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!

Our Christmas...

We celebrated Christmas just the two of us on Christmas Eve after I got out of work since I had to work a half day on Christmas. I came home to find our apartment with lights all over and the tree in our bedroom! It's been our tradition to always sleep out by the tree on Christmas Eve and with our little apartment I didn't think it would happen, but Patrick found a way. I was so excited to celebrate. I quickly showered off the work germs and then we enjoyed dinner and opening presents!

Patrick getting dinner all set.

We enjoyed his sausage spaghetti over Christmas pasta!

We opened our stockings while sitting in bed. It couldn't have been any better. 

He was so sweet for surprising me with such a nice Christmas Eve!

It's almost Christmas...

I was being social and got together with a girl from church to make a Christmas craft. Maybe she's my visiting teacher. Anyhow I still count it. I liked how the wreath I made turned out.

Then it got so warm here that the candies started melting. Next time I'll have to shellac it.

We went to my work Christmas party. I thought it would be a good opportunity for Patrick to see the coworkers I sometimes reference. And let's face it, my work is too cheap to give out a bonus for Christmas so this was it.

I was wondering what was in store for us once I picked up my ticket.(Yes I blurred out the name of my work. You know just in case.) All we knew was that it was at BYU, we would eat dinner, and we were supposed to dress up. It ended up being a lot of fun. Although there were not a lot of people I knew it was better than I expected. There were door prizes and an improv comedy group came and did a show for us. It was very much like "Who's Line is it Anyway" and it was kinda fun to see my boss be put on the spot.

We went up to Salt Lake City to look at the lights on Temple Square. It was as lovely as I remembered and a little bit colder than I remembered. Luckily I snagged some hand warmers for us and that helped a bunch.

We made gingerbread houses a couple of days before Christmas after I got out of work. We were smart and made them with chocolate graham crackers instead of regular ones because they would taste better that way. Turns out it was an awesome decision and I ended up eating almost my entire house later on.