an ENT) have it as a diagnosis, and so we went about treating it as such. The medications she had been given were really tough on her, as they made her even more nauseated or caused her heart to pound and beat rapidly. At one point, she was actually seeing things. One weekend, she even kept imagining someone walk by out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look, no one was there! Ultimately, we decided with the doctors to just try to be really conscious of when her migraines were going to start, to make sure she stays cool, hydrated, and out of the sun, and uses her glasses more. It's a little funny to see her in a building with sunglasses on, or wearing them while on the computer, but Jen doesn't seem to mind the funny looks!http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

As if the health issues weren't enough, we also had a bit of a financial blow. Jeff lost his job with Starbucks suddenly not long after Jen's leave. We were able to save some money since Jen didn't go into work and started using up our frozen food cache. For those who don't know, in our house we have two refrigerators and a decent-sized chest freezer that we keep full of food. We grocery shopped for veggies, milk and bread but had plenty of meats and frozen food to eat. Since we didn't eat out as much as well, we saved a bit of money there too and were fortunate enough to keep afloat. While Jeff was looking, a friend from church had mentioned he was selling life insurance through New York Life, so Jeff decided to look into it. He was able to study and take the test and pass on one try, so he is now an agent with the company. If anyone is looking for life insurance or just curious, he made his own Facebook page as well: . Also, to help with some of the finances, Jeff continued to see about any possibilities with Gap. Even after he left his job for Starbucks, Jeff worked at Gap near us to keep his discount. After being laid off from Starbucks, he asked his supervisors for any job leads and it turns out there was an opening at the mall down the street from us! He was offered the job this last week, and his first official day as the assistant manager will be this Thursday. Here's hoping everything is going to go well!

Even though it sounds like a lot of bad happened, we were fortunate enough to weather the storm. It's been a long summer, and with us both home we were able to hang out more and discuss our plans for the future. We have a lot to look forward to still and are excited about the possibilities the future will have.

Hopefully we won't wait so long to post our next blog, but so far September is looking busy with work and Jeff's birthday, plus the holidays are right around the corner. We hope you are all well and hope you enjoyed hearing what's been going on with us!

School's Out For... Well, Three Weeks, Anyway.

The last few weeks have been crazy to say the least. For those who don't know, Jen has had some issues with vertigo. She is prone to nausea and motion sickness in general and has been for years, but the last few months have been pretty bad. Her dizzy spells have lasted days, and the last one she had was at work, and her coworkers sat with her until she was well enough to go home.

The bad news of this was, it was affecting her schoolwork. She ended up cutting out her externship prematurely, and not completing the course. This puts a small hiccup in her school plans. Although she will finish her academic courses on time, her externship schedule was pushed back until next year, and so she will be graduating December 2014 instead of in May. On the plus side, she was able to retain the hours that she has earned so far, so she will have a few less to complete when her classes start back up.

It's been a bit of a toll on us, so whenever we have a chance, we try to get out. A few weeks ago, we decided to drive up to San Francisco one Friday and make a day of it. We started out at Industrial Light and Magic, which is a cool little place if you're a Star Wars fan. We only had a few minutes there, but of course we took a ton of photos while we were there. We also got to drive around the Presidio, and the Palace of Fine Arts, before heading over to hunt down a pizza food truck.

Casey's Pizza is a food truck that is around the San Francisco area, and Jeff found when he was following different food trucks on Twitter. While we were in San Francisco, we thought we would give it a try, and it's the BEST! The pizza was super-thin and tasted great, so much that we ended up getting seconds!

We were in San Francisco to go to Union Square. Giada De Laurentiis, one of the Food Network chefs, was there doing a book signing, and Jen was dying to go. So we headed up to Union Square and did a little window shopping before heading into the huge Williams Sonoma. If you've never been to this store, it's four floors of kitchenwares, and we loved browsing in it. The line to meet Giada was huge, and we were smart to get in line an hour before the signing. She was on the top floor, and the line wound around the stairs and around each floor, out the door onto Post Street and around the corner down Stockton. We didn't stick around for too long after we got our books signed, but Jen was told there would be a limit to 400 signatures and only those that had bought her new book would be getting signatures, and there had to be over 1000 people in line.

School's winding down for us both, and we are stumbling over the finish line this term. Between sickness and everything else, we both barely got through this term. On the plus side, we have a few weeks off from school, so we will take a little time to recuperate and relax before we gear up for more school.

Here's hoping for a quiet summer!

And A Quick Catch-Up!

Hello, all of our friends!

Wow, it feels as though it's been forever! I wish we could say it's because so many great things have been happening, so many trips taken, and just living it up has gotten in the way of the blog. Sadly, it's a lot of the mundane that have kept us busy. Not that we didn't have a few surprises...

In the beginning of February, Jen came home from her externship in order to eat and check on the dogs before heading up to Stanford, but she was delayed. As she was leaving the house, she saw that there were a TON of police officers pointing guns at our neighbor's house. The short story is that these neighbors were involved in a carjacking (which later was based on a false charge, but they're still not nice people) and the police suspected something was going on and raided the house. While the neighborhood was able to evacuate, because we had the dogs, they had Jen stay in our bedroom with the dogs in the house. Originally we thought it would just be for a little bit, but she was in there for about six hours, holed up with the three dogs! It was pretty scary, considering what was going on, but all ended well. There were a few arrests, and aside from being shell-shocked, Jen and the dogs were okay.

We also just got done repairing our car. The Civic was acting up, and something went wrong with the transmission. When we took it to one of Jeff's regulars at Starbucks, and to the dealership to get an estimate, it turned out there were a LOT of things wrong with the car, including a crack in the manifold and the engine mounts were about to go out. All in all, we spent a lot of cash fixing up the car. It doesn't deter us from ever buying a Civic again; Jen got this car and was the original owner when it only had 3 miles on it. Now at around 130,000, except for this latest round of repairs, we have had to put in minimal repairs, considering we've driven it across the Continental Divide numerous times.

Not everything was such crazy news. We got tickets to go see The Hunger Games in an advanced screening in San Francisco. There was a lot of driving from Newark to Fremont to get our youngest niece, Amy, then to Sonoma to get our oldest niece, Sarah, who's in college there, then to get to the theatre. We thought we were super late, since we didn't get there until almost 7 and the film started at 8, but because we got our tickets through Barnes and Noble, not only did we get to go in first, but our section was perfect; the back third of the theatre! We sat in a row with no one behind us, and got to stretch out a little in the nice seats. The four of us loved the movie. Jen had just finished the book a day or so before, and now Jeff is working on it.

Otherwise, everything is same old, same old. We are still working hard, going to school, and trying to stay out of trouble. Easter in a week will likely be low-key, and in May Jen signed us up to go to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium for us to see the Cooking for Solutions weekend, where we will sit in on a cooking session with Alton Brown as well as see exhibitions on sustainable foods, followed by a summer of school and working to pay bills. Oh, and planning a trip. Jeff is going to Houston for a Starbucks trip, and since everything will be covered, Jen's going for the ride too! Even if it isn't until October, it's something to look forward to, right?

Until next time!!

Watch That First Month, It's A Doozy!

Hello, world!

It's been a very hectic year, and January isn't even over yet! Lots of things happening, mostly good, and a few bad. Guess we can start with the end of the year.

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For a Christmas present, Jen's sister, Bertha, bought her family tickets to go to Safari West in Santa Rosa on New Year's Eve. The entire family was able to go: Jen's parents, her sisters, brother in law, brother, sister in law, nieces and nephew, 13 in all. It was a lot of fun to go on "safari" at this animal refuge, and there were tons of animals throughout the site. We posted our album off to the side (hopefully it's up and running, anyway!) and you can see some of the great photos we have taken.

The whole family!

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Unfortunately, soon after the beginning of the year, we were hit with bad news. Jen's sisters called her early on the morning of the 4th to let her know that her cousin, Jim, had suddenly died. It sounded like he suddenly was ill, and within a day they had lost him. Jimmy was Jen's oldest cousin on her mom's side, and such a fun guy. He was always so sweet and his smile lit up a room. Jimmy was a surfer bum, and everyone was "dude" to him. Jen and I can't watch Finding Nemo without thinking of him when the turtle, Crush, comes on the screen. The family was very sad with the loss, and we attended his rosary and funeral the following week.

RIP Jimmy. We Love You!

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The week following Jim's death, Jen came down with a horrible cold. Jeff originally had a little cold at the beginning of the year, and a few of her coworkers were also sick, so we don't know where the source was. She started getting sick Friday evening, and had hoped to be better by the end of the weekend, but no such luck. Her fever didn't break until Wednesday, and we worried she would not be able to make the drive to Pacifica and San Francisco for the services. It's been over two weeks since she has caught the cold, and although she's feeling a lot better, her cough hasn't gone away entirely and she still isn't quite 100%.

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Our routine is getting back to normal. After a few weeks off from school, both of us started back this past Monday. This semester, Jeff is enrolled in five classes online through Colorado State, and is in the process of adding a statistics class at Ohlone. If he succeeds at adding the course, Jeff will be on track to graduate this year, much to everyone's delight. It will definitely be a tough semester, especially taking into account not only that he is taking 18 units, but the math class will be in person two nights a week.

Jen's workload isn't nearly as big as Jeff's but is just as exciting. This semester is her first externship, and she was lucky to be so close to home. After some difficulty, Jen was able to have her externship at Lincoln Elementary here in Newark. She is there from 8 AM until about 11:30 AM, then drives up to Stanford to finish the workday, and works longer shifts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to make up for the extra hours. She will have very early days from now until May, and then a slight break in externships until the fall. She will have to complete 4-5 more externships before she finishes her degree, but she is on her way.

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Well, that's everything we can think of for the time being. The next big events coming up soon are Jen's birthday and Valentine's day. Because of the funeral, a lot of thought hasn't been put into either day, but hopefully we can have some fun for these days!

Hope all is well for everyone!

A Year In Review

Merry New Year!

In the past, when we sent out Christmas cards, we wrote a letter talking about everything the past year brought us. Now, we have resorted to doing that on the blog.

2011 was an amazing year. We had many adventures and a lot of memories.

This was the first year that did not involve a change in jobs or a move. Both of us are still working hard at our jobs. Jeff still works for the same Starbucks he was at last year, plus putting in hours occasionally at the local GAP to keep our discount. Jen is still in the same department at Stanford, and has been doing some interesting work.

School is continuing to go forward for us both. Jen completed the first terms of her Master's program and will begin performing observation and direct client interaction starting this month. Jeff continues to complete his undergrad, and if everything works out with the schedule of classes, he will be done with his bachelor's by the end of the year, and moving on to postgraduate work, hopefully completing his prerequisites to go into the medical field.

This year also brought us the chance to travel a lot! In the past year, we have visited southern California, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Utah, Colorado and Seattle. Together we had many adventures, and captured many of the memories on film, as you can see in the slideshows on this blog.

The two of us have been very blessed this past year to have the year that we have, and are grateful for our jobs and opportunities that we have been given. The coming year, we hope will continue to bring many adventures and new experiences for us. Already several trips are in the works, in addition to the demands of school and work that will allow us unique opportunities.

We are excited for this new year, and hope that you all have a fabulous year along with us. Here's to 2012!

Love always,

Jeffery and Jennifer Perry