In this personal vlog, the narrator, a farmer and parent, recounts a weekend snowboarding trip taken with his teenage sons and his younger daughter Lily. He frames the outing as a deliberate break from the repetitive farm routine to nurture family dynamics. The video details teaching Lily to snowboard, the narrator’s attempt to demonstrate that he still has his snowboarding skills, and the collective experience of riding lifts and runs together. Throughout the day, moments of nostalgia surface as he recalls his own past snowboarding with his partner Rebecca, and he observes his children’s growth and confidence. The narrative culminates in a reflective insight: recognizing and appreciating “the good old days” while they are happening, rather than only in hindsight. He shares this realization as a lesson for viewers to be present and value fleeting family moments before they become memories.
Chapters
I love our farm, but sometimes we've got to break away to save the farm, to build family dynamics, to nurture the family, which is in the end more important than the farm. That's why we farm, for the family. The big kids, the teens, wanted me to take them snowboarding. I've snowboarded over 25 years ago and was pretty good. The boys have been once. Lily hasn't been, has been zero. So I thought this would be a perfect get away, get out of our element, have a fun bonding experience with just the teens. And I'm hoping I still got it so I can show off a little bit, dominate a little bit in a good way, in a good way, in a good way. And by the end of the day, I realized something from that day that I must, and probably you need to apply to this moment in your life. Just wait, let's get to it. Happy day. Most days it's the same chore. Over and over again. And what's the project today? And we get stuck in certain roles and get stuck doing certain things, and we just get in a routine. Today we're hitting pause on that and juggling our minds, working our bodies, spinning. Just, it's an escape. First run, it's Lily's first run. We pretty much went to the top of the mountain. I imagine she's gonna fall a lot. When you learn to snowboard, you fall a lot, and we'll see if she's got what it takes to just get back up and keep going until you finally get it. Here you are. You're gonna— yep, that's good, that's good. So set it sideways to stop. There you go. But lean back when you do it. See how you're catching an edge right there? That's going to send you head over your heel. So try to lean back on your heels. Okay, you want to go that way. Let's cut that way and then lean up the mountain to stop. Okay, or fall. Fall. There you go. There you go. Keep doing that until you can turn. Try to lean to make a turn. Don't hit anybody. Fall before you hit anybody. There you go. That first run, at one point I was thinking, okay, this is my day. And thankfully I'm not old Justin, which would be, hurry up, hurry up, let's go, let's get all the chairs we can, you know, let's get all the rides we can in a certain amount of time for this amount of money. I was like, okay, this is going to be our day. Go 10 feet, stop for 2 minutes, go another 10 feet. And I was okay with that. The boys went on ahead of us and even lapped us at one point, and I just figured that's how our day was going to be. When they lapped us and caught up to us again, they kind of hung out with us. I don't know if Lily was getting a little better or what, or they had gotten their run in and felt good. It was neat. We all rode the chairlift together. Second run with Lily, oh my gosh. Something changed. Something clicked. She improved exponentially. She went from being out of control, falling every 5 to 10 feet, to actually cruising. I was so proud of her and so impressed because you never know how somebody's gonna do, you know, trying something brand new, falling a lot. She got back up. She wasn't deterred, and she just sent it, as they would say. And probably by the, by the third run, I was getting this shot on my phone. Like, she was smoking. Watching her grow and improve and gain a new skill like that, and seeing my boys doing that was just so neat. For one, it was nostalgic. Rebecca and I used to go snowboarding and we really loved it. And we see that in the older boys and now in Lily. And it's just— it was special. Best part about that is she was so reasonably speedy that we actually ended up all staying together. We didn't split. We didn't divide and conquer as we oftentimes do on this farm. We rode the lifts together, we went down together. Sure, the boys got ahead of us. Sure, I got ahead of the boys a couple of times, but we would just wait in certain areas, and it wasn't terribly long, it wasn't annoying. So it was cool how we were just together and having fun together. It's a rare event in this big family, and there is sort of two families— the older teen and then the much younger ones, 5, and, and then Gideon at 12. So it's good to nurture that into the family, the more mature end and have some undistracted moments away from the kids and the little kids and away from the farm. There's one big question we're about to answer: me versus the boys. Do I still got it? And then we'll talk about the revelation I had in the evening. You know, you go down the mountain a certain way. You go down right foot forward or left foot forward, which is regular, right foot forward, which is goofy. And both Lily and I were goofy. She was so good. I, I actually would ride switch a lot of the day. Which is backwards to the way you're used to doing it. And I could keep up with her, and it was fun, and it was a challenge, challenge for me. And it kind of gave me an incognito with the boys. They kind of saw that maybe I was struggling a little bit. Well, it's time to turn that board around. Let's show them the old man still got it. I think Jonah— I like his confidence— thought he could get me. You know, all he's— mostly what he saw of me was keeping up with Lily. I'd give him a glimpse here and there, but I think he thought he might have me. And parts of me wondered, he's crazy enough, maybe he would have me, you know. I hope he doesn't kill himself or dislocate another hip. I didn't let up. I gave it my best. I dominated. I dominated. I have more experience. I'm older. But I wanted to show the kids that one, I've still got it. And so then there's that physical respect. I wanted to show them that you can age— they think I'm the oldest person in the world— and still do cool things, active things. It showed the importance of just what they see in me trying to stay fit. And then I think it's something that, oh, that's cool, you know, that's cool, look at him, we didn't even know this, and this, this guy can snowboard. He's lived a lot of life. So maybe it gives me a little bit of a respect point. Does it? Felt like— felt good. We showed that Lily could do hard things. We bonded together in fun, uh, with with the teenagers, and I showed them that I still have it. But there's one more thing. It happened after the slope. It happened when we were getting home, and I was winding down, and I thought— I actually crashed one time at the end. Think it was the last round, I hurt my knee. And I was thinking, that was worth it, because that was an absolute perfect day. And I thought, that was a good old day. And then I remembered that clip from the last scene of The Office. I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. So I think about that, and I realized I had a good old day. I may not have realized it right in the moment. We were fighting soggy feet, the knee injury, the cold, whatever, you know, getting the tickets. You just think about the problems in the moment. But I realized it that evening, and I was thankful that I realized that was a good old day. And I went on further to think, if that's a good old day, then that means I'm in the good old days. My teens are getting older. Sure enough, Jonah, Josiah, they're gonna get involved in something. They're gonna get more and more individual lives. And these good old days are gonna be gone. So just knowing and realizing that helps me appreciate that. I hope it will for you too. Happy day.
