Droppin' the Mic

As of this past Thursday, Jen finished her externship!! She worked really hard this last term, wrote a lot of different reports and had to be flexible with everything else, and finally has (sort of) a break. Her schedule opened up, so now she'll have an actual 2-day weekend, and won't have to wake up super early every day to go work a full day, then go to her actual job.

The downside is that school started the same week, and two classes started three days before, so she had NO break before starting more school. So far the first two classes haven't been that difficult, but they will soon ramp up, and a third course will start in July. BUT to help make things easier, we have a 4-day "staycation" planned for the 4th of July weekend, where we can just unwind and relax a bit. Plus, we hope to have a real vacation, even if it's just a day trip somewhere.

A lot of studying and work in her future, as you can tell by the view.

Updates

Everything is incredibly busy here, but we thought we'd post that, yes, we are still alive!

Jen has been working through her externship. Despite the migraines, she's managed to stick with it. Starting tomorrow, she will be on week 9 of 11. If all goes well, she will be done on May 28th, just in time to start her summer school term on June 1st. Fortunately, she will have her mornings free to study, because she's supposed to enroll in three courses this summer, including one with a teacher she doesn't get along with. She's done a lot while in the clinic, and has been working on giving assessments to the clients. Before she leaves, she will be working on some more reports, hopefully completing a few more assessments, and writing a blog post for the company's website, which we will gladly share on here. She's getting closer to her degree, and only has one year left to finish. She'll have two more terms of "academic" courses, this summer and fall, and two more externships, including one working with adults. She has to complete 400 hours before she graduates, and she'll get about 250 by the end of this term.

Jeff has also been insanely busy. AT&T has recognized him as one of the top salespeople in the nation, and they are starting to look at advancing him further in the company. He may be selected to go to their annual conference this year if his numbers continue to stay high, which includes a trip they will pay for the both of us to attend! He is also trying to finalize his schooling and is figuring out where to finish his degree, hopefully starting this fall.

With everything being so crazy-busy, we are trying to plan on some fun things this summer. So far on our summer bucket list, we are thinking:

1) A day at a museum.
2) A Giants game (Jen is pushing for the Pixar game in August).
3) A weekend getaway.
4) Going to see a play/musical.

If you have any other suggestions for us, please let us know. We want to have some fun this summer before Jen has to do more volunteer hours to finish her degree and Jeff starts school again.

 Wish us luck!

Green Stuff In Our Front Yard

Last year, we stuck to a garden in the backyard. This year, however, we have WAY too many seeds and plants to stick to one area, so this year, we're taking over both yards.

Phase 1 is our front yard. So far, we've planted a bunch of tomato plants, but we also started a small herb garden in the planter box, plus a bunch of peppers and watermelon plants. Jeff has been working on clearing out the backyard so that we can plant more there but that has to be done in shifts because 1) there's just so much to do and 2) we had to plan out what goes where. But eventually the yard will have corn, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots, and some other stuff!

So here's just a glimpse of our front yard garden:

Here are 11 tomato plants (#12 died) and our little clementine tree.

Pepper plants, and some other plants our friends gave us.

So far we only have mint and two other herbs. Need ideas for what else to go into it!