Trip to Park City

We just got back from a great trip to Park city. It was on of those deals where you have to listen to a condo presentation and they give you 2 free nights in the resort as well as 100$ to spend. The best part was that at the end, when we had to listen to the presentation, they had all their sales reps tied up, and told us we could just go without hearing the presentation! And to top it off they gave us an additional $25 for our "troubles". It put a really nice cap on an already wonderful vacation.

Here are some pics from our stay:

Here is Sam in our room.
Here some of the buildings that make up the Marriot Summit Watch. It was a very big place.
We went to the pool a lot, and Sam loved it. It was his favorite part.
They had a fun activity center with lots of things going on throughout each day. One such activity was finger painting.
My favorite part of the trip was a beautiful lunch outside at a nice restaurant, Cafe Terigo in downtown Park City.
Mmmmm. We had a Crème brûlée for dessert and it was amazing.
Here is a nice shot of the beautiful scenery.
Sam and I have been wanting to see speed racer for a while now, and we finally got the chance, We had to drive to a little town called Kamas near Park City. Here was the modest theater. We loved the movie by the way. It was better than I was expecting.


Before watching the movie, I asked the guy selling tickets "We only have 20 min before the movie starts, where the nearest fast food joint so we can get some dinner before the show?" and he said they don't have any in their town! Then his eyes lit up, and he said, "Oh I know, you can go get some food from Chevron!" So we did. It wasn't the best dinner I've ever had... but at least it was a fun memory.

And here is a picture of Lucas looking very cute.

Barrand update

This is a soccer time of year. We won our 3rd game in a row last night in my indoor league. And I think that puts us into first place in our division. Last week we went to the Real game. We had great seats, and Real won.
Sam had his little pre-school graduation. He is still having some troubles overcoming his fear of standing/sitting/performing in front of an audience.


Sam had his first trip to the dentist, and he did great. No cavities and he didn't pass out like I did earlier this year.


Warm weather means boating with the Runyans! Here is Jake as the sun was setting on our last trip to the lake.


Marcia and the kids.

Flash/Flex developer job position at mediaRAIN

Most of the people who read my blog are not Flash/Flex developers, but you might know somebody who is, so if you know anyone with experience in that area, send them my way! We might even be willing to pay for relocation costs if they were out of the area.


Company: mediaRAIN
Job Title: Flash/Flex Developer
Description: mediaRAIN is looking to add strong developers to our team here in Utah Valley. Our passion is to build the Internet's leading user experiences in RIA. A Senior Flash Developer can lead project development establishing architecture and standards and implementing successful user experiences.

Compensation:
Salary dependent on experience: $60,000 - $90,000

Responsibilities:
* Interact with clients, exploring and advising technological possibilities,
discovering solutions that fit their goals
* Architect and develop large-scale Flash & Flex applications implementing
design patterns appropriately
* Write clean, structured object-oriented code with change and reuse in mind
* Lead and teach team members throughout a projects life cycle

Qualifications:
* Self-learning and motivated perspective - seeks excellence
* Ability to work in an agile development environment
* Well established as an experienced object-oriented programmer
* Comfortable developing in Flex's Eclipse-based environment
* Organized and efficient, hard working with high attention to detail
* Midichlorian count must be "through the roof"
* Preference will be given to applicants who have soccer skills, foosball skills and/or are familiar with the proper usage of the "W", "A", "S", and "D" keys

please reply to Bryce Barrand at bryceb at mediarain dot com

Victory

The indoor soccer team I play on finally got a victory last night! The game was super late, 11:25 pm, and the other team didn't have any substitutes, while they did have one big guy who didn't have physique of a soccer player, and he didn't like to run.

The final score was 6-3, and the 5 of the 6 goals were scored by our superstar brazilian striker Gui.

Our record is now 1-2, so lets hope we keep it up :)

An inspiring story

I've been following Oscar Pistorius for a while, and when I heard about the latest ruling allowing him to compete for a spot on the Olympic team, I got excited. You can read and watch his story here.

Sam's First Primary Talk

Sam "gave" his first primary talk last week. We practiced for days before, and recorded a few of his practice sessions which went awesome! He really did well at home, when he was just in front of Marcia, Lucas and I.
But then came the day to actually give the talk, and things didn't go very well. Sam froze, and Marcia had to give the whole thing. We were pretty sad, because as you can see from the video, he really had it down.


For those of you who don't understand Portuguese, here is what Sam said:
Hi kids. The families from the scripture, my family helps me be strong. Nephi, had a bow and arrow, which broke. Everyone got hungry. Nephi prayed. Nephi made another new bow and arrow. Then he gave a lot of food to everyone. Everyone was happy. I Sammy will be good. I will pray to heavenly Father just like Nephi. I'm also going to listen to my Mom and Dad speak, and I will be obedient. I will listen to Jesus also. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

Trip to CO

We had a great trip to Colorado. It started with a drive out to CO on our 5th anniversary! Due to the occasion, I wanted to take Marcia to a nice restaurant. We found this cool little Italian place in Grand Junction, and were very happy to do something special.

It was $40 for the food, and we split the meal, and the proportions were insanely small. By the way, the meat is hidden under the parsley. It was good food though.

Lucas had an insanely incredible blowout. Here is the onesie that we just chucked because it was not salvageable. This was gross city. Thank goodness that both Marcia and I were there, so we could team clean this one.


Once in Colorado, Sam wasted no time getting into trouble with Jensen. They snuck away and filled up the tub and threw in a bunch of junk, like statues, apples, cups, starfish etc.

One of the highlights of the trip was seeing my little brother Don, who just got back from Iraq. We got to play Frisbee in the park for a while, and I was in heaven.

Here is us at the Denver zoo.

These little monkeys were teeny tiny. The bigger monkey is about the size of my fist.
About 65% of the time Sam and Jensen got along really well. And Sam wanted to hold his hand.
We had a great experience doing Lucas' blessing at my parents home. It was a very spiritual experience. Dad gave a great testimony, mom played the piano well, and it just turned out very nice.


It was great to spend some time with Tiana as well, after she got home from her mission. She was real excited to play with all the nieces and nephews.



On the way home, I missed the turn, and we drove an extra 110 miles. Aaargh. We didn't get in until after midnight. It was a miserable close to an amazing weekend.