Still alive (if you were wondering). I've almost been at Amazon for two months so that is kind of crazy. There is so much work to do all the time I don't think it's possible to ever catch up. I've already had to interview a couple of people too.

Ok, I just wanted to write something so that I can try and get back in the habit.

My first week of work is over! It really wasn't all that exciting, I was mostly setting things up (it's amazing how many systems our product uses).

On Friday, Jacob, Ethan, and I went to Monster Jam:

Today I started my job! Unfortunately I spent most of the day in "new hire orientation," which wasn't very interesting... But I met my team (there are only six of us) I think it's going to be awesome working with them.

When we moved in and told the manager we wanted to put grass in our backyard (it was all bark), she said that we could, but we need to take it out and put bark back in. So we knew this day was coming... today I tore out our backyard and put in a couple of yards of bark. To get to our backyard you need to go through our house, so now our house smells like bark (Rachel doesn't like it). We also picked up some wood (for another project in which we took a hide-a-bed out of our couch), so our house also smells like fresh cut lumber. I think it smells great.

One of my counselors and I had the chance to go and meet a new family in our ward too. They haven't been very active but are thinking about coming back. I was amazed again by the testimony of my counselor and his ability to relate to peoples' situations. I think the Lord knew who to send.

I also cleaned out my office at school. It was really weird - considering that it's been my office longer than we've lived in this apartment, it might be more weird for me moving out of the office than moving out of our apartment... am I really done with school?

Yesterday morning we were taking Jacob to preschool and Rachel said something about it being my last day of school.

Ethan:
That means we're going to have a birthday party!

Jacob:
Ethan! we're not supposed to say that!

Needless to say I had a surprise early birthday and graduation party. Hopefully I passed all my classes.

School is half over! The only problem is that the first half is the easy half... But I've decided that I can live with two B-'s and two C's, so that takes some pressure off. I am learning some cool stuff and am a little sad that I won't get to take some of the follow up classes. Rachel says that that feeling should fade when I'm finally graduated.

School has been going on for a few weeks now... and it's not any fun. I'm not working this term as I'm taking a heavy load so that I can graduate this term (so that I can start at Amazon in January).

We are starting the process of renting a house for December! A couple of (some say big) coincidences came together while we were in Seattle last month, and we ended up taking a look at a very nice house that was for sale (and about to become available for lease too).

We really liked the house, but it was a little on the extreme of what we wanted to spend on rent. Over the last few days, we've talked to the owners several times, and they lowered the rent to the point that we couldn't say no!