XR Trading

 Aaron started looking around for a new job at the beginning of the year. He had been at Raytheon for 8 years and felt like it was time for a change. After several months of interviews, he found himself drawn to high frequency trading companies. They use the same kind of technology (FPGAs) that he has been working with, so it would be the same kind of work but in the finance industry instead of defense. 

One head hunter reached out to him about a job with XR Trading. Aaron initially said he wasn't interested because the company only had a few reviews on the job search sites, and they weren't great. They convinced him to interview anyway, which involved a zoom call, a rapid IQ test, an at home technical test, a technical interview, and then a cultural interview with the whole leadership team. The technical interview happened while we were in McLean at my parents house- he barricated himself in Blake's room with a bunch of referece sheets he printed off. 

Aaron was very impressed by them from the moment he was in contact with them. They ran things really well, and everyone he talked to was super confident, friendly, and laid back. They are a small company, around 100 people, with a hardware engineering team of 5 people. They are headquartered in Chicago, but most of their team is remote. Their small team is very competent but chill.  

Aaron was offered a job at XR a couple days after we got home from the beach. It launched quite the emotional roller coaster. The first day he was ecstatic, just over the moon excited. But then he started thinking about leaving his current job and wondering it was the right thing to do. He scoured the internet for other red flags and found some people on reddit saying things they disliked about the company. He coped by doing a researching frenzy and talking to Mary a lot over our Payson trip. The stress manifested itself unexpectedly- he was super sleepy all the time, and he got nauseous every now and then. This is interesting to me because these things used to happen to him in college but went away when we moved to Arizona. I thought that he started being able to stay awake through sacrament meetings because he was getting more sleep, but now we think that it is because working is less stressful for him than school was. 

Anyway, he decided to accept the job! He was still pretty stressed for the first few weeks when he was trying to get up to speed on everything, but now that he has gotten into the swing of things he's back to being his non-stressed self.  

His first day of work with the freaking huge monitors they sent him

Aaron loves working from home, and his impressions of the team have all been correct. He always chafed about all the regulations and paperwork that came with working for a huge government contractor. The process for getting new software at Raytheon was to fill out a bunch of paper work and then wait weeks or months hoping that it gets approved. At XR, he asked for it on a Slack channel, and they had it installed 10 minutes later. There are fewer meetings, faster turnaround times, less waiting around for aprovals. It is a better fit for him. 

About a month into it, they flew him out to Chicago for a week to meet people in person and see the office. It was a good thing for him to go to check it out. He said that there were lots of people there who came into the office for the first time in over a year to meet him. It confirmed to him that he's not missing too much being a remote employee since not much goes on at the office. They took him out to dinner, and he enjoyed exploring Chicago. 

Look at this city slicker

What did we do at home while Aaron was gone for a week, you might ask? Well, it looked a lot like this:

We ate quesadillas for dinner and wore underwear on our heads (well that last part was just Elliot)

Our countdown chain! The end of the chain is Christmas, with Daddy coming home, Thanksgiving, and Elliot's birthday featured along the way. Annie is in a phase where she angrily says things like "But how LONG is 3 days" so the chain has helped her. Annie had cried the whole way home from the airport after we dropped daddy off. The chain definitely helped her wrap her mind around when he was coming back. 

This water fountain was the most fun part of the playground. My kids were all drenched from the homemade splash pad. We made it outside and around other people every day which was good for my sanity. We also started watching a show called Phineas and Ferb during dinners which helped a lot with morale. 

Daddy is home! His fanclub talked him into sitting in the backseat with them. We sure love him and are glad that he normally works upstairs where we can drop in and say hi throughout the day.

This is probably the place to mention that Aaron got called to be a counselor in the bishopric in July. He was only in for a couple of weeks before we took off on vacation and missed church for 4 weeks in a row. To avoid feeling like Jonah running away from his calling, Aaron zoomed into his bishopric meetings from assorted balconies and bedrooms in 4 different states. 

Between the new job and the new calling, it has definitely been a time of big changes for Aaron. He's pulling it off well!

All the Madera Canyon Trips Blurred to One

 This year was an unusually wet one- the third wettest on record! This meant that there was actually water up in Madera Canyon- the most I have ever seen, and more than enough to make a few swimming holes!

This is my girl that says yes to any adventure. She has an enthusiastic love of life. 

Introducing... Nature Baby! He was comletely delighted to be practically naked and crawling on gravel. 

Nature baby surveys his kingdom while his knights frolic around

Annie and I went behind the waterfall. We both regretted it. 

Another day, another swimming hole! This is up the creek before the waterfall. Someone dammed up several parts of the creek to make swimming holes. This one has a natural waterslide and plenty of boulders to scamper on, making it one of our favorite spots. 

Every time we go up to the canyon, I find myself thinking "why don't I come here every week?"

Nature baby was pleased to be reuinited with his log throne

This last picture was November, a few months later when the green was starting to fade, and the weather was getting cooler. We weren't supposed to be swimming that day, but Annie managed to get drenched nonetheless. 

We Bribed A Mexican Police Officer

 We finally got to take Stephen's family to Rocky Point with us! The Nelsons joined us as well. 

Elliot informed me that the decorations were the best he's ever seen in a rental house. They certainly had a lot going on with lots of bright colors

A couple of beauties posing on one of our three balconies

Isaac spent the trip trying to eat as much sand as possible. Changing his diapers was... interesting that weekend. 

I have photogenic children.

Really photogenic. 

I love digging around during low tide. We found lots of sand dollars and a huge blue crab that Stephen stepped on! It did this big claw dance while running away that was hilarious. 

I got to spend some early mornings with this guy. Little Brady Nelson was on a similar sleep (or lack thereof) schedule, so at least we had good company on our early morning beach walks. 

Rain rolling in during sunrise

Watching the waves roll in

This gal loves holding my hand

Elliot and Bree both learned how to snorkel! The problem was that we only had one snorkel set, so it was hard taking them out to the point where there were cool things to see. I tried wearing just goggles, but it was hard to keep up with them. Bree and I did see a baby shark, which I thought was awesome but Bree thought was terrifying. She stayed away from the rocky part where the interesting critters are after that, which was a shame. There were plenty of yellow and silver fish to see. The snorkeling was such a hit that we continued at home in the pool. 

We had the interesting experience of a windstorm knocking our power and water out while we were there. We called our Airbnb host, and luckily it came back on fairly quickly. 

One of the most dissapointing things about Mexico is the ice cream selections at their grocery stores. I was trying hard to load the fridge with frozen treats, but there were shockingly few options. We had to buy individually wrapped ice cream bars and these pencil popsicles. They make up for this by selling mangoes cut into flowers out of coolers on the beach. 

It was Stephen and Claudia's anniversary while we were there! They picked this BBQ place to go to for dinner. I was hoping for some mexican fusion BBQ, but it was pretty standard- but yummy- American BBQ. We were the only customers there that night, and the owner brought us out a big thing of honey sopaipilla for a free desert which was super nice of him. We also ate at Pollo Lucas and Barrelito, my old favorites. 

A boy with his seaweed

We were super careful about following the speed limit while we were in Mexico because we have heard stories of other people getting speeding tickets. People were passing us the whole way from rocky point to the border town of Sonoyta. There was a total speed trap when we  got to Sonoyta, and a cop pulled us over. He told us that we were going to have to pay $150 for a speeding ticket, and that we would have to pay in cash either on the spot or at the police station. We told him we didn't have that much cash so we would go sort it out at the police station. He had us follow him for a block, then pulled over again and was like "ok, how much cash do you have, you can just pay here and not have to go to the station." We didn't want to spend hours at the police station, so we just gave him some cash, he took the ticket back, and we went on our way. Totally ridiculous. I walked away with a greater appreciation for American institutions. 

Annie Ballerina

 I was going to put Annie in a low key prechool co-op this year. That kind of fell apart, so I signed her up for ballet lessons once a week instead. She gets plenty of social interaction between volleyball, playgroup, and having friends over to play. I appreciate having an extra year where there is one less place to be- I like our relaxed schedule. 

This picture accurately sums up Annie's feelings about being a ballerina. The clothes? The shoes? The buns? She is so there for all that. 

Unfortunately her hair is short and fine and very hard to put into a bun. I'm working on it!

Annie's absolute favorite part of dance class is when they take turns leaping over these stuffed cats. One of the cats always falls over, so she stops every single time to try to get it to stand up again. She also loves freeze dance with the ribbons. At first she was super quiet and mostly observed everyone without moving very much. Despite that, she came home gushing about how fun it was every week. She has gotten more comfortable over the past few months, and now she goofs off and I have to give her the evil eye from the sidelines to get her to participate. Oh well, she loves it. 

The dance studio has a policy where you can make up missed classes by attending other classes at the studio. We got to go to a couple weeks of gymnastics to make things up. She liked it, but says her heart still belongs to ballet. It did lead to a fun day of gymnastics at home. 

Payson and Geode Hill

Mary planned a fall trip to the mountains and invited us and Stephen's family to come along. It was oh so nice having someone else do all the planning, especially since it was the weekend after we got back from our big trip. We shared a house with Stephen's family that had a 3 level air conditioned tree house! Sadly no pictures were taken of the awesome treehouse and its triple bunk bed. Elliot and Annie got to sleep in it. 

A herd of cattle wandered through the yard

Mary stayed at the house we stayed at with her a couple years ago. For some reason they took the zip line down, but the swings and treehouse there were still played constantly!

Somehow they found out that there is a hill right near where we were staying that has tons of geodes on it. Andrew, ever the minecraft enthusiast, used his own money to buy a pick ax to facilitate a geode adventure. This was a huge hit. 

Geodes abounded! each kid filled up a bag of geodes. Our backyard now has them dispersed among the gravel. Andrew gave Elliot the biggest one he found, and it has a place of honor by the boulder. 

Geode hill! We found out that dropping heavy rocks on them was faster than using the pick ax. Stephen got to be the designated boulder dropper, a role that he fulfilled with strength and grace. 

Boulders may have been faster, but the pick ax was cooler

Annie and Isaac were still a little jet lagged and woke up way too early every morning. I got to have some good mornings with them wandering around outside to let everyone else sleep in to a normal hour. 

Annie making a "dirt porcupine" at 6 am

I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the sleepy mornings wandering the forest with my little ones. I played some music on my phone, and we explored all the little things. 

Another huge hit of the trip- the Water Wheel hike! This place is the bomb. It's a lovely scramble over rocks with natural water slides along the way. Even better- Mary stayed back to watch Isaac for us, so we didn't have to carry him!

I carried this girl a lot of the way instead. Not necessarily an upgrade from Isaac in terms of weight, but she is a better conversationalist. We took up the rear together. 

Our biggest regret was not having swim suits. Most of the kids decided to just get wet anyway.

Elliot tried to keep his pants dry by rolling them way up. It's a great look. Eowyn is about to go down one of the slides here, there is a video of it at the end of the post. 

Not having shoes or thigh coverings didn't stop the lad from climbing to the cool wedged cube

My handsome man

A couple of Blood Brothers. I love how they are in the same pose here

After a long day of hiking, we roasted marshmallows at Mary's rental house. Everyone except Elliot that is- he fell asleep on the couch and refused to wake up for marshmallow roasting. 

Rare footage of Elliot napping. We were playing hard! Even sleepier than Elliot was Aaron. Aaron got a job offer from a company called XR Trading right before this trip and had to decide if he was going to accept it or not. This was intensely stressful for him. The stress manifested itself by him falling asleep at 6pm every night and every time we sat on couches. It was good that Mary was there to play devil's advocate for him and help him talk through all the factors of the job change. More on that to come later. 

Here's some video clips from the trip. It was a good time!