Archive for the 'Parenting' Category

Las year, my family and many of our friends spent the Memorial Weekend participating in the filming of the Modest Mouse “Little Motel” video. Cody (then 5 yrs old) had a starring role in it. Pretty cool, huh!?

It was a long weekend of shooting and we all had an excellent time staying up all night watching Reno native writer/director Justin Francis work his magic. A Flickr slideshow is here.

A year later, Modest Mouse is playing at the Grand Sierra Resort on Tuesday 5/27 the whole Twelve Horses crew is going to support and draw attention to GabrielsLife.org. Modest Mouse is an amazing band in the first place, but this whole experience has made them even more amazing with the attention it has brought to Reno and to GabrielsLife.org.

The Backstory:

Many of you know my best friend / local attorney Matt Francis. We met on the UNR ski team back in 1988. His younger brother Justin Francis is an amazing music video producer/videographer having done music videos for artists like Gwen Stefani, Alicia Keyes, Mariah Carey, the Hives and on and on and on….they guy never stops shooting videos and commercials.

Anyway, he pitched Modest Mouse on shooting a video of their song “Little Motel” in the town he grew up in, Reno Nevada with a script he had written. He asked Cody to play a role in it. If you’ve not seen the video, now would be a good time to watch it so the rest of this blog post makes sense!

For obvious reasons, the subject of the video was difficult at best. My wife and I had our reservations about having our son play a role in such a tragic story. I mean, would you? Every time I watch this video I tear up and cry. If you made it through this video and are still dry-eyed, you’re definitely not a parent!

Leilani, Twelve Horses’ Social Marketing Manager, talked my wife and I in to letting Cody doing the video. I work closely with Leilani every day and she’s been a tremendous role model in my life. If you have had the wonderful opportunity to get to know her, then you are undoubtedly aware of the tragedy in Leilani’s life due to Hydrocephalus and the amazing leadership and courage that has led her to launch GabrielsLife.org. If you’ve never read this story or met Leilani, please take a moment to do so and sup[port this organization. Also, there’s a great story that the local newspaper did here: http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080129/LIV/801290331.

Now it’s almost a year later and I’m reading the hundreds and hundreds of comments of how deeply moved people are by this video Justin wrote.

Our family is absolutely proud of being part of a project that has reminded so many people how precious life is and how powerful connections are. Through family, friends and the online social media, tragedy, writing, creativity and friendly helping people have all had an opportunity to inspire each other. That’s cool.

If you’re in Reno Tuesday, I hope to see you at the Modest Mouse concert! We’ll all be there!

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Today was our last “official’ day on the hill. Cleaning out the ski locker all the way down to the spent duct-tape balls, empty Hotties wrappers and that broken goggle lens from January got me all teary-eyed.

This was a ski season I’ll never forget. BIG snow in Tahoe. And more BIG snow in Tahoe. New fat skis. New thooperphat skis. Seven a.m. KAAAHHHBOOOOMS as avvy control woke us up to unreal powder.

Dozens of days of good times on the hill with dozens of family, friends and colleagues. Hundreds and hundreds of runs with Logan and Cody. Logan can ski everything now. Cody’s almost there. It’s an unreal feeling to not have to wait for the kids anymore!

The free wifi in the lodge at Alpine Meadows made it a little easier to work/ski/work/ski. And the 450+ inches of snow made it easy to ski and ski and ski and ski.

Sad to see it end, but it’s time to get back on the bikes. Here’s some video clips from today with the LoganCody knuck’n around the hill. ‘Till next season!

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Cody decided to cut his hair. And then mom did, too!

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Last weekend the LoganCody competed in a cool little air contest at Alpine Meadows. Props to Justin at Snowbomb.com for organizing and dealing with the usual parent BS. (Rant: why do parents CARE so much about prizes for their 6 yo!? Some parents were idiots because this event wasn’t judges like the Olympics…EVERYONE was a winner and that seemed to upset a few Type-A “my-kid-is-fifth-in-the-nation” dorks. Go to Killington then…sheesh!)

Anyway, for those of you who know the little snots, there’s a cool video of the contest. Photos here. Cody’s in the red pants and green sweatshirt. Logan is in all black pants, green sweatshirt. He’s got the yellow Reno Bike Project sticker on top of his helmet. They all got Shane McConkey, Tanner Hall and Johnny Moseley huck dolls and were stoked!

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Holland Project is a very cool all-ages art and music initiative made by and for the young people in Reno and beyond. Kids are introduced to all kinds of diverse music and art, workshops and community service work. In my opinion, Holland picks up on the “real world” where the school district has to leave off.

Volunteers and donors make it all possible… check out Holland’s event calendar for April and May and support what you can.

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I’m a 3rd generation skier raising a 4th generation. Just how many generations before skiing starts to become embedded within our DNA?

Over the last three weeks, Reno-Tahoe’s seen several winter storms. As I write this, it’s cold outside and all the Tahoe peaks are covered in the good white stuff. This year will be Logan’s (8) third year on the Alpine Meadows ski team. Cody (5) will be starting his first year. Yay! Last year, Logan played hooky from school about 13 days to hit every day of ski team plus the few powder days we had. I expect Logan and Cody will be missing a similar amount of school again this year.

Skiing for us is a lot of time spent together as a family. (See post from 2004.) It means 50+ days of being together. The 50+ days of 1.5 to 2.5 hours in the car together is where Logan gets a massive amount of homework and reading. It means a lot of discipline getting out of bed at 6:30am to be on the road by 7:30am to be in the lodge by 8:30am booting up and ready for 9am ski team start. It means a lot of lodge-time playing foosball, wrestling, eating, goofing off and hanging out with friends and other family. It means a lot of time riding the chairlifts with my kids and good wife talking and singing/making up stupid songs. And, of course, it means skiing! Whether the snow is great or the snow sucks, at least we’re skiing!

Skiing also introduces my kids to mentors like Shane McConkey…who my kids idolize as an “educational role model”. Shane can read. He can also ski, too!

Here’s a video of Cody from last January (2007). He was 4 at the time…about a month before his 5th birthday. Juxtaposed to that is a video of Paul Dugan — the Washoe County School District’s Superintendent (who kicks ass BTW) — giving Logan a reading award when he was in kindergarten 2 years a go.

The point: ski for literacy <grin>.

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Photographer Amy Beck of the Reno Gazette-Journal was at the Reno Rodeo the night Logan and Cody went Mutton Bustin’ and she snagged some killer photos and audio for this slideshow. There’s a few shots of Logan and Cody in the Mutton Bustin’ section (about 2/3rds thru).

Stay tuned for the audio/video we took.

Link to RGJ.com: Rodeo Kids Slideshow

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It’s mighty depressing to realize that my five-year-old boy Cody is by birth a better dancer than I am and that I shall more than likely be asking him for dancing lessons before he hits puberty. The Chrome Transport booth at the Tour de Nez got Cody’s groove on. Rock on son…

Technorati tags: reno, nevada, cycling, chrome, tourdenez, cody, codylaplante

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