Year Wrap Up

Dear Friends and Family

My apologies for not updating the last few months, but we have been incredibly busy as you will read!

It's been another great year for us in California. There have been a lot of changes and milestones that we've reached in that time.

This year, Jeff was able to complete the Pathways program, and this last fall was his first FULL semester at BYU-Idaho (online, of course)! He took a full load with a religion course, two business courses and an accounting class. At first it was a rough start, as he went from two very easy classes per term to four difficult ones, but he still pulled off his B-average. Next semester he'll have econ, business and one more accounting class, which has been the toughest of the courses, so wish him luck!

Jeff is also continuing to work at Comcast, and has had the good fortune to be home. On average he will go to the office in Sacramento once a month, and maybe once or twice to Livermore to drop off paperwork. Having him home has been very convenient, not only saving on gas, but his being home has been a benefit to the animals as well.

During Thanksgiving break, our niece found a small puppy outside of a local restaurant. No one called to claim him, and Newt (as in Scamander) has been squatting at the Perry house since. We found him at about 7 weeks, so he's obviously too little to be let alone, and Jeff's been fortunate to be home to watch him, then Jen takes over after work. It's a lot of work, but when our niece finishes school this spring, she will be taking him back to live with her.

Jen's work has been enjoyable this year. 4 of her students from last year returned and she got 3 new ones. Except for one second grader, her entire class is 3rd graders. The students have been doing well this year, and her class and team have had one of the best years with the kiddos. This will probably be her last year in this class, so it will be interesting that she will "graduate" out of the class with most of the students, as the teacher covers second and third grade.

Jen also continues to plug away at school. Next semester, she will complete her cumulative final in the fall and finish the last 60 hours of her externship. After that, she will finally be DONE with her degree! This last term will be the first time both of us are working and going to school, so it ought to be an interesting spring, but at least the end is near!

We had hoped to go away this year for our anniversary (Our 12th!) but with school and work, we thought we'd keep it local, so we celebrated by going to see Fantastic Beasts on our anniversary, followed by Jen having a week off from school to do some home organizing projects and preparing for finding an externship site. We are planning on going away the weekend of Jen's birthday to southern California to go to Universal Studios and to tour the Warner Brothers lot, so a vacation is on the horizon.

We hope that you all had a great year and are excited to see what 2017 brings us!

Sincerely,

The Perry Family

PS - Here are the photos from our Christmas card. Since Jen's vacation from school started the 23rd they were sent out VERY late this year! The boys were very silly poses, but the girls had to be dignified!

Garden Overgrowth

Our garden this year has been amazing. We've already had corn, peppers, tomatoes and zucchini, and we'll be getting more this fall, including pumpkin and watermelons. We're already planning what we want to grow this winter, and are excited to get more veggies!

Even Callie was getting in on the whole gardening thing, claiming this pepper as her toy.

Our very first ear of corn.

The stalks this year have already cleared 10 feet (so they're taller than the house) and the veggies have been so good!

Our zucchini have been bigger than our dog, just so you know...

Our first pepper. Well, one not claimed by the dog.

 Every year for the past few years we've grown tomatoes, and this year is no different. The plants did not go as crazy as year's past but we're getting a good yield.

Foodstuffs

We have been trying really hard to eat better and try new recipes, and so far it's been a lot of fun. Now we have a new list of foods to have for dinner!

This was kind of a crap shoot. We had a lot of veggies and wanted something different, so this has cream of chicken soup, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, potato and chicken with cheese on top.

This is one we've done a few times. It's chicken cooked with basil and tomatoes from the garden, with whole wheat pasta.

A classmate of Jeff's brought this to us as a thank you for tutoring her all the way from their fishing trip to Alaska. We'd never cooked whole fish but figured it out, and added a side of cauliflower mashed potatoes.

 Kabobs have been another interesting thing we've tried. The first one we did were the broccoli and steak in teriyaki ones, and later we did a steak and potato one with olive oil. Both ended up great, but Jeff can't eat red meat anymore, so they're all for Jen now!

This was the most unique one of them all: lasagna, but instead of noodles we substituted zucchinni! It was pretty good, but since we had to cut it by hand, the zucchini was a little thick and hard to cut through, but otherwise it was delicious!