A Year In Review

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

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

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!