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!

The Sights, The Sounds, and The Rest

Hello to everyone out there!

Hope you are having a happy Halloween. Ours this year has been pretty quiet. We had two groups of kids come all night, so we get to have A LOT of leftover candy this year.

For those who noticed the change in the slideshows to the side, we uploaded a lot of photos recently. We finally uploaded the photographs from Jeff's birthday in Monterrey and San Francisco, plus we uploaded the photos from our recent trip to Seattle. Yes, October has been a very busy month for us.

First off, we have a new addition to the furry family. Jen's coworker had a pup that needed a home and thought we might be a good fit. Jen had wanted another dog to protect the house, and even though this was a puppy, we thought we would give it a try. Jacob (Jake for short) is a good fit for our dog-family. He is almost 8 months now, and is just a little smaller than Fox (but he is already heavier!) He is mostly husky but his face looks a little pit bull-ish. He is super sweet to us, but already is protective of the house and his friends. He also gets along great with Christopher, but bonded with Fox immediately.

The week before we left for Seattle, we found out that a lot of Food Network stars were touring the country and coming to our part of California for book signings. Within a week, we got to meet three of our favorites: on Monday we met Guy Fieri at his restaurant in Dublin. On Tuesday Jeff got to meet Alton Brown in San Francisco, and was a good sport about taking Jen to see him on Wednesday in Palo Alto. That Friday, Anne Burrell was also in Palo Alto at the Stanford mall, so Jeff met Jen up there for the signing, then had dinner in Palo Alto.

Then we went to Seattle. For those who wonder why, there were a few reasons. The biggest is that our anniversary is in November, but traveling then would not work. It's very close to Thanksgiving, and the weather likely would not be any good for us. So we opted to go to Washington in October. It was very much fall weather, and although it sprinkled a little at times, we had so much fun. We visited the local temple, went to the space needle, Tacoma, and even spent some time hanging in the hotel. The hotel was a studio-style room with a kitchenette that had a decent fridge, microwave and stove. During happy hour one cold evening, we hung out next to the fireplace in the lobby reading and munching in cookies that the staff baked for the guests. Washington was very beautiful, and we even got to play with Jeff's new camera. For a birthday/anniversary/Christmas present, we cashed in three years' worth of gift cards and points to get the camera, a Nikon D5100 with a telescopic lens and a nice backpack case. You can see how nicely the camera works by the photos, particulary of the temple and the space needle.

Aside from our travels, the same is still going on. Both of us are plugging away at school, as the terms are getting closer to ending. Jen is also starting National Novel Writing Month tomorrow, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in a month, so we will see how she does this year.

Until next time...