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Back in March I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Sam. He had recently returned to North Carolina after finishing his graduate program at the University of Colorado. With the blessings of our wives, Sam and I headed to Virginia for a couple days of snowboarding in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sam and I met during our first semester at Appalachian State and ended up rooming together for the next three years, until Kristen finally agreed to marry me and I moved off campus. At ASU — due to location, wonderful student discounts and a general lack of pressing (financial) obligations — the three of us had an opportunity to go snowboarding practically as often as we were up to it; usually three or four times each week. This was the first year I have been able to make it back to the slopes since we left Blowing Rock in 2008. Sam and I spent two days at Wintergreen Resort, near Charlottesville. The weather was perfect, the slopes were fairly well covered and the crowd was relatively sparse.

Knowing how much patience and planning it would take to get any decent snowboarding shots that weren’t cliche, and, more importantly, knowing that I only had two days to enjoy the mountains, I decided to try something different with the camera. As we moved around the mountain, we just pointed the lens in a general downhill direction and held the shutter, blasting off nearly 2,000 still frames of random snowboarding action. I dropped the pictures into iMovie, added a soundtrack and created my first stop-motion video. It’s pretty rough, but you have to start somewhere, right?

Here are a few still shots I pulled out of the reel, in case you missed them.

Earlier this month Kristen and I went to Myrtle Beach for a family baby shower. The trip was especially fun because we had just learned that my cousin Rhett and his wife Sayla are also newly expecting; sparing any early surprises, their baby should be born about six months after Samuel, so we will be able to share stories of baby disasters ( I mean adventures), tips for dealing with strangers who feel compelled to touch the babies and grandmas who refuse to hand the babies back. We may even be able to share toddler clothes, although I’ve got a hunch that their first baby is going to be a girl.

Leaving Sunday afternoon, Kristen and I both felt a little perplexed as we reflected on the fact that we won’t be returning to Myrtle Beach until we have a new baby boy to bring with us. Actually, it was mainly just Kristen that felt perplexed; I was too queasy to drive.