The Year In Review (Just A Few Days Into the New Year!)

Hello to all! For those who aren't in the know: Our Christmas cards came late this year. In fact, they arrived yesterday. So we missed sending out the holiday cards and from what I've read on Facebook, we are in good company! Oh well. You'll still get them in the mail this week if I can find everyone's addresses. :-) We didn't do a newsletter, but here is what we would've written: This year has been a bit of a roller coaster. Good and bad, we survived another year, and are happy to be looking forward to new adventures. There have been a few struggles, changes and challenges this year. In February, we found out our dog, Christopher, had Stage 4 Lymphoma. After a lot of thinking through things and prayers, we decided as a family to try to give Chris the best shot we could, and he underwent chemotherapy. After two rounds (out of 12!) he went into clinical remission. Currently, his lymph nodes are starting to grow in size, but he does not seem to have any illness or appear sick, thankfully. Also, we were told that the average amount of time he would have left would be between 6-9 months, and even less because his cancer was the more aggressive t-cell and he was later staged. However, as of this post, Chris is hitting 11 months post-diagnosis, so we are all happy with that! As if one sick dog wasn't enough, we also acquired two more this year! Kandi is Jeff's childhood dog, and at 15, she is still around. Jeff's parents moved into a new place that she couldn't go to, so we took her in. For an older dog, she has not been difficult. The last few weeks of the year, however, have been really tough on her. California has been extremely cold (actually reaching freezing temperatures) and that is not good for an old dog that has arthritis. We took her to the vet at the beginning of the month, but the first medications she got not only weren't helping her, but made her even more frail and ill. To be honest, we weren't sure she'd make it to the new year, but when we changed her medicine, she went back to being her old self. She's not moving the greatest, but at least she isn't in pain and can get around. We also found another addition this year. Around the fourth of July, a little chihuahua found his way into our garage. We kept him, thinking his family was just on vacation, but no one ever claimed him, and a few weeks later, we discovered why he might have been thrown out. Pepino (what we've named him) is epileptic and prone to seizures. The first time this happened was very scary and we had nighgtmares the next few days about it. Now that we are more versed, we have had his seizures under better control. Medications fortunately aren't that expensive (about $10 for a 60-day script) and they have worked very well for him. He went from about a seizure every 2-3 weeks to now having had his last seizure in October! Both Pepino and Kandi get along great with our other pets, and both Fox and Jacob enjoy having new people to play with when Chris decides he's done with them! But our year wasn't just about the dogs. Both of us have returned to school. Jen took a leave of absence last year because of her migraines, and started back up this past summer. So far she has been doing well with her classes, and this semester she will not have a "bookwork" class. Rather, her bosses at Easter Seals helped her acquire an internship with their speech pathologists. She will be driving to Oakland once a week, every Monday, to do this. It means that, from mid-January until mid-May, she will essentially be "working" 6 days a week, but she is excited to learn more about her company and about how they perform therapy. In fact, her advisors are excited to have her, because they use a play-based method of interaction with the clients and have wanted BIs (Behavior Interventionists, Jen's current position) to come in and show them some tips, so everyone will be learning in this new endeavor. Jeff is also going back to school, and has completed his first term at the local junior college. Because of his company's policy, he is only able to take 2 classes at a time, which works out well enough. So far he has been looking at business classes, but ultimately he wants to go for his MBA as well as his Series 6 and 63 or Series 7. He is still working with New York Life and has enjoyed it thus far. Starting out as a new associate isn't easy but he's had some success, and a lot of his colleagues go to him for questions, especially with the Hispanic market, as Jeff is the only Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking agent in his office in Fremont. Over the past year, Jeff has acquired licenses to sell insurance in California, Utah, Arizona, Idaho and North Carolina, and recently was certified to sell health insurance as well. We haven't been able to travel, but that doesn't mean we didn't have fun! We were able to take the puppies to the snow, we went to two formal galas for our work, we went to different museums, had Thanksgiving in our house for the first time in four years of living here, celebrated our anniversary sick (And had a do-over at the ballet a few weeks later), and enjoyed a VERY long holiday season. This year, we even decked out our house, enjoyed the light show a neighbor put on that got him on the news, celebrated Christmas multiple times, and basically had a holiday-type thing every day from December 22nd until today. We really embraced the holidays! This coming year has a lot more to look forward to: hopefully another snow trip, Jeff's gala coming up in a month, more learning and growing and more travel. But we aren't going to tell you all the details; you'll just have to stay tuned to find out what we are up to. Love you you all, and we hope you had a fun and wonderful 2013. Here's to 2014! Jeffery and Jennifer Perry (and their zoo)

The Christmas Photos, AKA How Jeff Fractured His Ribs

Hello, all!

We hope you all had a great holiday! Unfortunately, this year, our holiday cards won't be in until next week, so I will send out some when I get them. Until then, enjoy the photos of us that I posted. And our card does not have the individual photos of the dogs, so here's an extra special treat!

A story until our next post: We took these at a local park, and Jeff got the idea to try to put the dogs on the playground equipment. It was a VERY cold day in Newark, about 35 degrees when we took the pictures, and there was dew all over the place. Well, Jeff decided to see if Chris would go on the suspension bridge with him. When Chris refused, Jeff walked onto it. 

Now, remember I told you how everything was covered with dew? It also made the bridge extremely slippery, because the next thing we knew, Jeff's feet slipped out from under him, and he fell forward into the bridge. He's feeling much better now, but the holidays were very difficult, and his doctor thinks he fractured his ribs. So for the next few weeks, he will still have to be careful with the lifts!

And now, for your enjoyment, the dogs!! 

(oh, yeah, and us)

Kandi

Fox

Pepino in his jacket. I told you it was cold!

Jacob

Christopher

Jeff and Jen

Happy Holidays from The Perry People!

Just a brief update!

Hi, all!

Yes, we are still alive and kicking out here but we have been super busy. We should have some more updates coming soon, but wanted to give a quick list of what has gone on, and what's coming up:

1) In September, Jen was given additional clients to add to her workload. Overall, she has enjoyed the additional hours, but the driving is getting to be a lot for her. Her three regular clients were within a few miles of us but the newest are in San Ramon and Pleasanton, both of which are drives, especially when you factor in traffic. She also works long days back to back on Thursday and Friday, but lighter ones Tuesday and Wednesday, so that can add to the stress. So far she's handling it, and it appears to be temporary, so for the time being she is enjoying her clients.

2) Both of us have been working pretty hard at school. Thankfully, the term is almost over for us both. Jen ends around December 6th and Jeff will end sometime in mid-December.

3) We had Halloween at our house, which consisted of having maybe a dozen children get candy, and we enjoyed classic Halloween movies. This year it was Garfield's Halloween and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

4) Speaking of Hitchcock the Saturday after Halloween we went to the San Francisco Symphony to enjoy the live Hitchcock concert, where movies were played with live music. It got us more into Hitchcock films, so once school is over, we are adding more to our growing list of to-see movies!

5) On November 17th, we reached a milestone: 9 years of marriage. This would have been great, except that Jen was recovering from a cold that kept her out of work the entire week, and Jeff was in the middle of getting sick. We did manage to survive a run to Jamba Juice for smoothies, and Jen's sister was kind enough to make us some dinner, but we decided we will have to have a do-over, so we're planning to go out next month.

6) We celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with Jeff's parents, but cooked for a small army! We made three pies, mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, corn, salad, green bean casserole, and a 17-pound turkey. So there's plenty of leftovers at the Perry house!

7) We skipped the mayhem of going out on Black Friday and did some online shopping instead. We got a few good deals, so the next few weeks we'll be getting some nice packages in the mail.

We have a lot to look forward to in the next month including:

- Our annual photos
- Our anniversary do-over
- Christmas
- A few surprise outings
- And a lot more!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well!