Dear person who called me this morning...

I know it sounds silly but I just thought I should mention that I believe the polite time to call someone is between the hours of 8am and 10pm. Please don't call me at 7am in the morning, because I will either be at work or sleeping. Unless you are a member of my family I will not answer. And if it is important enough to call early please let the phone ring more than three times and leave a message.
Thanks,
The nurse who just worked from 6am-midnight

Traveling, vomitting, cooking, and more...

Patrick is still really busy so we try to do fun things when we have time off together. A few weeks ago we went to the BYU's art museum. We had fun looking at the art and I forgot just how big it is. We happened upon a display with big balloons you were supposed to interact with. I had a lot of fun.

We have some coupon cards and we've been trying to use some of our deals. One night we went to Burger Supreme and split a pastrami burger and a Hawaiian burger. They were tasty. I love their burgers and that they have fry sauce. Afterwards we got ice cream too. We went to Sub Zero were they freeze your ice cream with liquid nitrogen. You get to pick your flavor of ice cream and mix ins and watch them freeze it. Patrick had never been before and it was fun to see how excited he got watching his ice cream be made.

Amaretto with sprinkles and toffee!

Raspberry with brownies and oreos!

The first of the month we went to a wedding reception of a new couple who moved into our quad. The couple are both from out of the country and planned on getting married in the Provo temple without any friends or family there and then getting on with regular life. The bishop found out and thought we could do better than that. So one girl threw her a bridal shower.

 I made her a first aid kit. I decided this would be my new go to gift since I'm a nurse now. I always like practical gifts. At the reception she told me she already used a band-aid, so I say it was a success.

The ward really worked together since they had no family here. The couple borrowed a wedding dress, jewelry, shoes, a suit, a girl made them a wedding cake, they had flowers, someone took their pictures, and they had a reception that I'm pretty sure the whole ward came to. Everyone pitched in with set up, bringing desserts and appetizers, and cleaning up.

 We brought cupcakes!

 Before the couple made their exit from the reception one the girls made a comment that the new couple got more presents than she and her husband did at their reception! I think that meant that the ward did a pretty good job. I felt like I was living a story straight from the Ensign. I loved that Patrick and I could play a small role in making the day special for them. I'd post a picture of them on here but I think that would be super creepy.

I was supposed to work the following day but got the stomach flu. I went to bed not feeling well and woke up a good 5-6 times sick during the night. I can't ever remember throwing up so much and the diarrhea was out of control. I called in sick to work for two days and Patrick took excellent care of me. He went to the store to get me jello, saltines, powerade, and made soup. I slept pretty much all day Saturday. Patrick would wake me up to make sure that I ate something so I could get feeling better. While recovering from being sick I started watching Downton Abbey and let's just say that I am now all caught up. I'm officially addicted to the show.

Patrick was out of town a lot the past little while and we were so happy he didn't get the stomach flu. Instead he got major congestion, drainage, a sore throat,  headache, and one of his ears was plugged up. But he was able to still make all of his trips for school. Since the new year he has been gone 13 days and 9 nights. For us that is a lot. This past week he flew out Thursday came back Saturday, flew out Sunday morning and came back Monday night, and flew out Tuesday morning and flew home Tuesday night. I picked him up from the airport Monday night and we stayed in a hotel so he wouldn't have to waste so much time driving to and from the airport. We were at the hotel from 10pm to about 4am. As of right now there are no more trips scheduled which is nice. I tend to get really anxious and worried when he's away and eat my emotions. So I'm glad he's home and so is my belly!

I told Patrick that he could pick anything he wanted for dinner tonight and I'd make it. Since he's been feeling sick he picked soup. He said as long as it's not a cream based soup, maybe tomato soup. So I made tomato basil from the barefoot contessa. It was super easy and tasty. We had it with a salad and some sour dough bread. Then we had a couple chocolate covered strawberries!

Snow...

This is the second day of it snowing the whole day. I'm glad we live so close to work and school!

I love checking the mail...

 We got this surprise today from my parents :)

 I'm still not sure how my mom fit everything in that envelope!  I think all of the new decorations will look great with what I already have up.

Speaking of which I made these Valentine's Day pillowcases for us while Patrick was out of town with school. It's my first sewing project with my own sewing machine all by myself.

Just a close up of the fabric since the red has little hearts on it.

Our new door decoration that matches our pillows!

From Sillicon to Seattle for the interview from h...

******************************LONG POST ALERT********************************

I left Tuesday at noon and with three other guys drove to Silicon valley; the second trip in less than two weeks driving for more than 12 hrs one way. We were part of a group of about 25 BYU MBA students organized by the school to meet with a number of tech companies. Wednesday we visited EMC and Google. Then Thursday it was Ebay, Symantec, and Intel. At each company we spent a couple hours and had a chance to network. It was a good trip and it was fun to get inside so many companies and get a taste of the culture. Right after we finished with Intel on Thursday I took a plane from the San Jose airport to Seattle.

One of many of Google's self driving cars. More to come on this.

Me standing in front of the OS that runs on my phone (Ice Cream Sandwich). You can see a bit of the prior gen. OS behind (Honeycomb).

Inside Google's offices. Pretty sweet. Yes, that's a slide!

Last week on rather short notice I was selected for first round interviews with Amazon. Surprisingly, I made it to the final round fly-backs considering I was coming off a period of 36 hrs with only 30 min. of sleep. The interview was scheduled for the following week which meant I had to cut my Silicon Valley trip short.

View from my hotel room (paid for by Amazon) on the 36th floor downtown Seattle. Not a fan of heights, this freaked me out the first hour I was in the room and I almost went back to the front desk to get a room a little lower.

As you might know Amazon is a company in high growth. It is one of the best companies you could hope to have on your resume because of the type of experiences you can have there. People of all functions can really have a hand in some cutting edge stuff. They also pay extremely well, perhaps the highest all considered from the MBA program. They expect a whole lot from their employees. Both in the depth and quality of work but also of your actual life. One person who interviewed me who works in their notorious cloud computing group said that they expect 200 hrs worth of work per week and expect you to do it in 70 to 80 hrs. Catch that? 80 hrs per week! That said, they can give you experience that will launch your career.

Amazon is also notorious for having a very difficult interview process. After 4 hours of interviewing it lived up to the rumors. I left head down, feeling bruised and bloodied. The first 45 min I was given a laptop and asked to complete a case that I was purposefully given insufficient information and with an insufficient amount of time. Yikes, right!? This turned out to be the easiest part. Next was four 45 minute interviews; one of which debriefed me on the case. Two of the people that interviewed me were in general pleasant and I thought I did well. They asked mostly questions like, "Tell me about a time when you faced..." and then I proceeded to give them an example. The other two asked mostly case questions like, "Tell me how would you model the return on..." Then they would ask ten questions poking at my logic and testing my ability to handle pressure. At one point I was scribbling multiplication on a piece of paper filling up the half page I had left as the interviewer did the same on a computer to check my work then when I'd stop to draw the obvious conclusion he cut me off and tell me continue with the math. Brutal!!! I left with the certainty that I will not be getting an offer and mentally beaten. The only thing I had left was the resolute determination to spend the $65 for food per day that Amazon agrees to reimburse.

Unfortunately, a group of us agreed to have dinner with some Amazonians at some crazy upscale burger joint. A far cry from the juicy steak I was envisioning. Whatever. I was done. We ate, the food was fried and good, then one Amazonian's was super cool and took us to "the best view of Seattle" on the deck of the eleven floor of one of the 11 buildings Amazon occupies downtown.

"Lunchbox Laboratory" - Started with some fresh fried pork grinds (aweseome) and dork balls (duck and turkey puffs - less awesome), ate "the smoker" burger, and mushed it down with a Boston creme donut shake (a whole donuts is tossed into the shake - seriously awesome!!!)

Not sure if you can see the in the picture but the fog is low and hides the top of the Space Needle. To me it looks like it a latter to heaven.

It was a great experience but definitely one that I'm glad is over. It's now 6:30pm Saturday and all I need for my life to return to the normalcy I love is to wait patiently for 2.5 more hours for Ashley to come home.

Dinner of champions...

Patrick has been away for several days visiting companies in CA with a group from school. So last night I ate this. Good thing he is back today!

St. George Christmas...

We headed down to St. George Christmas afternoon to meet up with my family. My parents and brother had flown in a few days before and we all met up at my grandparents house. I hadn't seen my grandparents for a few years and it was the first time Patrick got to meet them.
We spent our time eating, playing cards, telling stories, eating at buffets, napping, going to the clubhouse, and eating some more. It was so nice to spend some time with my family and with Patrick for that matter. We had such a great time that after we came back to Provo so I could work on Saturday we headed back down as soon as I got off.

 Opening presents.

 We played bingo and all won prizes.

Playing hand and foot. I happened to be the big winner one night and won a pair of Christmas toe socks!

 Hanging out at the clubhouse. Most of the boys played pool.

Danielle and Taylor took turns playing the piano while we put together puzzles.

Grandma and I chatted after enjoying a swim in the pool and soaking in the hot tub.

Napping at the grandparents.

On Monday my parents and Taylor had left to go back home. Danielle took a half day off work and we went shooting that afternoon!

We had a great Christmas!