Yes it's been a while since the blog has been touched, BUT a lot has gone on. It's been a busy summer for us all, so let's just take it away!
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At the end of May, Jen returned to her schoolwork full time. She won't get to graduate until December 2015, but she's happy to be back in school. Now she is in the process of locating a site to do her externships at. She has approached her employers at Easter Seals, as well as other sites in the area, so it seems she may have some options.
Speaking of work, Jen is still doing well at Easter Seals. She had a cut in hours when a client went away to India for over a month, and it wasn't certain that she would have a new case. Her bosses have been giving her hours with administrative tasks, so it's been okay for the time being.
Her office also changed locations. When Jen was hired on in June of 2012 there was talk of them opening offices in Fremont. Unfortunately that fell through but they located a place in Hayward that was supposed to be opened October of last year. There were a lot of structural setbacks, and moving in kept getting delayed, but finally on August 1st, her team moved to the Hayward offices. Her commute went from almost an hour to 15-20 minutes at most, and no more paying for parking. Plus, the office is down the street from two of her clients so she can go in the morning and hang until her sessions start!
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Speaking of school, Jeff has just enrolled in two classes at Ohlone, the local junior college. He will be taking business classes, and ultimately his long-term goal is to get his BS, his MBA, and his Series 6 and 63 tests. In the meantime, he is going to try to see if he can get his AAs done.
New York Life is continuing to grow, and Jeff is now licensed to practice in four states: California, Idaho, Utah and Arizona. He has a few deals that he is working on and is still trying his best.
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Just prior to the 4th of July, we acquired a new little friend! While cleaning out the garage, a chihuahua wandered in and decided to stay here. At first we thought that he escaped from a house and his family would eventually come claim him after the holiday, but it never happened, so we kept him, thinking we would find him a home. About 3 weeks in, though, he started to have seizures. We suspect that our new friend was epileptic and so, instead of taking care of him, his family just kicked him to the curb to fend for himself. Fortunately for him he wandered to our home. He's been a great addition, and is a cuddly little guy. We were calling him "Puppito" because we couldn't think of a name, and it eventually morphed to his current moniker: Pepino, which means "cucumber" in Spanish (and apparently in Tagalog too!) We have him on meds to control the seizures, but he had another one yesterday, so we are looking for a good vet for him!
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Speaking of dog news: Chris has finished his chemotherapy. We were lucky that he went into remission after his second dose of chemo, and treatment went well until the very end. A week after his last treatment, Chris seemed to be off. We took him to our regular vet, who recorded his temperature as being 105.7 (normal is about 101) so we took him to BAVS, his oncology team. Chris ended up having to stay overnight and they struggled to get him to eat. For a week, Chris had a hard time eating and had to have the bland chicken and rice diet. He soon was back to his usual self, and about 2 weeks ago he had his first post-chemo visit, with an ultrasound of his spleen. The doctors told us that Chris is not only in clinical remission, but his spleen, which was dotted with cancer, was actually clear, and he was officially in COMPLETE remission! The only caveat is that he will need to visit BAVS once a month for the rest of his life to monitor his lymph nodes, but hopefully we are out of the woods for a long time!
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We have our garden up again in the front yard again, since the dogs are too tempted to pull at the plants and eat the veggies. We've had a lot of success with tomatoes this year, and even grew one that weighed a pound and a half! Frank (short for Franken-mato) is going to be made into something very delicious! We have some corn in a row, as well as zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, eggplants, and some random peppers and herbs. The only fruits of our labor so far are the tomatoes, but everything else is slowly getting planted into the ground. It looks weird to have the garden out there but it works for us!
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We have a few things to look forward to this fall. Jeff's birthday will be in a few weeks, and Jen is taking a week off of work to do some "fall cleaning". We also have preparations for the holidays, including the annual photo shoot for the Christmas cards. This year, Jen's also taking photos for a friend's wedding, so that will be fun! We hope you are all having a great summer and would love to hear from you all. Until next time!
