Year Wrap Up

Dear Friends and Family

My apologies for not updating the last few months, but we have been incredibly busy as you will read!

It's been another great year for us in California. There have been a lot of changes and milestones that we've reached in that time.

This year, Jeff was able to complete the Pathways program, and this last fall was his first FULL semester at BYU-Idaho (online, of course)! He took a full load with a religion course, two business courses and an accounting class. At first it was a rough start, as he went from two very easy classes per term to four difficult ones, but he still pulled off his B-average. Next semester he'll have econ, business and one more accounting class, which has been the toughest of the courses, so wish him luck!

Jeff is also continuing to work at Comcast, and has had the good fortune to be home. On average he will go to the office in Sacramento once a month, and maybe once or twice to Livermore to drop off paperwork. Having him home has been very convenient, not only saving on gas, but his being home has been a benefit to the animals as well.

During Thanksgiving break, our niece found a small puppy outside of a local restaurant. No one called to claim him, and Newt (as in Scamander) has been squatting at the Perry house since. We found him at about 7 weeks, so he's obviously too little to be let alone, and Jeff's been fortunate to be home to watch him, then Jen takes over after work. It's a lot of work, but when our niece finishes school this spring, she will be taking him back to live with her.

Jen's work has been enjoyable this year. 4 of her students from last year returned and she got 3 new ones. Except for one second grader, her entire class is 3rd graders. The students have been doing well this year, and her class and team have had one of the best years with the kiddos. This will probably be her last year in this class, so it will be interesting that she will "graduate" out of the class with most of the students, as the teacher covers second and third grade.

Jen also continues to plug away at school. Next semester, she will complete her cumulative final in the fall and finish the last 60 hours of her externship. After that, she will finally be DONE with her degree! This last term will be the first time both of us are working and going to school, so it ought to be an interesting spring, but at least the end is near!

We had hoped to go away this year for our anniversary (Our 12th!) but with school and work, we thought we'd keep it local, so we celebrated by going to see Fantastic Beasts on our anniversary, followed by Jen having a week off from school to do some home organizing projects and preparing for finding an externship site. We are planning on going away the weekend of Jen's birthday to southern California to go to Universal Studios and to tour the Warner Brothers lot, so a vacation is on the horizon.

We hope that you all had a great year and are excited to see what 2017 brings us!

Sincerely,

The Perry Family

PS - Here are the photos from our Christmas card. Since Jen's vacation from school started the 23rd they were sent out VERY late this year! The boys were very silly poses, but the girls had to be dignified!

Garden Overgrowth

Our garden this year has been amazing. We've already had corn, peppers, tomatoes and zucchini, and we'll be getting more this fall, including pumpkin and watermelons. We're already planning what we want to grow this winter, and are excited to get more veggies!

Even Callie was getting in on the whole gardening thing, claiming this pepper as her toy.

Our very first ear of corn.

The stalks this year have already cleared 10 feet (so they're taller than the house) and the veggies have been so good!

Our zucchini have been bigger than our dog, just so you know...

Our first pepper. Well, one not claimed by the dog.

 Every year for the past few years we've grown tomatoes, and this year is no different. The plants did not go as crazy as year's past but we're getting a good yield.

Foodstuffs

We have been trying really hard to eat better and try new recipes, and so far it's been a lot of fun. Now we have a new list of foods to have for dinner!

This was kind of a crap shoot. We had a lot of veggies and wanted something different, so this has cream of chicken soup, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, potato and chicken with cheese on top.

This is one we've done a few times. It's chicken cooked with basil and tomatoes from the garden, with whole wheat pasta.

A classmate of Jeff's brought this to us as a thank you for tutoring her all the way from their fishing trip to Alaska. We'd never cooked whole fish but figured it out, and added a side of cauliflower mashed potatoes.

 Kabobs have been another interesting thing we've tried. The first one we did were the broccoli and steak in teriyaki ones, and later we did a steak and potato one with olive oil. Both ended up great, but Jeff can't eat red meat anymore, so they're all for Jen now!

This was the most unique one of them all: lasagna, but instead of noodles we substituted zucchinni! It was pretty good, but since we had to cut it by hand, the zucchini was a little thick and hard to cut through, but otherwise it was delicious!

July Antics

July has been hectic to say the least. Here's a (somewhat) brief recap of what we've done this month:

- Jen is finishing up her externship this week. It was six long weeks but she learned a lot while working for the school district. She also had to create her own materials, so her previous ABA skills of making things up on the cheap has come in handy!
- Jeff finished with Pathways, and this fall he will be starting his degree in Business Management. As of now he should be finished Spring 2018, so the next two years ought to be interesting for him. There will be one semester of overlap between the two of us, with Jen finishing this December and Jeff finishing his first term at the same time, so there will be two students in the house!
- Laredo moved out! After about a year of staying with us, Jen's friend found a new home and Laredo was returned to her "mom"! It'll be sad not playing with her (and Pepino is already looking for her) but we know Laredo will enjoy being the only dog again!

 - We had wanted to do a paint nite in FOREVER, and this month we got to do a 4th of July-themed one! We think it was fun, and we need to do these more often.

- Fun in SF! We went again to the AIDS Walk San Francisco and enjoyed hanging around the Pixar booth. It was even more appropriate because we also attended the San Francisco Symphony's performance of Ratatouille! It was a big Pixar day for us!

Next month will likely be just as busy, despite school being over until the fall. But if nothing else, it'll be a lot of fun!

Summer Time!

Hi, all.

Summer is gearing up to be VERY BUSY for us here, and different than the usual summers.

Jen is almost done with her courses and her master's. All of her academic courses are done, and all she has left is to complete her necessary hours (She has to do 400 by graduation) and to pass her board exams this December, so this summer she is taking time off work to focus on her volunteering. She is splitting up her time between two schools in her district - a high school and an elementary school - and will be doing this for 6 weeks. When she finishes in July, she'll have an entire month off before reporting back to her school for work.

Jeff has also been completing his coursework as well. For the past year, he has been enrolled in Pathways, the online prerequisite courses for BYU - Idaho, and has been very successful thus far. When he completes his courses (also in July) he can transfer to the online program the university has, and he will complete his business degree through the school.

We also have the usual craziness that comes with owning dogs and living life in general. Such events include:

- Going to see Motown The Musical. We hadn't gone in FOREVER to see a live show, so we ran to San Jose and enjoyed some great music and had a blast.
- Reshelving the books. Our home is overloaded with books (not that it's a bad thing!) so we put in a new unit into the family room. Now every book has a home... until we bring home more!

- Gardening. We started a garden again this year. So far, it's peppers, corn and tomatoes that are growing but we have zucchini and other plants we want to buy for the summer. Wish us luck!

Color Run

In addition to trying to eat better, we are both trying to be more active. This year we had participated in a SuperHero 5K (running around dressed as a super hero and you get a cape!) as well as the Insane Inflatable 5K (you go through a lot of inflatable obstacles). In May, we participated in The Color Run. This is a 5K that people throw different colors of cornstarch on you in order to make your white shirt super colorful! This time, instead of just the two of us, we invited our nieces Rachel and Amy, and Jen's sisters to come along with us.

There are photos somewhere on Facebook of the event, but here's the only one we could find to download. We think it gives you a good idea of how colorful the event was!

Dogs, dogs and more dogs

For a while we have had a large pack. In addition to our five (Fox, Jacob, Pepino, Callie and Ichabod), we also were allowing Laredo, our friend's dog, to squat in the house. Well, our home is (at least temporarily) the Perry 7!

While walking the dogs, a small little dog ran out from the lake. When we called him, he ran right up to us. We posted flyers everywhere but no one claimed him, so he is staying with us while Sarah our niece looks for an apartment and then she will adopt him!

Sam (short for Samwise Gamgee) absolutely has a pitbull face... but the rest of him??? We think someone was a kind of beagle/bassett hound, because he has THE SHORTEST LEGS!!! Hence, the name, Samwise, one of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings, since he is a hobbit-sized pittie. Just imagine having a puppy that will never grow. That's Sam.

He's a very sweet dog that gets along fine with everyone (although he and Pepino can be nasty to each other). So we're happy that our pack has another dog-cousin!

UL: Jake with Sam
UR: Fox
LL: Callie
LR: Pepino with Ichabod

Smarch Snacks

It was the 13th day, of the 13th month...
                                                                                                                     -----Homer Simpson

We have been trying really hard to eat a greater variety of food (Okay, Jen more variety, and Jeff more healthy) so we've taken to cooking a bit more and adding as many vegetables and fruits that we could in our diet, and learning to cook more things.

This month we decided to learn how to make scones. There's a great little grocery store chain called Sprouts that is just down the street from us, and we have been stocking up on fruits and veggies there. They had a great deal on blueberries and strawberries, so we thought we'd try to tackle scones!

It was a lot easier than you'd think, and they came out great. We wouldn't use the cream topping that came with the recipe again, because it made it just a little too sweet, but the recipe overall was a huge success!

The blueberry were the preferred. Good thing because we froze a bunch of berries!

Strawberries and cream scones. The cream was so-so, but the scone was good.

Valentine's Dinner

Valentine's weekend was interesting. Between the holiday falling on the weekend, and that the following day was President's Day, we knew everywhere would be busy, so we opted to stay home and make dinner ourselves and it turned out great! We did a bone-in ribeye steak, vegetables and for dessert, we bought a bag of mini Snickers bars and deep fried them. The whole meal was AMAZING and we enjoyed spending a quiet evening at home.

Birthday Time!

This year, Jen celebrated her 35th birthday, so we decided to throw a little party with her family at our house. We watched the SuperBowl and had a lot of good food, but her favorite part was her cake. Last year a friend of Jeff's made the penguin cake, using the penguins from Madagascar. This year, Jen wanted one that was Harry Potter, and the same friend came through again with this masterpiece! Everyone enjoyed it, and it was a great day!

New Post, New Year

Dear friends and family

It's that time of year again: the BEGINNING of a new year! We have had a crazy busy year here in Perryland.

Jeff has had continued good fortune in the work world. He was recruited by the competition, and thus left AT&T for a position at Comcast in the fall, and was lucky to get a position that is work from home! He has enjoyed his time thus far with the company and he has a very supportive boss and team, and he has the added flexibility to continue working on his academic goals this past fall. He is continuing to pursue his degree in business and is getting closer and closer. Before the year ended he received a new calling in our church as a counselor in the elder's quorum, which means he helps to oversee any needs the families of the church might have.

Jen knocked another year out of her program, and plans on graduating with her master's next year. Now that the end is FINALLY near, she is contemplating life where she will finally no longer need to be a student. After so many years, it'll definitely be an adjustment. She also switched jobs and works for the school district which she enjoys. She works with a small class of 7 students and loves being around her new kiddos as much as her old clients. After working with one child for almost a year, Jen continues to work in the church with Jeff as employment specialists, where she can help others find jobs, write resumes and the like.

We have had a  lot of adventures and even ending the year with a weeklong vacation. This coming year we are hoping to travel to at least one new state (and we are open to suggestions!) and possibly planning an oversees trip to celebrate Jen's graduation.

It has been a fantastic year and we are grateful for all that we have been fortunate enough to experience and are looking forward to a fantastic year with more adventures. We hope you all had a great holiday and here's to 2016!!

Fox

Jacob

Pepino

Callie

Ichabod

Jeffery and Jennifer aka the bipedal Perrys

A Vacation Much Needed

An interesting perk of Jeff's new job is that there is a bit of travel involved. The bad news: he was gone for almost the entire first half of November.

Jeff's first work trip took him to Boston and New Hampshire for training. That was fine, and he was gone for a few days and back by Saturday. The only problem was he had ANOTHER training the following week, and was gone in less than 48 hours, this time to Maryland. After he returned from both trips, he found out that there was yet ANOTHER trip the first week of December and he wouldn't be done until December 4th. The problem: That was when we planned on leaving for our anniversary trip to Chicago. So, why not make a long trip?

We both traveled to Washington DC on December 1st and settled into our hotel in Maryland. While Jeff was working, Jen was able to sight-see without him. She went to the Capitol Building and the Library of Congress, then went with Jeff at night to see a few of the monuments at night. Day two took Jen to Virginia to see Mount Vernon and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, and again at night we hit the city to see more monuments and walked around the city while they televised the Christmas tree lighting at the Capitol. Friday was our first day off, so after checking out of the hotel, we went to look around the Smithsonian and then the Holocaust Museum, one of the most moving experiences we had. We had to cut our day short and took a late flight to Chicago that evening.

Chicago was a lot of fun as well. We went to the Art Institute of Chicago and looked at all of the paintings, which Jen enjoyed being a huge fan of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. We also enjoyed trying authentic Chicago-style pizza and driving around the city and outskirts. We even found a small burger chain that Jen loved because their mascot was a penguin! We packed as much as we could in two days, and then spent a lot of time in the airport on Monday. We were fogged in, and our original 9 AM flight was supposed to take us to Denver for a layover and then take us home to California. The fog changed that for us, though, and we ended up leaving to Las Vegas around noon. Originally we were in a puddle jumper, which is a Southwest flight where you'll land in a city, but instead of getting off and switching planes, you stay seated for a few minutes, more people get on, and you continue on your flight. However, just before we landed, Southwest decided to change us to another plane, so we had to sprint through the Las Vegas airport to get to the plane. When we got home, because of all the switched flights, our luggage came much later and, while we got back to Newark at 6, our luggage arrived sometime around 1:30 in the morning! It was a great trip overall, despite the extra confusion at the end, and we are hoping to go back to both cities soon!

Washington Monument

Mount Vernon

The LDS Temple. It was COVERED in Christmas lights and so pretty!

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington, VA

A photo wall at the Holocaust Museum. This is actually from the top floor and we are standing on a walkway; it was 3+ stories of pictures.

The famous bean in Chicago

Willis Tower. Yeah, it's pretty big

Outside of the Art Institute of Chicago

As The (Work)World Turns

So there have been two major changes in the Perry household: Both of us changed jobs!

After being with AT&T for over a year, Jeff was offered a new position at Comcast. It was a surprise, as he accidentally applied for the position, and technically he didn't meet all of the desired qualifications. But, Jeff being as awesome as he is, he really impressed the higher ups in the company and they offered him the positions. He is now an Accounts Executive, which means he signs up apartments and communities to get them good rates for promoting Comcast. The best part is he works from home most of the time! He has to go to Sacramento once a month, and Livermore once or twice a month, but the rest of the time, he works from home. We even cleaned out the office so it's a little more functional for work. Let's see how long it stays clean though!

Jen also was offered another job. After being with Easter Seals for 3.5 years, she left to be a paraeducator at a local elementary school. While she misses her clients (some she had been with since she started ESBA) she is excited to be in a classroom setting. Also, the hours are shorter, and her drive time is significantly shorter, and she is done by 3 PM every day. Plus, she won't have to deal with paperwork!

We are both excited to start these new phases in our careers. Wish us luck!

Foodstuffs

We have been trying really hard to not only make more food at home, but to change up our meals as well. One of us in particular (Okay, it's Jen) is admittedly finicky with trying new food, so we started to cook more things at home. So far, we've managed to create a new soup that we both love, and we have been working on more slow cooker meals since they are much easier to do. The food has turned out pretty good, and we hope to keep cooking together more!

The wild Ichabod waiting for the grill to provide sustenance...

Pot Roast

Chicken, potato and broccoli soup. Jen's idea, and it was so good!

Another roast, this time with purple potatoes. They didn't taste different but it was weird eating a purple potato!