Just got off the phone with with Amazon (for my first phone interview). I feel like I did well enough to get a second phone interview - we'll find out in about a week!

For the Mormons: The stake president called me last week and asked if I could meet with our area authority and ten other SPs... They wanted to ask me (and two other EQPs) about our service and how they can support their EQPs in general. We were only there for the first hour, but it was a pretty awesome meeting. They started with a hymn and a kneeling prayer, and then we read and studied the scriptures for about 30 minutes. They then asked us a lot of questions about our service and how they could support us. All in all it was a very spiritual meeting.

Google didn't take me :(. But I've got a friend at Amazon (in Seattle) who would be awesome to work with - he recommended me to his boss so I think I'll have a phone interview pretty soon! I'm also excited about a couple of local opportunities, so hopefully we'll have a job lined up by January.

We cooked some trout on our bbq last night and I remember why I'm not much of a fisherman - cleaning and prepping fish is no fun (not that a cow would be any better, but I don't want to go hunting for cows either). The whole time, all I could think of was Gollum from Lord of the Rings biting into live fish.

Yesterday we were driving home and Jacob said:

"Dad, I have bad news, Ethan smashed my hand in the door, and I have good news, my hand doesn't hurt anymore."

Then Ethan and Jacob had this dialog (starting with Ethan):

"Dad, I have bad news, Jacob smashed my hand in the door."

"No I didn't"

"Jacob, did you smash my hand in the door?"

"No!"

"Did mom or did dad?"

"No!"

"Did Makaylee?"

"No!"

"Jacob, who smashed my hand in the door?"

"No!"

(and then it all repeated, not as cute the second time around)

When we put the kids in bed I gave Ethan a kiss and he yelled: "Don't step on my flowers any more sir!"

I really don't know where they get it from.

Still no news from Google ;)

Still no news from Google... but in other news, some former classmates emailed me yesterday about a job. I don't think that they could have any idea that I'm starting to look, so I was pretty shocked when he said:

"Hey! I was talking with (x) at lunch today, and we were talking about how we should get you on at Concentric Sky. You in the mood for a java programming job?"

I wouldn't doubt that this is in answer to all the prayers (and fasts) being done in our behalf. I'm meeting with them on Wednesday to find out more!

Also: added a few 4th pics from Bill: http://witski.com/

Had my Google interviews (5 of them) yesterday. The first and last were a little rocky (each had a technical question I struggled with). The middle three were pretty good. Over all I'd give my self a B (but I don't know how we'll most of their candidates do, so I don't know if it was good enough). If they don't hire me, I'm going to reapply in 6 months ;).

Jacob is becoming much more independent with getting himself cereal in the morning. The other day he wanted some instant oatmeal, so he got a chair from the table and moved it over to where the cereal cabinet is and got the box down. Then he asked me if the dishes in the dishwasher were clean, and since I didn't know, I just told him to get one out of the cupboard. So he moved another chair over to get his bowl. Next he moved another chair over to the sink so that he could put some water in the bowl.

Since the microwave is right under the cereal cabinet, he just used his first chair to put his cereal in the microwave. Ethan, always excited to watch things in the microwave, grabbed the last chair from the table and slid it over so that he could see.

When the cereal was done, Jacob walked over to the table and yelled "Dad! there's no chair for me to sit in!"

FYI: Google asked me for more availability, so it doesn't look like I'll have my interviews this week.

We've been trying (just a little) to potty train Ethan (the boy is almost three for crying out loud...). Anyway, I put him in some underwear and set a timer so that I'd remind him to go every 10 minutes (I really didn't want to deal with an accident). The first two times he went, but the third time Jacob informed me:

"Dad, somethings wrong with Ethan, nothings coming out of him!"

The rest of the night, out of the blue, Ethan would say:

"Dad, somethings wrong with me."