Well, after about 4 and a half months, I’ve found work again. I’m now working for an internet marketing consulting group down in the Thanksgiving Point business park. My new employer is called PMI and I’m working in the consulting group helping clients with their online marketing (both retail and affiliate marketing). My client base is a little different than what I was used to working with at Omniture, but the environment is good and I’m part of a good team. We’ll just have to see how things go as I spend some more time and get more involved. Either way its good to be working again. Many things are overrated in this world, but paychecks are not one of them.

The twins and I decided to make a tent in the front room a few weeks ago and the following pictures were the result (not sure why we didn’t get any pictures of the exterior). Anyway, this is us chillin’ in the tent. Jack has apparently been watching too much BET or something cause I’m not sure where the gang signs came from (probably Hailey). I’ll have to beat it out of him (and her) later.

For Christmas this year Jack got a new Batman cape as well as a nifty new headlamp. He now combines these two items to become Bat-Jack. We’re not quite sure yet if he’s a super hero or a super villain due to the fact that half the time he wears his costume he’s up to no good. At present though we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt.

On a mostly unrelated note, one of the jobs that Jack as adopted as his own is the job of helping to make and deliver my lunch to me each morning. Although his cape isn’t required to perform this job, he does take it quite seriously and I’ve seen him slide violently towards the “villain” end of the scale when his job doesn’t go exactly as planned (meaning someone else helps or we forget to let him perform his job due to being in a hurry).

We just hope that he’ll eventually decide to fight for good.

In late January we got to spend a long weekend up at the cabin. It was a nice relaxing weekend of movies and playing in the snow. Rarely do we get to spend time up at the cabin without having other family up there so it was fun to spend the weekend sitting by the fire alone. When we first arrived we spent the first couple hours getting “parked” and getting the cabin to a livable temperature. After turning the water on and getting the fire going, I then had to head back outside (around 10 at night) to get the van into the driveway. Although the road up to the cabin was plowed, the driveway itself was not so I had to head back out with a shovel and a flashlight to dig a path so that we could get the van off the main road. It took an hour or so, but eventually I was able to get a parking area dug out and after a couple runs, I was able to get the van pulled in.

The rest of the weekend was a lot of hanging out and playing in the snow piled up in the yard. As you can see from the pictures below, we had to improvise and use a knee board for a sled. It actually worked pretty well once the snow was packed down. After the girls had had their fill of the cold, Jack decided to take a walk up the road. Jack and I had a nice little walk to the top of the road and got to chat a bit about life and stuff. I obviously love all my kids and love to spend time with them, but I must say that I get excited thinking of all the fun guy stuff Jack and I will get to do together as he grows up. On the way back down the road Jack’s legs were a bit tired so he road on my shoulders back to the cabin. It was a great weekend.

In an effort to catch up a little, I’m going to throw down a few posts that have been sitting in the queue for a bit. The first here is about our little excursion we took downtown in February. I was out of the work at the time so we decided to head downtown and visit some of the sites on Temple Square. We first took a tour through the Beehive House. It’s crazy to think of what life must have been like back when President Young and his family were all actually living there and going about their regular daily life. The kids seemed to enjoy the tour, but it may have just been the steep stairs and pink lighting.

Next we walked over to the church office building and took a ride to the observation deck on top. We got a great view of the temple, the capital, and the rest of downtown. I think the kids mostly just enjoyed sticking their arms out of the camera holes cut onto the inch thick glass surrounding the deck. After that we walked down and took some pictures by the reflection pond and let the kids run around a bit. It was a fun little day trip and we even learned something along the way.