Everyone hopes their kids to be the next big thing, but fail to draw the line as to where to stop pushing.  In earlier discussion, there was great debate on Amy Chua's tiger mother parental teaching.  Sure, most Asians excel in academics, arts and sports because their parents push them to be the best in everything and in most cases they do surpass their peers.  But when should a parent stop trying to push greatness out of their child?  Sometimes, although as a parent it is not something that we would want to admit, your child is just a complete failure and cannot become great or even decent due to their low learning curve and lack of motor skills.  With the popularity of snowboarding, every parent wants their kid to be the next Shaun White and are pushing their kids to start early and to hit it hard without regard to the child's safety.  It's great that parents are starting their kids young but only if the child wants to because you cannot force someone to like something that they do not have a passion for.  We have parents taking their kids out as young as 16 months, but if the child enjoys it then kudos to the child and parent for finding something in common to do together.  However, there are the parents that ruin the fun for the child by pushing them and yelling at them for not being good enough like the mother who yelled at her young daughter who was scared to go down the steep mogul trail.  The mother didn't care for her safety but angrily told her to just go down.  There's a difference between pushing someone with no talent to be great versus pushing someone with talent, while it's another thing to be talented but not have the passion to follow through.  Eitherway, you cannot force your passion onto someone else because your child will not enjoy it anymore, if they did at all.  Roman, like many of other kids that I know, his parents sent him to school as early as 2 year old at a cost of 2k a month plus karate, dance, and singing classes because he enjoys it.  If the child enjoys it then encourage and support your child even if they suck horribly because not everyone can be great whether they are born with it or trained.

It was very unfortunate that I was not able to attend the Jib for Japan charity event, but it was still deemed a success and were able to raise over $10,000 in relief funds.  Japanese riders came out to Bear including Olympian Kazu from Japan.  It may not seem much since Japan's recovery will take more than that amount to bring the country back to it's original state, but every little dollar counts.  It is unfortunate to hear Japan was hit by another earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 and another tsunami warning has been issued.  Luckily no one has been reported dead so there's no need to add to the 25,000 body count from the first tsunami.  Japan just can't catch a break, but luckily the people have not lost their senses and resorted to looting unlike in the US.  Whenever something goes wrong, you loot.  Whenever something goes right, you loot.  It was pretty interesting to read an article as to one of the reasons why the Japanese are so orderly was due to the yakuzas.  Despite being thugs and gangsters, the yakuzas hates the act of stealing so they make sure the people do not steal and the reason for that is because the syndicate cannot profit if there is chaos amongst the people.  You may hate the yakuzas for dealing with drugs and prostitution, but without them, the people would be disgraceful as Americans.

One word, EPIC!  Although the overnight snowfall wasn't as much as our first time at Mammoth but it was still an awesome weekend.  The drive up was pretty crazy because the visibility was at a dreadful low due to the snowfall, but we made it to our destination.  The drive up was pretty hectic due to a fire that broke out in Big Pine so we were held back for 4 hours so that pretty much ruined our initial plan of heading up to Mammoth a big early.  The silly part was the local law enforcements were wasting their time escorting everyone through the town even though the fire was far off in the distance.  Later that night our friends unfortunately had their car stuck in the snow near our lodge while they were heading up so that took 2 hours to pull their car out.  Each night we had about 2 ft of fresh snow so it was not bad at all although we did become stuck while running pow runs but at least we had a way out which was to roll over into the groom trails.  We were practicing buttering so we accidentally missed our usually trail and ended up to the next quarter of the mountain.  We took the chance and tried the park, but had to eat it a couple of times because of the kids that fell ahead of us were too dumb to move out of the way upon a fall.  Although running them over or landing on them would definitely teach them a lesson.  I had to end my day a hour early because my butt caught the edge of my little brother's board while getting off the lift.  I was able to board for awhile until the bruise started to develop and the numbness went away then the pain came.  The next day, no one went to the slopes so we ended up making our own personal slope next to our lodge because it had a decent hill with lots of pow.  We ended up boarding there until it was time to head home.

Yummy butter~

So happy to have a handful of crack!

What's funny?  His face!

Out with the old and in with the new!  My little bro updated his goggles to the Smith Scope Pro goggle and personally I felt they could of put in more effort on the design of it because it looks just like any other regular goggle.  My peeve is that with its simplistic look, it is hard to tell by a glance which is the cheap pair of Smith versus the quality pair of Smith.  I spotted an awesome deal from steepforcheap.com for a pair of Oakley Fasten pants and Seattle was kind enough to buy it for me!  What a loyal dog huh?  The pants had a pretty high breathability and waterproofing rating so that's always a plus.  Plus it is well padded and insulated so it is certainly worth the buck. Oakley does make some pretty stylish pants that isn't too much like Nomis. My peeve is the length of the pants is a bit long but then again it is for women and I wear youth sizes so go figure.    This also reminds me, I have not posted the Big Bear trip!

Smith Scope Pro

Oakley Fasten

So I finally got around to putting my board mounts up on the wall.  I purchased a dozen mounts awhile ago but never got around to installing them.  The mounts are one of the cheapest priced mounts on the market because mounts like HangTime and others would cost you about $20  or more a mount.  We have too many boards to spend that amount of money on each mount so anything under $20 a mount is ideal.  The deal offered by Rixon is buy 3 mounts and get one free so that's another incentive to buy.  I ordered white mounts but they ended up sending me black mounts but to rectify their error, they offered me a 40% refund which isn't bad at all.  However, white would of been better, just saying. 

My wall of boards.

Little bro's wall.

Oldest bro's wall.

Older bro's wall although his board did fall down because the anchor didn't hold so the board fell 3 feet straight down on its tail right on tile but no damage so had to use a better anchor to put it up.

I have never been to a SnowJam Show, which I have heard was very similar to Skidazzle but with  a little more to offer even if you don't attend the show.  I was introduced to the SnowJam Card and as a member you are allowed pretty amazing discounts and deals at participating resorts, but keep in mind each resort offers their own deals with membership so don't expect to get the same exact deal at all resorts.  Membership is an annual fee of $18, but what I like about it is because I can get 50% off lift tickets everyday including weekends and holidays with no blackout dates!  Other participating resorts are Mammoth, Park City, Brian Head, Jackson Hole, and coming soon are some BC resorts in Canada.  Most are mainly deals for lodging or rentals but lodging isn't bad either because finding a place to stay can be pretty expensive.  I can't wait for the next storm to hit!

I just booked a cabin out in Big Bear for V Day weekend, vato loco weekend if you know what I mean homes.  The cabin is 1200 square feet with 2 bedroom and 1 bath so it is a pretty decent size.  There is 2 parking spaces and the garage was converted into a game room but that's fine because from the looks of it, we can probably go off road and park on the front lawn.  The game room includes a foosball table, dart, mini basketball, and an indoor jacuzzi.  The cabin pretty much has everything except for a pool table but we can live without it.  By far, this is a better deal than the cabin we got last year which only had 1 bedroom, no games, and only 1 parking space for 500 bucks total.  Whereas, this cabin is for 800 bucks total so it's a pretty good deal if I must say so myself. 

I was correct about the flaws of the K2 Cinch CTC binding, which made the Cinch totally not a cinch to use at all.  The easy in and out system was mediocre at best so K2 has much to learn from Flow if they want to take over Flow's reign in that area.  As for ratchets, K2 needs a lesson from Burton.  Also, it would of been nice if the capstrap was more adjustable but it was only able to be adjusted by the pivot point.

In other news, since the kids are on winter break, the slopes were jammed packed with people everywhere.  It was so jammed packed that Big Bear and Snow Summit ran out of day and half day tickets so their overflow ended up going to Snow Valley.  Although I was used to Snow Summit being empty, I still had a blast messing around on the slopes.  I had a buttery fun good time.  Videos to come once I edit them.

M's big feet getting stuck in my bindings.

Double standard SCHWING!

We actually opened our presents a day early because my parents went to Vegas today and everyone didn't really feel like waiting until Sunday night for them to come home.  Originally we planned on going boarding on Christmas but since my parents took the suv to Vegas, we are out of a car to drive to the slopes.  None of our other cars can carry all our gears and 5 people plus we would need to buy another set of chains for whichever car we would take so we decided to scrap that idea.  I also wanted to go to a archery and shooting range too but I doubt any place would be open on Christmas and I'm sure the guys would rather go out in the desert to shoot for free anyways.  So, all I know that we are going to do tomorrow is go to my cousin's house for lunch then after that is undecided as of now.

Dogs for sale!

Front half of the tree

Tearing it up!

Open sesame~

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!