The Perrys

Watch That First Month, It's A Doozy!

2012-01-22T22:13:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

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

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, Tip-Tip, Tet, and a Solemn, Dignified Ramadan

2011-12-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

We just got back from two days of celebrating. The normal Perry tradition is to see Jen's family on Christmas Eve and Jeff's on Christmas Day (although last year, that tradition got a hiccup, since we stayed home both days. Jen was still recuperating from the car accident).

Jen did a chunk of the cooking for her side of the family at her dad's request, and we got together at her parents' house. We had dinner there, played charades and opened presents. It was a big group; in total there were 13 there.

At Jeff's house, it was a much smaller and calmer group. This year, because of everyone's schedules, it was just Jeff's brothers and parents. Again, we had an enjoyable dinner and visited. We don't get to see Jeff's side too often, since they are about an hour away from us, so we caught up and enjoyed hanging out!

Our big "surprise" to our families were photos of us. It dawned on us that we had never had photos taken of the two of us. Fortunately, Angella, a friend of ours from Colorado, now lives in California in Davis, and she does WONDERFUL photographs, as you can see:

Check out more of Angella's work by clicking HERE.

Overall we got some very nice and wonderful gifts. Both of us feel very spoiled and blessed by our family and friends. Hopefully this week we can post some of the pictures from Christmas, and also write up the Year in Review.

And for those who want to know about the title, it's one of Jen's favorite holiday sayings:

Insomnia Rears It's Ugly Head

2011-11-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

Hello, everyone!

We have been fighting colds recently, which unfortunately messed with sleeping patterns. Since we are still up, why not update the blog?

November has been a busy month, much like all of our other months. In the beginning on the month, Jeff's youngest brother, James, came home from his mission. James served his mission in Brazil and we all were able to meet him at the Oakland Airport. This past Sunday he was asked to speak at both his parent's ward and his single's ward. Jeff was lucky enough to go, but Jen was running a fever and had to stay home.

On the 17th we celebrated another milestone. We have now been married for seven years! It has been an interesting roller coaster ride, but one neither of us would change. We had already celebrated our anniversary with the Seattle trip, but decided on the day of to go to Espetus, a Brazilian steakhouse in San Mateo. Dinner was nice, and we took a few pictures, but just enjoyed a quiet day together.

That weekend was the Big Game. For the third year, we went to the Stanford-Cal football game. This year the game was at Stanford and at first Jen had a hard time getting tickets, but she got a really good deal on seats, which turned out to be section 101, front row right next to the tunnel where the players run out. It was a great game, especially because Stanford won, but it was raining the entire game unfortunately.

The following week was Thanksgiving, at Jen's sister's house. It was a pretty quiet day, with just Jen's parents, siblings and her nieces there for the day. The food was awesome, and we got to do the majority of the work, but it was so much fun! Everything ended up tasting great, and then Jen, Jeff, Jen's sister Myra and our nieces Sarah and Rachel went Black Friday shopping.

We decided to hit McCarthy Ranch in Milpitas because The things we really wanted were at Walmart and Best Buy, and they bad both stores there. Jeff, Myra and Rachel waited to get in line at Walmart while Jen stayed at Best Buy. Unfortunately, the line to get into Walmart was insane, and a lot of people were pushing us to get in, so much that we had to yell at them to leae us alone. Inside the store, a lot of people were impatient, and tried to cut us in line. We didn't get much there, and don't know if we will go back to Walmart on Black Fridays anymore. Aoparently a lot of Walmarts had problems like that. Fortunately, Jen got everything she wanted at Best Buy, and now is the proud owner of a new GPS and two new BluRay boxed sets: Lord of the Rings and Star Wars!

Last Saturday we got to go on one more fun outing. We went with our friend Tanicia to go see Carmen at the San Francisco Opera. This was to make up to Jeff who fell asleep during the Opera At The Park event, and he actually enjoyed the opera. The three of us dressed up and went to the city. Originally we were going to go to dinner first, but a small emergency prevented that.

We went to go introduce Jacob to our nieces and while we were there a stray dog approached us. Another neighbor had followed him for several blocks and he was running loose in the neighborhood. The City of Fremont wouldn't come get him until Tuesday (and it was Saturday) so we caught him and brought him home. We posted flyers everywhere, but the old dog stayed with us until Monday. As Jen was calling around to local shelters, his owners found one of our flyers and called to claim him. Koa, we were told, broke out of his yard Friday night and was over a mile from his home, impressive for a 13-year old dog! His owners came and got him, and we miss the old dog lots, but we are happy he found his home.

Today a huge fog bank rolled into the bay area, and although its common to San Francisco, usually it doesn't reach Newark like this. On the way to work, Jen could not see the entire bridge she takes to get to work, and on the way home, she couldn't see the bridge at all! So. Decided to go outside and take pictures because this is an uncommon experience. We took a lot of pictures at the lake near our house, and they (along with our other pictures) are uploading on our computer now. Hopefully we can get them posted soon so we can share them all with you.

Hope everything is going well with you all. School and work are still going but should wrap up soon. We are planning on sending our Christmas cards soon, so please email us your addresses if you would like one!

The Sights, The Sounds, and The Rest

2011-10-31T22:27:00.000-07:00

Hello to everyone out there!

Hope you are having a happy Halloween. Ours this year has been pretty quiet. We had two groups of kids come all night, so we get to have A LOT of leftover candy this year.

For those who noticed the change in the slideshows to the side, we uploaded a lot of photos recently. We finally uploaded the photographs from Jeff's birthday in Monterrey and San Francisco, plus we uploaded the photos from our recent trip to Seattle. Yes, October has been a very busy month for us.

First off, we have a new addition to the furry family. Jen's coworker had a pup that needed a home and thought we might be a good fit. Jen had wanted another dog to protect the house, and even though this was a puppy, we thought we would give it a try. Jacob (Jake for short) is a good fit for our dog-family. He is almost 8 months now, and is just a little smaller than Fox (but he is already heavier!) He is mostly husky but his face looks a little pit bull-ish. He is super sweet to us, but already is protective of the house and his friends. He also gets along great with Christopher, but bonded with Fox immediately.

The week before we left for Seattle, we found out that a lot of Food Network stars were touring the country and coming to our part of California for book signings. Within a week, we got to meet three of our favorites: on Monday we met Guy Fieri at his restaurant in Dublin. On Tuesday Jeff got to meet Alton Brown in San Francisco, and was a good sport about taking Jen to see him on Wednesday in Palo Alto. That Friday, Anne Burrell was also in Palo Alto at the Stanford mall, so Jeff met Jen up there for the signing, then had dinner in Palo Alto.

Then we went to Seattle. For those who wonder why, there were a few reasons. The biggest is that our anniversary is in November, but traveling then would not work. It's very close to Thanksgiving, and the weather likely would not be any good for us. So we opted to go to Washington in October. It was very much fall weather, and although it sprinkled a little at times, we had so much fun. We visited the local temple, went to the space needle, Tacoma, and even spent some time hanging in the hotel. The hotel was a studio-style room with a kitchenette that had a decent fridge, microwave and stove. During happy hour one cold evening, we hung out next to the fireplace in the lobby reading and munching in cookies that the staff baked for the guests. Washington was very beautiful, and we even got to play with Jeff's new camera. For a birthday/anniversary/Christmas present, we cashed in three years' worth of gift cards and points to get the camera, a Nikon D5100 with a telescopic lens and a nice backpack case. You can see how nicely the camera works by the photos, particulary of the temple and the space needle.

Aside from our travels, the same is still going on. Both of us are plugging away at school, as the terms are getting closer to ending. Jen is also starting National Novel Writing Month tomorrow, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in a month, so we will see how she does this year.

Until next time...

A Sneak Peek of What's To Come

2011-10-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

We've had a busy couple of weeks in Perryland, both the week before our trip and the week of. We're still in Seattle (hence the change in background) but wanted to give you a sneak peek of our trip. Ready?

A visit from Alton Brown...

A puppy named Jake...

... and the view from our hotel window.

But you'll have to wait until we get home for the complete details!

Brief But An Update

2011-10-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, we still exist!

There has been a lot going on in our hectic lives as of late, so we decided to go ahead and throw out another update.

Jeff has been getting better. His stomach issues are fairly resolved but he is still being seen by a doctor. There is no exact diagnosis and what he had could have already resolved itself, but still we are keeping an eye on things. He is also continuing to progress with school: So far his classes are going well, despite having four classes, work and everything else! Work is getting to be crazy; a lot of his staff have left for full-time jobs or school, so there is a bit of craziness there, but all otherwise appears to be well.

Jen has had an interesting few weeks as well. She has gone to the dentist a few times and come back in pain, unfortunately. Although she likes the dentist, her mouth just isn't used to being messed with! To make matters worse, last week she had a slight cold and had to stay home from work. Fortunately, she was able to get a lot of it done from home and only took one sick day (the day for the dentist). School is also going well. She just finished her third class and, although she doesn't think she got an A like in her other classes, she was just glad to get through it. It was a pretty tough class for her. Right now, she is only in one class with a professor she has had before, and she enjoyed being in his class, so she's anticipating getting back into her groove and getting her A again. She is also starting her next class next week, a research-based course, and her advisors have told her that her background and work will likely benefit her in this class, which is supposed to be one of the more difficult. She should finish her first class before our anniversary, and her newer class will be the last for the year! Next year she will have only two classes, one of which is an observational course, but probably just as much work!

We are also going on our anniversary trip early this year. Our actual anniversary is Nvember 17th, but we have been toying with the idea of going to Seattle. A lot of thought went into this. We both need the break, and going to Seattle is not an option in November. The idea first hit us on our way back from Utah. We had a 30 minute stop in Seattle and the skyline intrigued Jeff. With more research we fou d there was a lot that we could do there, so we decided to give it a try! We leave Thursday the 20th and come home on Monday the 24th, and this will probably be the last trip of the year.

Well, time to wrap this up. We hope all is well with everyone and hope to catch up again when we return!

Summer in September

2011-09-12T22:58:00.001-07:00

Hello to all out there!

So summer is finally showing up. We have had a few days that were warmer than the others this summer (still relatively cool compared to the folks that have 100+ temps!) It's made for a nice few days lately, even though the days are getting shorter.

This year, Jeff decided to do a garden, and so far it's been successful! We have already harvested tomatoes and zucchini, and he has also planted herbs and cucumbers that haven't really ripened. He also planted peppers that just don't get hot enough to his liking, and originally we only had one corn plant grow. After talking to someone from our church, he decided to try soaking the corn before planting, and sure enough, we now have 100+ plants!! All of this is being grown in our FRONT yard, for fear that the dogs would take them out in the back. On the plus side, our zucchini plant has become a beautiful shrub in our front path!

We also celebrated Jeff's birthday last weekend. Since he wasn't feeling that great (more on that later), we decided to keep it simple and just celebrate together. On Friday, we both took the day off and decided to drive to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Jen's sister had given us passes for the year, so we thought we would go. They recently have been trying to rehabilitate a Great White shark, so we went to see that. Even though we have been numerous times, this was probably the first time either one of us went and there wasn't any construction or closed off portions of the aquarium! It was really pretty and we took plenty of pictures.

The following Monday was Jeff's actual birthday, so we decided to go to San Francisco for the afternoon. We started out eating at a burger joint in the Ferry Building, which is on the water, and do some shopping in the food market. Because of the holiday, a few shops were closed but we had fun anyway. We also went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Although we were only there for a little bit, we did get to try out the famous Mondrian cake and saw some very interesting exhibits.

The bad news is Jeff has been pretty sick lately. A few weeks ago he had to leave work because he had gotten sick. Although we suspected it was from milk we had purchased (the only thing Jeff had that Jen didn't) the doctor said no, it wasn't likely. The next week Jeff had more of the same milk and again got very sick. His stomach unfortunately hasn't been the same, and we spent part of Jeff's birthday in urgent care because it was really upset. All seems to be pretty good now, but we are both being really careful about what we eat.

School is again continuing for us both. Jen began a new class with the teacher she started with in her Master's program, and Jeff began the fall semester with four new courses. Despite sickness, we have been fortunate to keep up with our homework. Work has been great for Jeff, but Jen is wrapping up a study and working on two new ones at the same time! So this month is pretty packed, and we are looking at a trip next month for a much-needed break!

Right now we're uploading the photos from Jeff's birthday but hopefully we can get them posted ASAP. Hope all is well for you all!

In Brief

2011-08-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

Hello, all!

We would say that the summer is starting to wind down, but around here it hasn't seem to hit yet! We've had pretty calm weather, with very few really warm days. This mild weather has been very enjoyable, but makes getting back to the everyday grind difficult.

Both of us have been continuing to work hard. Jeff is about to register for his fall classes. It looks like he should be done with the undergrad work by next year, if he can keep up with the work load. Jen is down to one class, and so far has 2 As in her program. She will be picking up another class toward the end of the month, and then there is just one more until Christmas break. Break this year starts at the beginning of December, then goes through mid-January. Then Stanford has their usual two-week closure, so this year, maybe we will actually do something! The last few years, one of us has been sick or, in Jen's case, still recouping from the car accident, so our holidays have been local and very understated.

Although there aren't any trips planned for a while, we're still dreaming of some. Jeff really wants to go to Seattle, or back to New York, possibly for our anniversary, so we are saving up for that. And next month is Jeff's birthday. We haven't quite gotten that figured out, since it lands on Labor Day, we haven't decided if we'll go out the day of, the weekend of, or some other day. But we will be sure to keep you posted!

Time for July!

2011-07-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone!

After a ton of blog updates before in the last month, July is seemingly quiet in comparison. But, we are managing to keep busy and have some adventures to boot!

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In Jen's Family, the 4th of July is second only to Christmas in the hierarchy of family holidays. A small part of that is because Jen's oldest sister, Myra, was born on the 5th and the family usually gets together on the 4th instead. The real, main reason, however, is because Newark, where we live, is one of a few cities in California that still hasn't outlawed fireworks. The sales benefit different booster clubs, and there is just too much money to be made by blowing up your hometown, so every year the family meets at Jen's parents house to light off fireworks.. This year, the dogs made things interesting. Myra's dog, Mason, is not a fan of the loud popping (long story with his personal history) and our dog, Fox, was actually scared this year, so we put the three dogs inside of our RAV 4 so that they we're close enough to see us and know it's okay, without hearing too many loud noises. And, before anyone else asks, Christopher did fine. For some reason, he has always loved fireworks!!!

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The weekend after the 4th, Jen went to a conference put on by the National Urea Cycle Disorder Foundation. UCD is a disorder in which the body has a difficulty time eliminating ammonia from the body. It's a relatively rare disorder, but right now it is actually one of Jen's big research projects. Because of how rare it is, there is only one conference every year for it, and this year it was in Denver, CO. Jeff again went along, and so did our niece, Rachel, who wanted to look at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, an hour north of Denver and where Jen got her first degree. So we went back home to Ft. Collins while we were there and toured the campus and drove around the city. Jen put it this way: it was like going home and finding someone changed the locks. It was familiar, but a lot had changed in the city and the school, which is expected after having been away over five years, but there were a few homey things, like visiting our old apartment.

The hotel we stayed at in Denver was pretty nice as well. It has a rooftop pool that we hung out at, and while Jen was in her conference, Jeff and Rachel got to do some shopping. It was the shortest of the three trips, but still plenty of fun!

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That brings us to this weekend, another busy one for us. We already saw the last Harry Potter in a double-feature with the previous one, and today we went to the AIDS Walk in San Francisco. Jeff had volunteered a few times but didn't get to actually walk some of them, so we went out to Golden Gate Park and enjoyed the day. Although we got a late start, we still had fun listening to the music and enjoying the park and the people. In fact, Jen even got a t-shirt and a keychain from the Pixar Walk Team. The keychain is of the rubber ball that is part of their logo, and her shirt is in honor of Cars 2, with Lightning McQueen driving a red track made out to look like an AIDS ribbon. Between our trips, conferences and walks, we have amassed quite a collection of shirts!!

Well, that is it for now. We haven't uploaded any pictures yet, but they should be posted in one of our albums next to this blog. Hope all is well with our family and friends and we will see you all soon!!

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

2011-06-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-06-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-06-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-19T21:35:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-05T18:01:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-06-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

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!

Almost Made It In April...

2011-05-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

Hello, all!

We have been putting off updating the blog until something more exciting happened. We have been pretty busy with everything, so apologies for this being relatively short!

Easter was a fairly quiet day. Jen's sister invited her over to the house, and she and her family had dinner there. We brought over lasagna, and Rice Krispie Treats shaped like Easter eggs. They were pretty good, and she mixed them in with Fruity Pebbles to give it some color. We have some pics posted on our Facebook pages, because we've had a heck of a time uploading pictures onto the blog.

Jen started her orientation for school on the 18th, and it went pretty well. It was essentially making sure she had everything she would need to view posts and work on her schoolwork online. School officially starts tomorrow, so she is excited at starting the work for her Master's degree, even though it means school for at least another three years.

Jeff has been plugging away at school as well. His semester will be ending in the next few weeks, just in time for the summer and a few trips we have planned (more on that later). Work is still going well. There have been a few changes with the staff at his store, but everything is settling in nicely.

The past week, Jen's been home from work. We aren't 100% sure what was going on, but basically it seems to be a stomach flu of sorts and she has pain in her lower back. She's had a few labs done, and so far no answers, but she's been handling it well enough. We think tomorrow will be her first day back at work, so she will have a lot to catch up on, but at least she's feeling a little better.

This summer, we have several trips that we've got planned. At the end of this month, we are going to be going back east. Jen has a conference in Philadelphia that lasts from Sunday through Wednesday, so we plan on flying in on Friday, having a day to look around, then Sunday through Wednesday Jen will be at her conference and Jeff will venture off to visit some friends and family in New Jersey. On Thursday we will leave Philadelphia to see DC and New York, and return home that Sunday.

In June, we are planning another trip to Utah. There is a speech-language pathology program in the middle of June that Jen wants to attend, so during the week, we will fly out and back for the conference. And in July the weekend after the 4th, we are going to another work conference for Jen in Denver. So quite a few travels in store for us!

Well, we hope you are all having a wonderful Spring. It's starting to warm up nicely here already, so it should be a pretty summer!

Updates, Because We Haven't Posted in March Yet!

2011-03-27T22:31:00.001-07:00

We wanted to try to keep up with our blog posts, so it is time for a brief update!

Jen is getting busy with her work, and taking on more studies. She started out doing the paperwork and submission for a study of heart transplant patients under the age of 4 months (That's right; MONTHS!) that, at first, she didn't think would go through. The financing for the study got to be pretty expensive, and the sponsor at first did not want to pay nearly as much as she had calculated. However, it appears that there is still some negotiations going on, so it may become an active study in the near future.

Jen is also taking over two studies from one of her coworkers, who is leaving to go onto graduate school to pursue his PhD. One of the studies she is taking over involves how a medication plays a role in certain patients (sorry, can't get more detailed than that!) But her other study is the one she has wanted for a while. One of the doctors at Stanford is working on a Genetic Autism study, where they get skin samples of Autistic children, look at them for genetic abnormalities, and try to see if they can correct them in a petri dish. She has wanted to help her coworker on this study for a while, and when she found out that he would be leaving soon, she eagerly volunteered to take on the job, and got it! She's already met with her first patient, and helped out the team this past week, so she is very eager to continue.

School hasn't started for her yet, but as you can see, Jen's already got her desk ready for school. Jeff surprised her by cleaning off the desk, and she was so happy she HAD to get a photo.

Back to school....

Jeff has been plugging away at work and school as well. Now that the transition to the store is continuing to settle down, he is putting in consistent hours and has a consistent schedule. Although he ends up having to get up as early as 3 AM, he is home shortly after lunch and is still able to spend almost all evenings at home.

School is also coming to a close for Jeff. The term is now more than halfway done for him, and one class is already over, leaving him three classes with projects and tests to do. He should be done by the middle of May, in time for our trip to Philadelphia.

Tickets have been bought, and we will be going to the East Coast this May. We plan on leaving on Friday, May 20th, and returning Sunday, May 29th. This is starting to look like a great vacation for us both, since Jeff has not been back East since his mission, and Jen has never been! Until Thursday the 26th, we will be in Philadelphia for Jen's work conference, which ends Wednesday. We don't have the last three days planned just yet, but are working on it as we speak. There are so many places to see, but it'll be hard to get to everything with the conference being all-day.

Well, enough of our update. Here's hoping that our next one will be longer (and with photos!)

A Bit of Catching Up To Do

2011-02-20T22:31:00.000-08:00

Hello, world!

Yes, we have been away for two months now, and our apologies. It's been a busy few months, and so far, everything's been going well for us.

Christmas was a slight downer for us. Because of Jen's back, travel was out of the question, and Christmas Eve and Day were over an hour away. Doesn't sound like too much now, but Jen's back was acting up on her (we think probably from the cold), so we celebrated quietly at home. On Christmas Day, Jen's parents stopped by for a quick dinner, but aside from that, there wasn't much going on. We did not even put up a tree, but we managed to decorate our mantle at least!

FYI - We also barely kept awake for New Year's... so ONTO 2011!!

Before Jen's accident, her sister thought it would be a cool idea to go to Disneyland as a family. The plane tickets were a bargain, and we all ended up in a suite at the Disneyland Hotel, so that was a blast! In total, 11 people went: Us two; Jen's oldest sister; Jen's other sister, her husband and three girls plus a friend; and Jen's sister-in-law and nephew. We were there for almost 3 full days, and instead of posting photos directly in the blog, we'll put a slide show on the side for your enjoyment.

Disneyland was the beginning of a round of good things for us. About a week later, Jen got an email from CSU, Northridge, telling her she had been accepted into their online Master's degree program! She will be the first of her four siblings to go to graduate school, the first of her cousins on her mom's side, and the first to go for a Master's on her dad's side (she has two cousins that are lawyers, though, so not the only one to do post-grad work!). Since it's entirely online, we can stay here and not have to look for another place or new jobs. Her first classes start in May, with a two week "orientation" to make sure she's got her computer set up properly.

A week after that, we celebrated Jen's 30th birthday. Although it felt like the party lasted more than just the day. The Wednesday before, her office threw her a party and bought her Sprinkle's cupcakes. That weekend, we went shopping for some essentials and had a blast just hanging out, but couldn't go anywhere because we were also house-sitting, and on Monday, we went out with two families from church, the Snows and the Bishops, to go get Five Guys, a new burger place near us. The next day, when she returned to work, and her sister (Who also works at Stanford) brought balloons on their carpool together. Here she is entering the office with them:

Then, we had a party on the Superbowl for her! It's a long story, but Jen's birthday clashes with this event, so since it was such an important year, her folks came to our house for a "surprise" party. (We say "surprise" loosely because she started to find out that weekend that SOMETHING was going on)

Also, on February 1, Jen became a complete, full-time employee! She already was permanent since September, but she was at 30 hours/week, and now she is 100% time. This means a little less time at home, but a bit more money, so we're happy for that at least!

Despite working more, we've still found time to have some fun. Last week, since Jeff had the weekend off, we decided to hit the Tech Museum for their exhibit, Body Worlds Vital.

The exhibit itself is pretty interesting. We copied this from The Tech Museum's website, since it explained it so well:

BODY WORLDS Vital, in its first-ever showing, celebrates the potential of the human body and the body in motion. Featuring authentic human bodies, the exhibition shows the body in health, distress and disease. These detailed anatomical studies, compositions, and representations allow visitors a penetrating gaze at what lies beneath the skin.

Physician and anatomist Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS exhibitions are the original, precedent-setting public anatomical exhibitions of real human bodies, and the only anatomical exhibits that use donated bodies, willed by donors, for the express purpose of serving BODY WORLDS' mission to educate the public about health and anatomy. The bodies are preserved through a remarkable process called Plastination enabling visitors to learn what lies beneath the skin.

We got to spend the day in San Jose, then ventured on over to the Great Mall to get a few other essentials afterwards. All in all a great day!

It looks like we'll have quite a few trips this coming year. Even though we don't have to, Jen does want to go to CSU Northridge to tour "her" campus. We are also planning a trip to Utah the first weekend of May for Jen to get her other degree. Lastly, Jen's job has a conference in Philadelphia that we want to turn into a small vacation, since Jen's never been to the East Coast, and Jeff has not returned to New Jersey since his mission.

Hopefully we'll keep you all a bit more posted!

The Christmas Blog

2010-12-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, One and All!!

This has been a crazy year, to say the least. It is even ending in a rush! So up front, we apologize for not mailing out any Christmas cards or newsletters. We have been fortunate enough to get quite a few, and thank you all for them, as well as your thoughts and Christmas greetings.

Thinking back to last year, we couldn't imagine how our lives would have turned out. We have accomplished a lot in the last twelve months. It's hard to believe everything we have done, and want to just give a few of the highlights.

In March we moved to a house in Newark. Not sure how long it'll last (we had planned on purchasing the house, but right now we aren't so sure). It's been the first house that we've had, and enjoyed our time here. We settled in so fast, we even added a new addition to our family. Jeff's friend Kati found a husky puppy wandering the streets, and after staying with us for a week, Fox ended up becoming a permanent fixture in our home. She can be zany at times (As this is being typed, she's opening our sliding back door to get inside!) but is a great addition to our house and a wonderful accomplice friend to Christopher.

We've both been progressing through school and work. Jeff again found a new job, and is currently the general manager at Starbucks in Fremont. It's nice that, after having to commute to Los Gatos, Brentwood, and Los Gatos AGAIN, his drive time is cut down considerably. He has been plugging away at school and is excited to work on his Spring semester in a few weeks. The end of his undergrad is near!

As for Jen, she has had some changes in work and school as well. After being a temp employee, this past summer she became a permanent fixture in her department. As of right now she is 75% time, but this spring she will go for being full-time. In addition to moving up in the work world, Jen has also finished her second bachelor's degree! So this last week, without work or school, she has been resting and recovering a little more, trying to heal her back and finish up any other holiday preparations.

Even though this has been a roller-coaster year, we have made it through again. We have managed to make it through six years of marriage, and are excited to see what the future brings to us: More school, (Jeff finishing his degree, and Jen in grad school), more work (literally!) and more travel (for sure, southern California, Pennsylvania, and Orlando have been planned), which means more adventures!

We do feel very blessed for what we have received and that, regardless of whatever challenges we have faced, we have and are getting through them together. We are both so grateful for our friends and family, and wish you all health and happiness, especially during this time of year.

And as Jen loves to say, "Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, yet dignified Ramadan".

Love, Jeff and Jen Perry

Okay, Really, Three MONTHS??

2010-12-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's taken three months to update our blog. It has been a crazy time here, but let's see if we can catch you up to speed with everything:

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In September, we had (drumroll please) SEVEN dogs under one roof. The Trapps, friends of ours that were kind enough to take in our chinchillas during our move, asked us if we would watch over their pets while they went to Europe, Morocco, on a Trans-Atlantic Disney cruise and then spent a week in Florida. All in all, the Trapp dogs were with us for an entire month! It was pretty interesting having so many dogs, but we made it work and everyone did pretty well. So in addition to Chris, Fox and Mason, we had Sabrina, a 14-year old Italian Greyhound, Arrow, the 12-year old Shepherd, Loki, an 18-month old Pomeranian, and his little sister, Freya, who was about 8 months old. In addition, we watched their home, where there were still three cats, a tank of fish, 2 sugar gliders and about 45 chinchillas! A lot of fun, and the house seemed really empty when the other dogs left, but we will see them again soon, I am sure!

Six of the seven hounds. Fox wouldn't fit in this one!

It's sideways but they're all there!

Fox with Mason

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Halloween weekend was a rare treat. Jeff actually got the whole weekend off, which is something that NEVER happens. To celebrate, we thought we would go and have some fun!

We got to pick out pumpkins at the Ardenwood Pumpkin Patch, which is just down the street from us. Even though it wasn't the greatest weather (it started to rain pretty hard when we left, and it was cold) we managed to get a few pumpkins.

Jeff got to pull the cart. :-)

Loading in our prized pumpkins!

Jeff performing the lobotomy.

Jen drew the outlines freehand

Pumpkin #1: Pirate

Pumpkin #2: Spider in a web

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Further taking advantage of our free weekend, we decided to go to the Oakland Museum of California. From now until the beginning of the year, they have an exhibit devoted to Pixar Animation! For those that don't know, we are huge fans of the movies and artwork, so we thought we ought to go. We took Jen's sister Myra with us, and had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we couldn't take a lot of pictures inside, but the ones we did get were outside the exhibition.

Myra, Jen and Jeff

The mural outside of the exhibit in the shop

The glass bowl isn't the focus; Jen kept taking photos of the blond lady, a clerk at the store, because she reminded her of Edna from The Incredibles and this was the best shot we got of her!

Edna eating lunch! But we really wanted a picture of the mural behind her

We actually have quite a few more photos, but to make this blog a little easier, we'll probably make a slideshow of them soon!

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Compared to October, November was pretty slow. We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on the 17th, but because Jen still has physical therapy, there wasn't too much to do. We just a nice quiet dinner, and did some shopping. And we made a splurge purchase:

Originally, we weren't going to get one until after the holidays. But, Jeff felt bad that Jen was having a hard go at PT (more on that in a bit), and since it was a combination anniversary/graduation/Christmas present for both of us, we decided to not wait until after the holidays, and cashed in our gift cards and what-not now. We've already had a ton of fun on it, and we're still uploading all of the free digital copies of movies that we have onto iTunes, so it'll have a lot of use!

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Jen is still going to PT. Originally, she was going to be done around our anniversary. However, the doctors thought that, since her neck is still not in the greatest shape, she should keep going for another six weeks, which puts us past the New Year.

Not only were we not happy about paying for more PT, this last session she didn't have the greatest time. As we said, her neck is still giving her trouble, and so the therapist tried putting her neck in traction. It worked... for about 45 minutes. And this was this past Wednesday, and she's still stiff and achy from it. Wednesday and Thursday were the worst, because she was actually very dizzy from it (which gave her headaches and made her queasy. For those that don't know, when Jen gets really dizzy, she gets motion sick. Not a fun time at all for her!) She ended up missing more days from work from it, but on the plus side, she has caught up.

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Another notable achievement for the month of November: Jen wrote a book.

Seriously. She wrote something.

Jen found out through a friend on Facebook about National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. (http://www.nanowrimo.org) and decided to give it a go. The goal was to write 50,000 words of a book, so just under 1700 words/day, and although there were some struggles, the last weekend she pulled it together and cleared 65ooo! She still has quite a bit to go (apparently, she's very wordy!) and will likely be taking winter break to finish it up entirely.

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A brief blurb about school: It's still going. Jen is still waiting to hear back from CSU Northridge, but will be finishing her last classes for her second degree in TWO WEEKS!! And Jeff is wrapping up another semester through Colorado State. We've been plugging away at our classes, so hopefully our grades will reflect that!

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On the work front, there have been some developments for us both. Jen's coworker left in October, and Jen took on two of her active studies as well as acted as contact for two others. In addition, she helped do submissions for two other studies, and is backup for a few more. All this has kept Jen pretty busy (hence the no blogging) but now that the dust has settled, she is really enjoying her studies and her work.

As for Jeff, after many weeks of training, he finally is a general manager of his own store! He found out the afternoon before that he would be going to the store on Mission Blvd to fill a shift, and an hour after showing up, his district manager arrived at the store and pulled him to the back to inform him that it would be his store. The downside of this store was that the previous manager didn't take great care of the store. A lot of housekeeping problems, as well as untrained staff, were some of the things he had to clear up. He has been there for about four weeks now, and the store is really starting to turn around. Jeff actually just got recognized for sales in the past few days, and he has been complimented on how great the store is starting to run. This makes the holidays a little chaotic for us, but we'll get through it.

Well, that's enough of a recap for now. Next time we can actually try and keep up with this. Hope you are all doing well!

The Good, The Bad, And The Rest

2010-09-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

Hello, all

It's been a while, and a lot has happened in the last few weeks, so let's go ahead and jump right on into it!

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Jen has been busy with work. When she was given her layoff papers last fall, we were worried about her not getting a job right away. But, as luck would have it, she had her final day with the Diabetes group on November 30th (a Monday) and by the following Monday, she was back to work at Stanford in another department. Now, as of September 1st, she is an official salaried employee back at Stanford! It's a total win-win with her. She isn't 100% time, but she brings in about as much as she did in her previous position, so she can still go to school and get some volunteer work in!She's really enjoyed the job, and has even been able to take Fox into work with her. Here are a few pics of her cubicle, and her "guard dog" protecting her from the others in the office.

Is someone coming??

No, I guess not.

Wow, this is hard work!!

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Although we were complaining about the "cool" summer we were having, we were then hit with a pretty good heat wave. Newark actually hit the high 90s and bordered 100 degrees, which is pretty rare in the summer in general! To beat the heat, we had to figure something out for us and the dogs. We all got plenty to drink, but we had to be more creative fr the dogs, since they don't sweat. We ended up putting all of our fans in the living room and dressing the dogs in large soaking towels. The smell wasn't the most pleasant (Who likes the smell of wet dogs??) but at least everyone was comfortable.

Chris was not a huge fan, but kept it on...

Mason opted to sit right in the middle of the fans... in Jen's beanbag chair!!

And Fox just sat there while we made her take funny pictures.

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We have also gotten really into getting fresh veggies at the Farmer's Market. It's not as large as most, but still lots of fun. Whenever she can, Jen and her sister go to the little street market right in the middle of Fremont and they pick out all sorts of fresh produce. Although they have to go Saturday mornings, they've enjoyed seeing the different vendors and we've been eating pretty well because of it!

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Now some of the bad news. Last Wednesday, Jen was driving in Fremont when she got rear-ended by a driver from behind. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. There were three cars involved in the accident; Jen was in the front, and hit by the van in the picture. After that, a third car hit the van, and Jen was hit twice. Everyone was overall okay, although the passenger in the van did go to the hospital because she was having some chest pain, but we found out she was okay, just really upset by the accident.

As for Jen, she's got a lot of soreness. Although her knees and stomach were aching, right now most of her pain is in her neck from the whiplash (although she didn't go forward and hit anything in front, she hit her head on her headrest twice). She's also got some pain in her left shoulder and her right hip, roughly where the belt was. Although she'll be on the mend for a while, we're grateful that she's otherwise fine!!

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This past Sunday was Jeff's birthday. He turned 25 (again) and so we had to celebrate. Our plans had been changed greatly by the car accident, because originally we had planned on BBQing at home and Jen making all the dinner, but that was changed. We went to church, but Jen only stayed for about 30 minutes before going home to rest, and after Jeff came home, we decided to just go out and eat. Jeff decided to go to La Piñata in Newark for dinner, and Jeff got to enjoy chicken enchilladas with mole. Jeff's been craving mole sauce (a chocolate-based sauce) for a while now, so it was good that his cravings were curbed a little!

After dinner, we also went to Neptune Aquatics, where we continued to add more fish to our tank. Jeff finally cleaned out the 29-gallon tank, and we've been slowly adding fish to it. Right now, we've got 2 bleeding heart tetras, 2 striped danios, 3 German blue rams, 5 neon tetras, 5 Rasboras, and 2 water frogs (well, one we can find... we always can only find one!!) As soon as everything's settled, you can all expect to see more pics of our critters!

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Aside from the adventures we've had, life is continuing as usual. Both of us are back in school. Jeff is taking 3 classes this term. Originally he had planned on four, with one being a volunteer practicum, but since a site wasn't set up, he had to drop it. Jen is finishing her last semester through Utah State's program, and is taking the last 5 classes, plus an extra one-credit independent study course, but more on that next time.

We hope you are all well and cannot wait to hear how everyone else is doing!

Give and Get is Here!

2010-08-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Give and Get is Here!: "Enjoy 30% off from August 26-29 at Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy and we'll donate 5% of what you spend to a non-profit."

Summertime, And The Living Is… Well, Not EXACTLY Easy…

2010-07-11T23:31:00.001-07:00

Hello, everyone!

Sorry it’s been such a long time without an update. As always, life has a way of taking over and just getting away with time!

First off, let’s post some long-overdue photos. We finally found some of our house… well, before we moved in, anyway! So here are a few befores:

Our yard, before the rain killed all of our grass :-(

Either side of our kitchen area

Our master bedroom… we have 3 rooms, but this one is the biggest (And it has a vanity in one corner)

Eventually we will get some photos of after it’s been put together. Despite us being here for 4 months now, because of all the work that has been done, we never managed to finish unpacking!

Despite the mess, though, our dogs have been enjoying the house and the yard. After we were hit with so much rain, our green grass went to pot, and so if they tear up the yard, no one cares. Eventually we will fix it and it’ll have grass again, someday!

View Full Album

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In June we were able to celebrate our niece’s high school graduation. Sarah will be going off to college in the fall, to Sonoma State in Rohnert Park, far enough to be able to live on campus, but only an hour and a half away, so able to come for a visit if needed.

L to R: Jen’s brother, John, Jeff, Sarah and Jen

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The last bit was the 4th of July. We had a lot of fun celebrating. Not that we’re really patriotic; we just love setting things on fire! There were quite a few fireworks going on, and everyone was decked out for the festivities. The night before, Jen put together some scarves for the dogs, and the next night, we had fun setting off fireworks! Here are some more photos for your enjoyment:

View Full Album

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As for general updates, there have been a few good developments for us. Jeff finished his semester with some good grades, and we are happy for that! Originally he had planned on taking a course of summer school, either through the community college or through CSU, but we want to tighten our belts a little and save some money, and there weren’t classes that he needed to take available, so it looks like a working summer!

Jen’s still plugging away and doing pretty well, with two classes that look like solid As and two on the border. After this, she’ll have one more term before graduating. Right now she has to start looking at grad schools. One of the programs she is looking at, CSU Northdridge, has an application deadline of September 1st, so she has to finish taking her GREs and getting her application together. Fortunately the other schools she is looking at have much later deadlines, so she can continue to work on her resume and background.

After being temporary status, Jen is also being offered a permanent position on September 1st! This will mean the return of her benefits and PTO, so hopefully we will be able to make it out to Utah this winter when she graduates. The best part is that the job will give her some flexibility, so she can volunteer with the newborn hearing screening program this summer. Although her focus academically is speech pathology, she is also interested in audiology, and this will provide her some more experience.

Well, that looks like it for now. We hope you are all well and will update you again soon!

Is It Summer YET???

2010-05-11T21:36:00.001-07:00

Normally around this time of year, we are experiencing some nice, slightly warmer weather as a sign for what is to come this summer. Well, it hasn’t quite gotten there yet, at least not in Newark! It has been rainy and wet (in fact, it was raining just yesterday). Normally it’s not too much of a problem, but it is just a small setback for us.

For those who don’t know, our house had to be tented for termites. After the tenting and spraying, the roof needed to be redone. It has been difficult to get this done, because the weather does not allow work to be done on the roof. To add to the difficulty, City of Newark came by and noticed that the roof was not up to code, because there were too many layers to it, so now, instead of juts replacing what was going on with the garage (which was Termite Central) the whole roof is going to be replaced! The contractor, for now, has the roof at least covered, so we’re not in too bad of shape.

Unfortunately, Fox did not take to the people on the roof. Last Wednesday, when I got home from work, Fox was not in the yard. It turns out she escaped from our yard and was picked up by the city, so I had to drive into Fremont to go pick her up. After bailing her out, we decided to try to fix the fence where she escaped so we would not have the same problem later. However, this past weekend, she broke out not once, but TWICE from the same spot! While we were at my niece’s confirmation, Fox managed to get through the fence in the same spot. Jeff had placed several boards over the hole, but she was able to move them. Fortunately our neighbors noticed her, and took her back into our yard. When they saw where she got out, they replaced the boards and added several large blocks to keep her from escaping. But, alas, little can prevent Fox from roaming, and the blocks were moved out of the way and she escaped again. So our neighbors on the other side “loaned” her a chain, and she was tied to our front porch when we got home that day!

Since the week had been traumatic enough, on Friday, Jen actually opted to bring Fox to Stanford with her, since she was working in the office and did not have any appointments. Her team and the other department really enjoyed having Fox in the office, and even considered making her part of the office. She did do a good job of scaring squirrels and raccoons away from the large window by Jen’s desk, so she might have a future with Stanford security.

The new plan with Fox for now is to train her to go into a crate, but we’ll see how that works out, since neither of us have ever crate-trained a dog. It’ll be a new adventure!

School has ended for Jen and is wrapping up this week for Jeff. So far, everything is still going well, with the grades being posted soon. The plan now is for Jen to finish in the summer, and Jeff will probably take this summer off before starting again in the fall. Unfortunately, Jen’s summer “break” is only 10 days long, so she will be back at school starting next Monday!

The jobs are starting to work out as well. Jen has been talking with her boss, and it looks like she will be placed on a permanent salary by the end of the summer! Although it’s nice to have a pretty free schedule for her, to have some more stability and a little more money isn’t bad either. Jeff is still doing great at Banana in Los Gatos, and is looking at side jobs for extra money. So far, he’s been offered a job with Farmer’s Insurance, and his uncle is sending him information and stuff from HerbalLife, so we will have to see what happens next.

Well, that’s it for now. We know we’re constantly promising pictures, but our computer (the desktop) died with a lot of our most recent photos on it. We’re taking the hard drive in this week to recover them. And then, you will get to actually see some of the insanity that is our life!

Fun With The Puppy and Other Adventures

2010-04-12T23:05:00.001-07:00

For those who didn’t know, we recently acquired another dog. Fox was found roaming by Jeff’s friend, Kati, and no one ended up claiming her, so we decided to take her into our house. I mean, seriously, what’s one more animal in the house? Currently we’ve got 4 parakeets, 10 freshwater fish, one Beta, who knows how many saltwater critters, Chris, and now 12 chinchillas, plus 7 we are fostering. What’s one more dog, really?

Apparently, it’s a lot.

Now, a little background: Jen has had pets growing up. She took in the feral cats in the neighborhood and saw oodles of fish and birds in my house. In fact, her first job was a volunteer position feeding baby animals at a nature preserve. However, Chris is her first dog, and we’ve only had him for 2 years. Those that know our adventures with Chris know that he wasn’t (and still isn’t) your garden-variety dog, When we adopted him, we were told he was almost three, but the vet thought he was between 12-18 months, so almost out of the puppy stages.

Fox is a different story. Although she is very sweet and extremely smart, she often bores easily and has gotten into the habit of destroying and chewing things. Here is a small example of her habits:

Foxy….

… plus her toy, a clearance-priced toy bought last weekend at Petsmart…

… equals a few hours of fun, and 15 minutes of sheer horror!

This was one of the many things this pup has gotten into. We have holes in our yard, chew marks on our door frames and several broken leashes and knickknacks to prove this fact. We just have to endure it a little longer, though. Right now she is kept away from Chris and Mason because she was fixed, and we don’t want her popping her stitches, so until Thursday, we’ll have a bored lonely pup on our hands.

Aside from our dog-adventures, everything is going well here. We had a nice Easter. Jen’s folks decided to come over here to check out the new place and visit together. We thought it was going to be hard to “host”. After all, we’ve helped to plan the last few holidays, but this time the two of us pretty much did it all. It was a little tough getting things together (in particular the house being clean!) but it was still a fun day. We didn’t take any pictures, but Jen will have to steal her sisters’ cameras to see if they’ve got any photos to share!

School and work are still insanely crazy. Jeff is doing pretty well in his courses, and his grades are showing it. He did drop one class due to a missed assignment that came up in the middle of the move, but he plans on taking it again this summer. Jeff’s first term should be over by mid-May, so just a few more weeks left! Also, he started his first week at his new store in Los Gatos, not far from one of his previous stores. Jeff had been commuting from Fremont (and then Newark) to Brentwood since September because we had gotten a house in July, but when that fell through and we moved in here, he asked for a transfer. Originally we thought he would have to go to the Gap in Los Gatos (his 2nd store) but we were pleasantly surprised that he could go to the Banana Republic a few storefronts down! Now the commute is almost reasonable!

Jen’s toward the end of her classes, with the finals starting the last week of April. After this she has one more term, and then she’ll have a second bachelor’s! The plan after that is to take off a year from school to work more, build up her resume a little, and then take her GRE this summer and start applying in the fall. All of the programs she is looking at only want fall applicants, and since she might not be done in time to start, we figured this might be the best for everyone. Work is also going crazy for her as well. She is still in charge of an oncology study, but on top of that, she is also helping read over grant applications for her department. The grants are for studies that are meant to focus on child health, and normally they receive about 25 grant applications for this round of funding (roughly $35,000 each grant). This year they received a total of 44 applications, and so Jen, with her team, is having to go through the applications to check for completion, create spreadsheets of the information, and send out packets to reviewers (both online and in paper) to determine recipients. Doing clerical/admin work was never Jen’s intention, but she figured, hey, I’d get some more hours/money, I’m sure I can help out! So this will be bringing in quite a bit extra for the next few months, until she gets another study or another position.

So that’s enough for this update. We have more stuff going on, but we’ll have to bore you with it all later on!

What we’ve accomplished

2010-03-22T22:56:00.001-07:00

Hello, world!

We are taking a minor break from unloading boxes to give you an update on us. Who would’ve thought that it’s so much work to pack and unpack??

We have been here for about 3 weeks now, and so far we’re adjusting well. There are still plenty of boxes to unpack, but we’re slowly but surely getting there. Plus some of the new “toys” like the washer and dryer are making opening all the boxes a little more worth it. :-)

So far, the living room is almost decent, and the kitchen has it’s moments of being clean and then not so much. Our bedroom set is up, but we still have plenty of laundry to clean in piles to be washed. Our library/office/guest room has most of the books set up, with a few random boxes in the room. Then the last room, where the pets and their things go, was set up last night. We stayed up until 3 putting things together like cages, an A/C unit, and all sorts of other stuff. Who would’ve thought pets were so difficult?

Speaking of pets, it looks like we are acquiring a new friend! Jeff volunteered us to babysit a friend’s dog, and she has been here ever since. Fox is a white husky who was found out in Bethel Island by Jeff’s friend, Kati. She took Fox in, but couldn’t keep her, so Jeff graciously accepted her into our family. She’s still pretty young, we think maybe 10 months, but is super smart and very playful. Chris and Mason get along with her great, but we are keeping her away from our other critters. She likes to chase birds and squirrels, we found out, and don’t think she would do well if left alone with our chinchillas and parakeets.

We also got our chinchillas back this weekend! After 6 months, they are finally back under our roof, and we are ecstatic over it all. It is a little bittersweet, as Brian was not able to come home with everyone else, but he will forever be home in our hearts. So far they have all made the adjustment well, although it’s clear that Scout, Brian’s son, does appear to be missing his daddy and cage mate, so we may have to find someone for him to hang out with. Our other boys are either already in pairs or they are too ornery to be with others.

School is slowly plugging away for us all. Jen should be done by the end of next month and Jeff will be finishing this semester around mid May. In the meantime, we are both looking at volunteer opportunities. This week, Jen is volunteering at a speech-language pathology clinic for a few weeks and then doing an observation at Lucille Packard, and both of us are looking into volunteering at the hospital in the summer.

Jeff is also looking for more job opportunities closer to home. Although he loves his work now, commuting to Brentwood is difficult in terms of time, energy, and car wear and tear. So far he has been offered a similar position at the Banana Republic in Los Gatos, and is waiting to hear on some other positions as well.

We hope you are all well, and hope to have you over as soon as our house is more habitable!

So Much Information, So Little Time…

2010-02-22T00:35:00.001-08:00

So, it is kind of late at night (around midnight) on a Sunday. I’ve got a late day at work, and Jeff’s off, so we thought we’d toss out all that has been going on.

First off, we have been plugging away at school. This term we have managed to keep up with the homework and assignments, and now Jen has to add observation hours to one of her classes. She is trying to see if anyone at Stanford would be willing to let her help out and let her sit in, and she is waiting to hear back from some people she has met at Packard.

February was a pretty nice month for us. For Valentine’s Day (well, the day before) we took our three nieces and Jen’s older sister, Myra, to the San Francisco Creamery (which, oddly enough, is actually in Walnut Creek). Before that, though, the 6 of us went to the movies to see (surprise) Valentine’s Day, which turned out to be a pretty funny movie. After the movie, we raided the creamery and ordered a sundae known as The Kitchen Sink. We saw this sundae on the TV show, Man Vs. Food, a favorite of Jen’s, and thought we would attempt it!

This thing is a lot bigger in real life than this picture shows. It consists of 8 types of ice cream, 8 toppings, whipped cream, and cherries. Ours had a ton of toppings, including gummy bears, M&Ms, and, much to Sarah’s delight, a cookie. We only managed to get about 2/3 of the thing eaten, and yes, we’ve still got some in the fridge!

That Monday we did some volunteer work with the rescue that is currently housing our chinchillas. So we headed to Adobe Animal Hospital in Los Altos, CA to help them out for the day. In addition to getting out little pals taken care of, we helped check in and answered questions for the families. Although we had the most at 12, there were many who had multiple chinchillas, and the rescue even brought in 8 of their own, and their partners brought in another 2 dozen! Overall, we ended up having the doctors see approximately 135 chinchillas in an 8-hour day, of which only one had been slightly ill (but treatable) and our guys came out with a clean bill of health: great teeth, good weight, no heart murmurs and NO SURPRISE PREGNANCIES THIS YEAR!!

The next big thing: both of us are looking at moving up in our jobs. Jen’s assignment with CHRP technically ends this week, but they have not said one way or another if they plan on keeping her on. They have made more accommodations for her, like giving her a real desk and talking about her taking on more studies, but nothing official has been said by her team or her temp agency, so she interviewed with two more research teams at Stanford, both in cardiovascular departments, but for two different teams. If none of these positions pan out, the temp agency has stated they will find her another temp position, but of course we are hoping for a more permanent spot.

Jeff is also looking at new positions. The commute to Brentwood has been hard on both of us, Jeff’s school work and our cars, so Jeff is considering a transfer in the company. He has applied to both GAP and Banana Republic stores closer to Newark, and has had a few phone interviews so far, so again, we are very hopeful. It doesn’t hurt that the GAP manager that he is going through is the same one he had when he was working in Los Gatos!

You’re probably wondering why we keep talking about being closer to “home”. Well, after a long hunt, we FINALLY found a home!

We are moving… down the street in Newark!

We tried our hardest to buy or rent a home in Tracy, but nothing panned out. We were outbid, someone else rented the house before us, some people drove through the garage (that was the house we almost bought!) and so we thought we’d try again to see if something panned out in Newark, and with one try, success! It is a cute little 3-bedroom home with a nice yard and everything is pretty much new (the rugs, windows, paint, etc) so little to nothing has to be fixed. We have to put in an air conditioner for the chinchillas, but aside from that nothing! It is not too far from the lake – cross the street and we are there – so that’s a definite perk for Chris. We got the keys on Friday and are slowly moving in our stuff, so hopefully by next week we should be pretty well moved in.

So that’s the latest from us. Hopefully as we start packing we’ll snap pics (I know, promises promises!!) and we will keep you posted.

And if you never hear from us again, it’s because we’re buried under boxes, DVDs and chinchillas!

Back to School

2010-01-10T20:41:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone! I hope you are all having a great Sunday night!

WOW!! We didn’t go more than a few weeks without an update. Yay, us! We hope you’ve all had a good holiday, and that you transitioned back to “non-holiday time” easily enough.

Christmas was spent here in Newark. On Christmas Eve, we stayed here and had all of Jen’s family over for the holidays. It actually was a pretty quiet night, even though there were 16 here in the house, and the next day, we had Christmas dinner with Jen’s mom, sister, and Jeff’s parents. We got quite a few nice things from our family, including Jeff’s XBox and the photographs of Chris. We also got some gift certificates and gift cards, and Jen’s sister even got them passes for the de Young Museum to see their King Tut exhibit, which is our plan for this coming weekend.

There was also a new addition to the family. Just before New Year’s Eve, Jen’s sister decided to adopt a dog. Mason’s had a bit of a rough start. His previous owner moved in with her dad who did not take to Mason, and so, one day, while trying to “shoo” Mason away, he inadvertently hit Mason in the mouth and scraped up his hand. The man was so angry, he grabbed a gun and tried to shoot Mason, but fortunately missed. Unfortunately, he’ll likely always have the scar, which looks like a part in his head, for the rest of his life.

Mason was put on quarantine and not allowed to be held at the shelter because he had a record (the old man decided to charge him with biting) and the family could not take him back because the old man threatened to shoot him again. So Officer Kristen, the same woman who saved Chris for us, helped Mason to find a home, and he is now the newest Borgen! At first he was a bit shy around us, but not so much anymore. Chris has become his best buddy, so that helps a lot. He’s teaching Mason the ropes… the good AND the bad!

Recently Jeff’s been having a bit of bad luck. Just after New Year’s, Jeff came down with a cold. Luckily, Jen didn’t catch it, because it still is lingering. Then last week, while driving home, the tire on our Civic blew out. Fortunately, there wasn’t any damage to Jeff or the car, but it was a little nerve-racking to say the least!

The next few weeks are going to be interesting for us. Tomorrow Jen is going to Stanford for some work and is also starting her second semester of school. Originally this was going to be her last term before moving onto her master’s degree, but because of her migraines, she had to drop some of her classes, which pushed her graduation to the summer.

Next week it will be Jeff’s turn to return back to school. Luckily, this semester he will be able to get at least 4 classes taken care of. The past few semesters, he has only been able to get into one or two classes, so this will be a big step for both of us: two full-time students working full-time!!

Well, we wanted to post some new pics for you, but our older camera appears to be AWOL, and we haven’t started to use the newest one yet! So next week (hopefully) we will get them up for you.

Hope you are all having a great week!!

The Christmas Letter Blog!

2009-12-21T22:37:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and family,

This year, we got our Christmas cards a little later than expected, so many of you will still receive the card in the mail after Christmas (provided we have your address. If you're not sure, email Jen at jmbperry@att.net). So we decided to go ahead and do a card through the ever-wonderful blog!

There have been a lot of changes over this past year: new jobs, new moves, and it looks like 2010 is going to be just as crazy!

Just before Christmas of last year, Jeff started working at Gap in NewPark Mall in Newark. After being there only a few weeks, he was promoted to an assistant at the Gap Kids in Los Gatos, and was there for about 6 months. When we were certain about our move (more on that in a bit) he decided to transfer out and be closer to where "home" would be, and so he is now the assistant manager at the Banana Republic in Brentwood, CA. He is also still plugging away at his undergrad courses online. Right now he is taking a few courses through Colorado State University until everything begins to settle down.

Jen has also had an exciting year. She is still working for Stanford, but now in a different department. At the beginning of December, she moved to the Child Health Research Program and is currently working in the Department of Pediatric Oncology, in a study that examines how a specific drug used in chemotherapy may cause heart problems in patients. She is also still working on her second bachelor's degree so that she can get her Master's in Speech Pathology. Originally, this spring was supposed to be her final semester. However, this past fall, she had been having a lot of migraines, which forced her to drop out of a few classes and set her back. Her new graduation date is for the end of Summer 2010.

2009 has brought us many adventures. We traveled to Las Vegas 3 times (that we can think of) for Jen's work, as well as to Sequoia National Forest, San Francisco, Monterey, Lake Tahoe/Squaw Valley and the ever-glorious... FRESNO!! We also reached a milestone: this past November, we celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary. We had a blast touring San Francisco (on a Tuesday in November, so it was extremely peaceful!) and finishing it off with a dinner at Ruth's Chris on Van Ness. Now we anticipate the next holidays and adventures: Christmas, New Year's, Jen's birthday and (possibly) Valentine's in Las Vegas. What can we say? We love it!

We are still in the process of moving. For those who didn't know, our offer was accepted on a house in Tracy at the end of July, and the house was finally put into escrow in November. However, the current residents were putting up a fuss and not cooperating with the brokers, the inspectors, or anyone, and so, before we lost our deposit, we decided to rescind the offer. Now we are back on the hunt for a house and are looking for a rental in the meantime. Right now we are staying in Jen's parent's house, but we are eager to get into our own place (and to get our things out of storage!)

We are hoping that you all have a wonderful Christmas season and hope that the New Year brings you and your family all that you want and more. We love you all.

Love, the Perry People

PS - A sneak peek of what your Christmas card will entail this year :-)

Life of Brian

2009-11-29T19:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a bittersweet weekend. This morning, Jen got an email saying that one of our guys, Brian, had died on Friday.

Brian was our white and black chinchilla. For those of you who don't know the story, Jen found four chinchillas at a garage sale. They were sitting out in the sun last summer during a horrible heat wave, which is deadly for chinchillas. Rather than leave them, she made an offer on them and the cages and took them home. We didn't know anything about their history, and the woman who owned him said they guessed he was about 2 years old, but then again, this same woman said that his cagemate Stewie was a boy (she's not!) and that the other girl was sterile (again, we proved that one wrong as well). We honestly weren't sure if the four would even make it through the weekend, but with some love and care, they did survive and grow to be healthy chubby little guys. After we rescued him, we took him to the vet, where we did discover he had a heart murmur, a very common ailment with chinchillas, but it never stopped him from living a full life.

Although a small boy, he was very mellow and overall a friendly guy. We guess that he was at least 5, making him one of our oldest boys, but our unique boy as he only had a half-black tail and dark ears.

Fortunately, Brian passed on his wonderful traits to his two babies, a little girl named Boo and a little boy named Scout, who also has his white coloring, but is beige (like his mother) where Brian was black.

We have both enjoyed having Brian in our lives for this past year. Although we wish he had stayed with us a lot longer, we are glad that he did not suffer, and rather, was found cuddled with his little boy in their chinchilla house. He died peacefully in his sleep.

RIP Brian. Hopefully we'll see you on the other side.

The New Casa de Perry

2009-09-08T17:07:00.000-07:00

So, it appears to be 99% official. We will be moving into a house. Specifically, this house!

For those who didn't know or haven't heard, we have been looking for a home on and off for over a year now, and have had a lot of tough luck with this. Overall I believe we put in offers in nearly 40 houses, came close to getting a few of them, but never got the whole deal closed, until now. It has been a long struggle, but it is seems to be done... at least, the house hunting part.

This is a 5-bedroom, 3-bath house in Tracy, about an hour east of where we are currently in Fremont. It will add a bit to Jen's commute, but on the bright side, she won't have to drive. The ACE train will take her from Tracy to Fremont, and the shuttle will take her from the station to her office at Stanford.

Overall, it's a great house, but needs a bit of work. We have to paint the entire interior of the house because there are a few holes that need patching as well as some odd colors that we would like to change (two bedrooms are bright blue throughout, and one is Pepto pink). A good deal of the flooring needs to be changed as well, because the previous owners had allowed their animals to mess them up. Also, the master bathroom is carpeted, something that baffles Jen, and so we would likely tile that bathroom instead.

We've also got to redo the back yard to make it nice and comfortable for Chris. It's pretty much dead grass and gravel, but there are a lot of fruit trees which give us some much-needed shade in the Tracy heat.

The only scary part is the brief period that we are nomadic. Our lease in our apartment expires on the 15th, so in about a week, we will no longer have an address until we move into our new place, but because the paperwork is in the last-minute detailing, we will likely be homeless for a week, until we move into the new house.

So, if you don't hear from us for a while, we're either not with internet or we're buried in the fixer-upper stuff.

A long-awaited update

2009-08-12T21:46:00.001-07:00

As one of Jen's favorite coworkers would say, "Holy Schnikies!" (and my apologies for not spelling that "correctly" in advance!)

It has been an INSANE summer to say the least! Between work, camps, school and everything else, there has been no time to blog! Although, many do get an interesting treat from Jen's FaceBook updates. One of the most recent had to do with her having the Fraggle Rock theme song stuck in her head. "Dance your cares away..."

Anyway, for those who actually follow up with us this way, allow us to divulge the 411.

Jen has been pretty busy with work AND school. She completed her first semester online for her degree in Speech Path, and it wasn't easy! 15 units (five classes), PLUS work PLUS house does not make for a relaxed Jen, but she still managed to pull off her desired B-average! Next semester she's aiming for higher!

Also, nearly every weekend there has been a Diabetes camp that needs her attention, so we have traveled throughout California this summer, to camps as close as San Jose to as far away as Sequoia National down by Fresno, and all of them (at least the ones requiring some actual travel), Jeff was able to come along. This last weekend was the last of the camps she has to attend for a while; Camp De Los Ninos, put on by the Diabetes Society in Boulder Creek. Coincidentally, it was also next to Camp Harmon, the camp for Easter Seals, her LAST job! Overall it was successful. Jen's boss brags that their screening numbers were up 600% this time! Yeah, they only screened 6, but it's definitely better than the 1 from last year!

The quiet won't last for too long, however; from the last week in September through November, there will be the JDRF walks to attend. This time, the work will take us to exotic places like... Modesto... and Las Vegas!

As for Jeff, there's been a lot going on in his world as well! He also finished his first semester online. Although he lucked out and only took two classes, it was a bit time consuming for him as well. It was a good warm up for the fall, where he will likely be taking more classes.

Luckily, he will be getting a job closer to home. Recently, Jeff applied for a transfer from GAP Kids and Baby to another store in the same company: Banana Republic. If everything falls into place, he will be an assistant manager at the Banana Republic in his hometown of Brentwood.

"Wait", you ask, "How is Brentwood any closer to your place than Los Gatos?" Well, here's the biggest piece of news for last: WE'RE MOVING! Although nothing is 100% finalized (unfortunately), we recently put an offer on the house. Ours is the only one accepted by the bank and we are waiting for the final ok before we start our moving.

Moving will be a bittersweet experience for us. We have been together about 5 years now, and we have moved Jen from her apartment in Colorado to married housing, to Jen's parents and now to where we currently live in Fremont. We have been in this apartment for over two years, the longest we've lived anywhere since being married. But the two of us and our menagerie have gotten too crowded for this place, we have gotten tired of paying rent, and Chris (the dog) is tired of only being able to "visit" and not stay with us in our apartment. Plus, paying rent almost equivalent to a mortgage payment is getting ridiculous!

But then there is the sadness part. We will be moving further from most of Jen's family (her brother, however, will be down the street) and all of our friends. Also, her commute will be a bit longer and require a train ride to work (thank goodness for public transportation!). And then the actual act of packing, especially the books is enough to change our minds.

There are some more things we wanted to share with you all, but it will likely have to wait for another time. Until then, hopefully sooner than three months!

ONE LAST THOUGHT

2009-05-27T23:38:00.000-07:00

As you can see, we've only added a few people on our blog list. Not because we hate our friends, but we don't know everyone's blogs! PLEASE email or Facebook or something so we can post it, because, honestly, that's how we keep up with everyone's blogs (we won't think to go seek them out on our own).

Much Needed Update!

2009-05-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

Wow! It's been almost 2 months since we've updated you. It's been a busy 2 months for us. Although April was uneventful, May has been crazy to say the least.

First off, Jen is back in school! She is now in grad school at Utah State through their online degree program. It's basically getting a second bachelor's before getting her Master's. She has about a year to get the prerequisites done for her Master's. She is on her third week and adjusting to school. Anatomy is still difficult for her but she is enjoying her other classes, especially Sign Language, which she is taking with the help of her web-cam.

Second in line is Jeff. He has been fighting tooth and nail trying to get his transcripts transferred over but has finally been admitted into Colorado State's degree completion program in the field of Human Development and Family Studies. He is getting ready to start classes during the summer term and is very excited to be back in school! Jeff is also working full time at a Gapkids & babyGap store in Los Gatos as an Assistant Manager while going back to school. He really enjoys his job and is happy to be out of the food industry!!! And last on Jeff's list, he has also taken up the hobby of raising Marine fish and other Marine/aquatic life.

At the beginning of the month, Jen was given an invitation to the Hope Gala. It was a black-tie affair at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco. Her supervisors were nice enough to give us the tickets to attend, and it was wonderful. We got to meet with a lot of wonderful people, eat in a huge dining room, and dance in the ballroom at the Ritz!

A few weeks back we celebrated Mother's Day. On Saturday, Jen went out with the girls and her family. Her mom, her sisters, her auntie, her grandma and her niece met her at Cheesecake Factory in Pleasanton. Jen's family has always had the tradition of eating together the day before, because Sunday usually is too hectic for the family. The ladies thoroughly enjoyed a man-free lunch and some shopping afterwards.

On Sunday, we went out to Tracy to spend Mother's Day with the Perrys. Jeff's brother, Ryan, drove home from Rexburg to surprise his mom, and the five of us went out to eat at Famous Dave's, a BBQ restaurant in Tracy.

The following weekend, we made a road trip out to Las Vegas. Jen had another event out there, so we decided to drive. Granted, we spent more time in the car than in actual Las Vegas, but it was worth it. We returned to the Coca Cola store as well as the M&M store :-). Because there were so many conventions, the only hotel we could book was the Paris on the north end of the strip, and we stayed on the 29th floor. We didn't venture out too much that weekend; the temperatures were around the 106-degree mark!

We had left Violet, our black chinchilla, and her daughter, Emerson, with the rescue organization we've worked with that weekend because we suspected Violet was pregnant again. We were right; the Tuesday we returned, we took her into the vet because we were concerned that she wasn't gaining weight, and on Thursday, she gave birth to two babies. Sadly, one of the little girls, a grey Jen named Walden, was just too small to survive, and died at birth. Her sister, Poe, was quite a bit bigger, and is doing very well. They are still in the maternity cage, but Poe, Violet, and big-sis Emerson seem to be adjusting well.

On Monday, we took two of our nieces, Sarah and Amy, to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield. There was no real reason behind it; we had the day off and wanted something to do! So after touring the factory and buying a lot of candy, we left the factory at 1 and hit the mall for a while. We still got home early (about 4) so Sarah brought her DVDs and we watched The Office as well as Blue Harvest (the Family Guy version of Star Wars). All in all, an eventful day.

We had planned on being in Utah as of this writing, but, alas, that was not meant to be. Despite not having actually consumed a Jelly Belly, Jen came down with a horrible stomach flu. She spent most of yesterday asleep, and woke up today long enough to get some homework done for class (a high 78 on a test she didn't study for, and a high B on an ASL test... Way to go!). We still think we might try for an outing this week, but we don't know when, or what. It all depends on Jen and how she's feeling.

We've also got a birthday party to attend. Our nephew, William, is turning 4 on Friday, and we'll be celebrating his birthday on Saturday at a water park. It should be fun, and we're looking forward to a day in the sun (especially Jen, since she's been cooped up in the house for 48 hours!)

Well, here's hoping that our next post isn't as long, gang!

Busy Busy Busy!

2009-03-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

So, if you are unable to tell by the lack of posting, we have been super-crazy busy here in Perry Land! Most of the updates are small, but we thought we'd throw them out there for SOMEONE to enjoy!

Jeff has actually been the most busy Perry. Earlier this month he participated in a sleep study at Stanford. He's gotten through half of it so far (the overnight sleep study) and now he is waiting to hear back his results. If he qualifies, he will be subjected to a hot-cold test without and then with anesthesia. That one will be fun; Jen gets to take off early to go get him!

Jeff also had his police exam. A few weeks ago he had the written and passed that no problem. This last weekend was the physical agility, and he probably would have done better, but his back had been acting up again. We'll try to get some photos, but there are quite a few bruises on our poor boy!

In animal news, we came to discover that our 10-gallon tank only had 3 of our tetras in there! Rather than waste the space, Manny, Moe and Jack were transferred to a smaller 5-gallon tank where our phone used to be. This got us thinking; what to do with another tank? Originally we were thinking of either frogs (the really colorful ones, not the lumpy weird ones) or turtles/tortoises, but thought a 10-gallon tank would be too small for more than one turtle, and Jen didn't want to have to feed live mealworms to another living animal again (at least, not now). So we reverted back to our original wants.

Back when we were living in Colorado and first got married, we had wanted a saltwater tank a la Finding Nemo. However, the expense, the cost and the sheer size were just not going to happen (at the time, it was highly discouraged to have a saltwater tank under 35 gallons). Well, recently we read about people actually making the 10-gallon tanks work, so Jeff set out doing that. After a week and a half, he was ready to add our two newest fish to the family: A yellow-tail damsel named Leon and a stiped damsel named Donovan.

In addition to these wonderfully colorful fish, Jen also acquired a small betta fish, Hagrid, who hangs out in the bedroom on the dresser as a sort of "night light" to the room.

So, we ended up with three more pets, bringing our in-house total to 22!

There are some big things coming up for us as well. In May, Jen will have to go to Las Vegas again for work, and Jeff has his mission reunion at the end of May, so there looks like some travel will be in the near future. Also, we are still trying to coordinate a way to get to the east coast, since Jen will not be going with her coworkers to DC this year.

Well, back to the grindstone. I promise, pics are coming!!

Field Trip!

2009-03-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

Well, sort of.

Myra, Jen's sister, is a paraeducator at one of the elementary schools, and she talks up Jen's chinchilla babies to all of her students. This past week, Myra asked if Jen could bring some of the chinchillas into the school because the kindergarteners were learning about animals and conservation (they were also doing projects involving wood, and since our critters love to chomp on the wood, we thought we'd bring some before-and-afters for them!).

After much thought, we decided on bringing only half of the Perry 12, but brought a good mix: we brought Mommy Violet with Baby Emerson, Boo and Scout (on their first solo trip without mom) and Calvin and Hobbes. All of them did very well with the kids, and with the exception of Scout having an accident while Jen and another student were holding him, it went off without a hitch.

What started out being a small task ended up being quite a bit more! At first we thought it would be a few minutes of passing the chinchillas around, but it turned out to be a bit more. Originally it was just the three kindergarteners. In all, we saw 7 different classrooms and spent between 20 and 30 minutes with each class, answering the student's questions about the animals. The best questions were "How do you know a boy and a girl are different?" and "Why are their poops so small?" Jen's answers: "You look at their bottoms" and "Because they have small butts". Both were sufficient for the kids.

It was so much fun going to the class with some of our gang, that we hope to one day be able to do the same thing again. It brought back Jen's memories of wanting to be a teacher and to teach little ones, so she may keep going with that someday.

What's a-going on, Kristi Jo?

2009-02-22T20:02:00.000-08:00

Hey, all out there watching our blog with bated breath, waiting for the next posting! It's been about three weeks since our last post, but a lot has gone on during that time.

The last time we posted, Jen was about to start her weekend birthday, and it was great! She was spoiled rotten with a lot of gifts from her family and friends, and even a few surprises. On Saturday night (her actual birthday) we stopped at our house before hitting Barnes and Noble for more presents, and she happened to notice one of our chinchillas had a bit of a bald spot on his nose. Thinking nothing of it, we went shopping and had fun and, before bed, Jen decided to feed the chinchillas (they're nocturnal). As she was feeding Violet, our black chinchilla, she heard the familiar peep we heard from our babies... except the peep came from Violet's cage! It turns out, sometime during the day, Violet gave birth to a baby girl on Jen's birthday. We've named her Emerson, and she is the sweetest little baby. After being with Boo and Scout, Mr. and Miss Energy, Emerson is a completely different baby.

After Jen's birthday, Jeff started his new position officially at GAP. He is now the assistant manager at GAP Kids and Baby in Los Gatos. It's a bit of a commute, but it is more money and hours for Jeff. Plus, unlike the mall stores, this one closes at 8 on the latest days, so usually Jeff is home by 9 at the latest. He seems to like it, except for the commute, but in 90 days (early May we think) he will get the option to transfer to a store closer to home.

After being at the store for a week, Jeff opted to have his first vacation (plus, Jen had acquired extra hours and needed to take the time off!) so we decided to go to Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe. We drove up Thursday and left Saturday, but enjoyed the time in the snow immensely. There was a good snow fall, plus another foot fell while we were there, so there was plenty of fresh powder to play in, which would have been great normally, but when you're taking the beginner classes in snowboarding, it's sometimes a little tricky! But we enjoyed the time in the suite, playing in the snow during the day, and relaxing in our room with the fireplace burning in the evening.

When we returned from our long weekend, we had to go through animal health day. That Monday was Chinchilla Health Day in Los Altos, put on by the chinchilla rescue that we adopted four of our boys and who helped us with getting aid for my roadside babies and the newborns. In addition, this is when we had Chris' comprehensive annual exam. The chinchillas came away fine, and aside from a small possible ear infection, Chris' visit went well also. Just a lot of fluffy happy fur-babies!

Unfortunately, we can't say our time recently has been full of happiness. Last weekend, Jen's grandmother passed away at the age of 91. She hadn't been doing well the past few years, and was recently in the hospital due to breathing complications, but she fortunately passed quietly early Friday the 13th. The services were held this past week, a viewing and prayer service on Wednesday, and the burial on Thursday. The family has been holding up well, and now are moving on from the sad day.

Hopefully, tomorrow for FHE we will be uploading all the photos we have of our babies, our vacation, and everything in between. Until next time!

PARTY!!! PARTY!!!

2009-01-30T15:50:00.000-08:00

In Jen's family, everyone is born by a holiday. Her brother is two days shy of Christmas, one sister is the day before New Year's Eve and the other is the day after the 4th of July. But Jen has a special holiday by her birthday: Super Bowl Sunday.

It's been somewhat a tradition for her to watch the SuperBowl on Sunday and cook whatever tailgate food she wants; usually burgers, but she's gotten really good at steaks and other stuff too. But this year it might be different.

There is a four-month streak of events for us: November is our anniversary, Christmas in December, Jen's birthday in January and Valentine's Day in February. Usually we do well the first two, have fun on her birthday, and then just relax for Valentine's. But this year, since we had a somewhat lean holiday season, and because her birthday falls on a Saturday, we're switching things up a bit.

We started our celebrations yesterday. Since Jen put a lot of OT in these last few weeks, and since she refuses to claim it to avoid the wrath of the money-counters, she took off early yesterday and met Jeff at the California Cafe, a really nice restaurant between Stanford Medical and the shopping center. It was a pretty nice restaurant that has a slightly elegant feel to it, especially considering Jen had a burger ;-). But it was a calm way to start off the festivities.

Tonight we are eating out again, this time in downtown Palo Alto. There is a restaurant called Pampas that serves Brazilian churrasco (pronounced something like Chew-hah-sco). They roast different meats on swords with only a little bit of salt, and the waiters go around offering different pieces to the diners (still attached to the swords... the meat, not the waiters!). There is also a very beautiful salad bar with all sorts of exotic fruits and dressings and a bunch of wines and drinks that we won't try, but are pretty to watch everyone else enjoy.

Despite wanting to sleep in, that doesn't look like it'll happen tomorrow. Jen's brother wants to go shooting for her birthday (I think we did something like that the year before) so we're going to a range in Milpitas to target shoot (With all the animals Jen has, there's no doubt she will never try hunting). Then the afternoon will be the family dinner at Texas Roadhouse, another steakhouse. Jen picked it so she could continue with her "Red Neck Birthday" theme, and since it's not too expensive or fussy, she figured her folks would enjoy it as well.

Then, finally, the big event: SuperBowl Sunday. We are still debating on that one. One of the doctors that Jen works with is having a huge SuperBowl party, and that is somewhat appealing, since Jen has never been to his house. Otherwise, if we partied too hard, we'll probably make a ton of snacks and enjoy the game from home. So Sunday is yet to be determined, but it should be a packed weekend regardless.

It's about time!

2009-01-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

I apologize. I really do. I am still trying to find out how to add the slideshows to the blog itself, instead of on the side. Oh, well. At least we're blogging, right?

Last weekend was pretty crazy. It was supposed to be my last days home and I was supposed to start work back at the University on Monday. Well, that didn't QUITE happen.

On Saturday, some good happened. Stewie, one of the chinchillas that we saved from the garage sale, gave birth to two babies. The lighter baby is a little boy we named Scout Finch and the dark gray little girl is Boo Radley (From "To Kill A Mockingbird"). Mommy and mini-chinchillas are doing wonderful, and Jeff and I are finding any reason to play with them!

Then, Sunday morning, IT happened. We woke up in the morning to a flood in our apartment! I had woken up at 5 in the morning because I heard the babies making noises, and all was good, but when we got up for the day, we discovered an inch of water in our second bathroom, office, front door, and seeping into our dining area and kitchen! It turns out that our noisy neighbors upstairs flushed things that are unflushable (I'll spare you the graphic details) and it lodged into our shared pipes, and since we are on the bottom, we had the worst of the damage.

The managers of the complex were less than nice about it, and most of them still won't answer when we call (stupid caller ID) but at least the maintenance and rug guys were quick. I ended up missing two days of work because they wound up replacing ALL of the carpet in our place in 48 hours.

I'm sure many of you think it sounds nice. New carpets at someone else's expense, right? Well, it wouldn't have been so bad, except we had to find out where to put all of our furniture. The first day was the hardest because we only had one hour's notice to empty our office, dining room and walk-in closet, and it was raining so our patio was off-limits. Needless to say, with the help of the rug men (who we gave lunch to both days for helping us move it all!) we pulled it off.

The one downer was the office. I had finally organized all of my books (no easy task, mind you) and my DVDs and was about to start our CD collection, but in order to move the shelves, we just took stuff off and stacked it everywhere we could. So tomorrow I will probably finish reorganizing it all. My only day off this weekend, because I went in today to make up for the work I missed the other days. BLEAH!

But on to more news.

Tonight Jeff and I managed to actually spend time together. Lately he's worked nights at GAP and I'm at Stanford during the day, and with all the catching up with the research we've been doing, I haven't been awake when he's gotten home. But that will all change soon. Although he's only been at the store in Newark for a month, he was offered a promotion at another store. I haven't seen the new store, a lot of my coworkers tell me it's in a well-off area in Los Gatos. So I guess that's a good thing.

Well, off to munch on ice cream. If I get the photos up, I'll have to tell you the story about tonight's dinner.

The Final Headcount

2009-01-05T00:44:00.000-08:00

It's way late here, but I thought I'd share the newest numbers in our family.

Humans: 2, Jeff and Jen
Dogs: 1, Christopher
Fish: 8 still, we think.
Parakeets: 4, Thing, Horton, Ren and Stimpy 2.
Chinchillas: 11, Andy, Cullen, Fibel, Calvin, Hobbes, Dash, Violet, Brian, Stewie, and now, Scout and Boo, 36 hours old.

Merry Christmas...

2008-12-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

Wow, we're really bad about this, aren't we?

Well, reporting in for our holiday now. I guess it's better late than never.

Despite the hardships, Jeff and I had a good Christmas. The night before Christmas Eve, our home teacher came over and dropped off Christmas cookies that his wife (our Visiting Teacher, coincidentally) had made. They rocked! They inspired Jeff to do the same, but alas, they just weren't.

On Christmas Eve we did the usual: For as long as I could remember, the night of Christmas Eve always belonged to my parents. In hindsight, there is some wisdom to this, as that allowed my siblings and I to visit our in-laws on Christmas Day (more on that in a bit). It was a bit smaller this year, you will note in the pictures once Jeff uploads them: It was my parents, Jeff and I, my siblings and their families, and my grandma and cousin Jimmy: 15 people total. To some that seems like a lot, but we've had Christmas Eve's with EVERYONE over, and those days easily totaled over 40! But I personally enjoyed our small party. A few of us were sick though: My nephew William was just getting over a cold, as was my sister, Myra. Jeff got that pneumonia-type sickness he had a month or so ago, and I started getting really sick that night. Fortunately we cut out early and everyone had left my parents before 11, a record for us!

The next day we had planned on going to Oakley to Jeff's aunt and uncle's house (they just bought a new one) but that didn't happen. Between us both being sick (I got REALLY bad) and everything we just couldn't pull it off. We did call and talk to them a bunch of times during the day and yesterday too, so hopefully that made up for some of it.

Now we are on to New Year's! So far no resolutions aside from the usual (get healthier, work out more, become super-impressively rich :-) and the usual). But in all honesty, there are a few things we want to work on. Both of us want to refocus on school and saving up more money. Jeff, it appears, will be transferring to Colorado State University either this coming term or the next. Now, don't read into this: We aren't MOVING back to Colorado (darn it)! They offer a correspondence course online so he can get his bachelor's and that is likely the route he will be going.

As for me, I applied to Utah State University for a one-year Speech Pathology program that should have me done by next year. Working with the kids at Easter Seals helped me to realize that this field seems to be my calling in life: working with children with special needs. The only way to make it in this field, however, is to earn a graduate degree in some specialty like Speech-Path.

Well, that's enough of an update for now. I have to start dinner in a little bit. Hopefully I won't take so long next time to update you all on our going's-on!

Update

2008-12-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

Yah, so much for that "Every Week We'll Update This" promise!

Well, I thought that, since I've got some downtime here (I'm at Stanford) I'd go ahead and give you guys a little bit of an update.

The good news: Jeff has a job! He is a logistics supervisor (Yah, I don't know what that is either... some kind of manager) at the Gap in NewPark Mall. He seems to really enjoy the job and the environment (I think anything is better than food service!) and his new supervisors are great.

The bad news: The house we put an "offer" on ended up getting sold to another family. So no lake house, no super-cool bath tub for me to soak in. Now we're not sure what to do: Extend our lease at the apartment or keep looking. We found two houses in Fremont that are in nice areas that are in our budget last night, so Jeff is going to follow up on that. Although I had wanted my own home by Christmas, it looks like that's not feasible, so if we can pull this off in the next few months, I'd be happy!

My biggest concern is room for the critters. The chinchillas need AC and Chris needs enough room to run around. Aside from that, everything else is not important; just desired.

Aside from that, everything's the same. Chris is rambunctious. The chinchillas are doing well, and we suspect one girl might be pregnant. Tomorrow morning she's going to the vet, so we'll find out then!

So we'll try to be better at keeping you up to date with stuff.

The First Day

2008-11-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

Hi, everybody. After a lot of thought, we decided we would start a blog together. Both of us have MySpace and Facebook accounts, but 1) they've been individual accounts and 2) neither one has ALL the stuff we want (blogs, pictures easy to upload, stuff like that). So we're together on this blog thingy, and hopefully we can keep up with this at least once a week so you all know we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

The first act we wanted to do on our blog was apologize to the friends and family we haven't been keeping the greatest contact with. This past year has been insane. For a while there, we were hardly seeing each other, much less family and friends. Jen was juggling two jobs and working over 50 hours a week, all 7 days. And Jeff was working crazy shifts at Jamba Juice while trying to finish up with school.

But all that has changed, and we're still going through the changes.

At the end of the summer, Jen left behind most of her families and duties at Easter Seals and was hired on to work at Stanford University. There, she is a research assistant in the Pediatric Endocrinology department, doing research studying Type-1 (Juvenile) Diabetes. Starting summer 2009, after taking a nice long break from academia, she plans on enrolling online at Utah State University to get a second bachelor's degree in Speech Pathology, with the intent of getting her master's degree in 2010.

As for Jeff, he recently left Jamba Juice, and is currently seeking out other job opportunities. So far there have been plenty of interviews, and hopefully he will be accepting a new position in the next few weeks. Next semester he too will be giving the online educational world a shot and enrolling at a university. The school has not been decided, but once the acceptance into a program is finalized, we will let you know.

We also are in the middle of another potential move. After living in our apartment in Fremont for a year and a half, we have decided we've outgrown our apartment and want to move into a house. We are currently applying for a home in Newark in the Lake area, a nice 3-bedroom where we can settle in for a while that will accommodate our growing family.

Well, we have some more paperwork to fill out for school and work. Hope everything is going well for you all. Hopefully this weekend we will be adding some more photos and such to our blog so it's not so dull.

With much love, Jeff and Jen.