Back to School

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!

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

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.