Snowboarding in Colorado with Riley

For Christmas, I got Riley a used snowboard from Craigslist and he and I went snowboarding in Colorado. I had heard that giving experiences was better than giving stuff. We left our house at 4:00 AM and there was a few inches of snow here which is really scary since there isn't any snow removal equipment here. It took us a long time to get to the airport but we made it. When we got to Colorado, they had record low temperatures and tons of snow. Fortunately, we were prepared and had brought a whole lot of warm clothes to wear.

We went with some of our friends from our church (Darrell and his son Jared) and despite the freezing and occasionally blizzard-like conditions we had a pretty good time. Unfortunately, large amounts of powder isn't great for a beginning snowboarder but Riley was (mostly) brave.

In the end, I think it is true that an experience is better than stuff. We had fun and I hope that Riley will remember that time for the rest of his life.

The end of snow?

My friend Randy sent me this article from 2000:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html


I thought it was fun with the recent blizzards and other major snow storms all over the place. My favorite part of the article was this part:

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

Hopefully the guy who wrote this article and the scientists he quoted are all much happier now that it appears to be snowing just fine.

An idea on being a better person

OK, so I had to teach a lesson in church last week and it was about pride. I was basing the lesson off a great talk about pride which you can find here:

http://lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/pride-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng

It is probably obvious that the goal of the lesson was to not be prideful and I realized that not being prideful is a pretty good idea because it actually makes you happier. Doing that, however, is pretty challenging and I thought I would illustrate why with this little diagram:

The problem is that balancing ourselves on that point of humility is almost impossible. On one side of the hill, we have the envy. This is where short people like me live. On the other side we have the "I'm better than you" type of pride. That is where the tall people live. It is really difficult because there are constantly things pushing us from one side to the other. That is unless we are really pitiful or really awesome and then we just camp out on one side.

Now, don't fear because I thought of a solution to the problem. Well, OK, the person who gave the talk actually thought of the solution but I thought of an analogy that helped me understand the solution. Think of balancing a stick on your finger. Have you ever tried that? If you have, you might know that if you look down and concentrate on where your finger is, you can't balance the stick. However, if you simply focus on the top of the stick, you'll find that you are much better able to balance the stick. I compare this to concentrating too much on ourselves. If we TRY to be humble by focusing on ourselves, then we can almost never do it. However, if we focus outside ourselves (specifically, if we focus on helping other people) then actual humility is within our grasp. This is like looking at the top of the stick (the furthest point away from ourselves) instead of our finger. Anyway, that is it. Now, if I can just start doing better at doing good stuff for other people...

Kynda and Kaydence singing Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

The other day, Rachelle noticed that Kyndall could sing almost all of the words of "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas". It was actually pretty impressive because she actually knows the lyrics better than either of us do. Then it turned out that Kaydence knew the words too so we got the video camera out and recorded them. Kyndall was kind of being a stinker. She just didn't want to hold still.

Why I thought Tangled was a great movie

Yes, Tangled is a Disney musical...and yes, I thought it was awesome. There are several reasons for this. One of the first reasons is that Tangled essentially made Han Solo the main guy. I have a theory that the Han Solo character makes any movie better. Nobody likes a weak guy. Han Solo isn't a weak guy. He is a guy that is a little bit bad but deep down is good and he is a manly guy. Lately, some of the movies I have seen have guys that are not all that manly. No guy wants to be like those guys. That is why chick flicks are generally unpopular with guys. This is all my theory of course. I just thought it was nice to see a Disney prince that was, well, Han Solo.

The other thing I really liked about Tangled was the fact that the animal side kicks didn't talk. That always bugged me a little. The dragon in Mulan was an exception but that was only because Eddie Murphy was funny and because he was supposed the be a sort of spirit thing. All those talking animals are really just annoying...like Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars episode 1.

The other reason I liked it was that the princess wasn't a self absorbed jerk. Ariel...total jerk and rotten daughter. Jasmine...spoiled jerk. Snow White...more or less brainless. Belle...well, I guess she was mostly OK. The princess in Tangled seemed a genuinely nice, albeit a little sheltered, girl. She was just likable.

The other thing I really liked about it was that it didn't rely on potty humor. It just didn't need to go there and that was actually pretty impressive. Dreamworks tends to put a lot more of that in their movies. Not that I don't laugh at some of the potty humor in other movies. I am a guy after all. However, I am always much more impressed when they can manage to make a good movie that doesn't rely on it so much.

Aside from those things the music was good although not as memorable as some of the other movies. It didn't really have that signature song that sticks with you like "Beauty and the Beast" but the music was comparable to other Disney movies. In the end, it was just simply a very good movie and you should go see it.

A video with our photographer friend

I shot a video last weekend for a friend of ours, Kristen Duke. It was fun to go do. Kristen is a mostly self-taught photographer here in the area that has a good eye and can really make people look good. She also does a good job of snapping off photos when you aren't looking. These candid photos are often my favorite because they show something different that the smiling at the camera photos. I honestly get a little tired of the smiling at the camera photos because after a while, they all look about the same and they lack real personality. Anyway, here is the video I made for her.

Kristen Duke Photography Session from Jayson Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Riley's controversial Reflections contest video

If you have seen Rachelle's post, then you know that Riley and Kaiya recently participated in the school Reflections contest. They won in their categories (photography for Kaiya and video for Riley) which isn't totally surprising because they were the only ones to enter those categories. They have got a lot better though and I think this year they have a chance to go a little further. Anyway, the thing I wanted to mention was that it turns out that Riley's video is a little bit controversial. See if you can spot the controversial part (hint: it's near the end)



Did you spot it? It was the part where Riley took the plastic bags and threw them in the trash. The controversy was in the fact that he didn't appear to throw them in the recycling bin. Now, just so you know, we usually save the plastic bags for use with other things. However, I have to admit that we don't do this 100 percent of the time and I also have to admit that we often save the plastic bags because they make great trash bags for throwing away disposable diapers. I suppose that this makes us fairly rotten people in the eyes of some. That is actually fine with me. I'll admit that I don't feel like I have a moral obligation to recycle (even though I think it is a good idea). To me, being a good person has very little to do with whether you recycle or not but much more to do with how you treat your fellow human beings. If you had to choose, would you rather have a kid that tries to do nice things to others or one that always remembers to recycle? I would take the nice kid every time...even if he does throw away a few plastic bags every now and then.