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

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!

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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:

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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???

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

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!