May Day!

May - July is always craziness at the Perry's and this year will be no question. Mother's Day, Father's Day and the 4th of July are obvious, but we also have several birthdays: Jeff's brother, Ryan; Jen's dad; Jen's brother-in-law, Mike; our nephew William and then Jen's mom and sister.

Add to that some VERY fun things we are doing, and that adds to the chaos.

Jen signed up to raise funds for work, and as a result, she received two tickets to the Easter Seals Gala. We will get to go to San Francisco for another black-tie party, and this time there is live music by Javier Colon, the winner of The Voice.

Before we party, though, that day is also the Autism Speaks walk. We sign up every year but something always happens and we don't get to go. This year we took the day off, and so we will do the walk first, come home, clean up and party in the city.

Also that weekend is the big Cooking for Solutions celebration at Monterey Bay Aquarium. Every year there are a ton of cool celebrity chefs there giving cooking demos. Last year we went and heard an awesome lecture by Alton Brown. Not sure who we might see this year but we want to try!

This ought to be the last "free" month for Jen. Her summer semester starts June 3rd, and she is taking 9 units (a lot for summer session). We will hopefully get some fun in before the work starts.

Yeah, we fell behind...

... But we are still here!

It's been INSANELY crazy here in Perry-land. We have had a lot of little things going on and here's just a brief update on everyone:

In January, Jen celebrated her birthday. It was fun and we spent the actual birthday celebration in San Francisco, going to museums, hanging out, and just taking it easy. She also had a "girls day" where she hung out with her friends and just relaxed, which was what she wanted.

February seemed to be an interesting month for us. We took Chris in to his vet visit and they told us that he lost a lot of weight and to give him some pills to help his liver. The numbers were very elevated, and despite the medication, he lost weight even faster. We opted for a scan, and the vet found cancer in his spleen. It turns out that Chris has lymphoma, and we have been taking him to a specialist for chemotherapy. So far he has done well. He put on all his weight (and then some), his diet is back to normal and after the first two treatments he was considered clinically in remission. We hope to get another scan of his spleen soon to see if there's any change, but for now he's still our happy boy.

Because of this, we decided to have a "family trip" with the dogs, and so we drove up to Donner Pass together to have a snow day. We had always talked about going to the snow with our sort-of huskies, and we thought now would be as good a time as any. We didn't think that Kandi, at 14 and highly arthritic, would appreciate the cold, so we left her with Jen's sister while Chris, Fox and Jake came with us. We were sure that Chris would hate the snow; after all, this is a dog that can't stand dirt, getting wet, or anything remotely dirty. But he LOVED it! We posted a video on our Facebook pages of him galloping through the snow like a puppy. We took plenty of pictures so the day is documented, and we hope to go again next year with a cancer-free Chris!

Jen also started back in school... sort of. She was not able to get a clinical site to do her externship, so although she is enrolled, she hasn't started actual classes yet. This will change in about a month when she will have to take 3 courses. Her graduation date is set for December 2015, which feels like a long way away, but it'll be here soon!

Jeff is continuing to progress at New York Life. He has expanded some, and can now do policies in California, Arizona and Utah, with other states on the horizon once his business grows. He is also looking into taking the Series 6 and Series 63, so that he can continue to expand his services.

Jen's work is continuing to expand as well. In February Easter Seals broke into regions and now Jen has only clients that are close to home. They have changed her schedule around a little but she is now set with four clients and continues to work Tuesdays-Saturdays. Now that there are more staff members, she can look into taking days off as needed, something that was a problem for a while there!

Just as work started to have a normal routine, Jeff was given a calling at church to be the branch clerk. Basically, this means he helps out with the finances with the Spanish branch (congregation) that shares our building. This means that Jeff, after meetings and everything else, spends around 5 hours at church on Sundays. This puts a little kibosh on the one shared day off we have, but we have managed to get in fun date nights or dinners here and there. Also we have finally joined a gym after trying to figure out which one to join for the past 6 months. City Sports hasn't opened yet (they are planning on it sometime this week) but it'll be fun to hit the gym together to swim or play raquetball.

We hope everyone else is doing well and hope you enjoy hearing about our updates. Hopefully more pictures and fun adventures will be posted on this blog. Stay tuned!

Happy Christmas

Hi, people!

The title this year is one of Jen's favorite Christmas songs, Happy Christmas (War is Over). If you haven't heard it, it's sung by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the version she has played lately was actually sung by Maroon 5.

We wanted to do our yearly update on the blog instead of putting it in our Christmas card, so that everyone can have access to it, so here we go with our wrap up of 2012!

We have had an interesting year to say the least, with a lot of ups and downs. Early this year Jen lost her cousin, Jimmy, very suddenly, and the family has felt his loss very much. When we celebrated with the Borgen side of the family yesterday, as we goofed around and played video games (We all played Dance Central together) thoughts of Jimmy did come to our minds, but we know he's watching us all act up together.

Starting in February, Jen has had some medical issues. She began to have headaches and dizzy spells, and while she has had migraines before, these were something very different, often leaving her bedridden for several days. She began to go to the doctor's office, as well as visit an ENT and a neurologist. She went on a medical leave from Stanford and it wasn't until the summer that we got some sort of diagnosis. We had thought she suffered from vertigo, but as it turns out, she has vestibular migraines. In Jen's case, when she is feeling ill, not able to properly sleep, or undergoing a lot of stress, she begins to feel dizzy as her "aura" prior to having a large migraine. We have been able to curtail a lot of the migraines as of late, and made some changes to help her cope (more to come later) and she seems to be on the mend for the most part.

This summer there was a bit of upheaval as well. Jeff was let go from his position at Starbucks and Jen was on medical leave from Stanford, so although funds were tight, we were able to spend a lot of time together. During the summer, someone from our church got Jeff in touch with New York Life, an insurance company, and they had him test to be a life agent. After some studying and training, Jeff passed his test and is now licensed to sell life insurance, as well as help with long-term care insurance, financial planning and retirement planning along with other things. He started out with a license in California but now covers Utah as well, and is looking at going into other states as well. If anyone out there has any questions or wants insurance, be sure to come our way!

As for Jen, after all of the medical issues and a lot of discussion, it was decided that she leave Stanford University after working there for 4.5 years, and almost 3 in her last position. It was sad to leave such a well known place, but someone must have been looking out for us, because she was offered a job at Easter Seals Bay Area. Presently, Jen works as a Behavior Interventionist, and goes into families' homes to work with children on the autism spectrum working on a variety of life skills. This has been a huge blessing for us, because she is able to work from home part time with data entry, her travel/commute is shorter (most of her kids are close to home) and because the hours are generally later in the day (a plus when you don't get enough sleep). She currently works about 35 hours/week, and has a Tuesday-Saturday schedule, which she enjoys because Mondays are always hard for her. And some days she is able to come home for a little bit before seeing her next case. Her "siesta" as she calls it, is long enough to get a quick nap and a good lunch in, both of which help with her migraines. Plus, it is less stressful than research, as she basically gets paid to play with her little guys, most around 4-5 years of age, and one older elementary age boy.

In animal news, we have had a lot of changes as well. Two of Jen's beloved chinchillas passed away this year. Hobbes, one of the first chinchillas she adopted, passed away earlier this year. Scout, her very first baby chinchilla (and the only boy we've raised since birth) also passed away after getting injured in his cage. While we miss our little furries a great deal, we have also had the addition of Kandi, Jeff's parents' dog. They recently moved and were unable to keep Kandi, a 14-year old German shepherd/rottweiler with them, so she joined the Perry Pack. Despite her old age, Kandi tries very hard to keep up with our dogs, Chris, Fox, and Jacob, who continue to grow and get into mischief. We definitely have some troublemaker funny pups!

As we continue on through the end of this holiday season, we are looking forward to everything that the new year may bring us. We hope that you also had a wonderful holiday season and love to hear from you as well, and hope nothing but the best for you all.

With love,
Jeffery and Jennifer Perry