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Sunday, October 28, 2012

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



Monday, October 1, 2012

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.