The future of a sacred world is at risk when humans come to harvest the land for their own selfish motives.  Despite the raging controversy, one human is miraculously accepted by the natives and begins learning their ways.  Eventually he sees the error of the humans’ plan and tries to stop the inevitable destruction of the native’s world.

The machines come and cut down trees and the one accepted human is now stuck in the middle, being accused by both sides of his involvement with the other side. He eventually overcomes the controversy by boldly putting his life on the line and stopping the human machines from completely destroying the sacred native world.

Know what movie I’m talking about? That’s right - Ferngully. Takes a little bit of the awesome out of Avatar doesn’t’ it. Ah well.

Cute Little Things that Riley’s been doing lately:

I was measuring a picture frame and Riley runs up to me and says “Wiley Twy!” I hand the measuring tape to him and he goes over to the coffee table and starts measuring it while singing the theme to Handy Manny.  “Hop. up. jump. in.” (In case you don’t know, Handy Manny is a cartoon handyman that fixes everything using his friends, the tools.)

During a storm I tried explaining lightning and thunder to Riley.  He now calls lightning “flashlight” and thunder “big boom”.  Then after he says those (and a combination of other baby burble I don’t understand) he says “Scary Tweeeeees” and makes branches out of his fingers and puts his hands by his forehead.

Riley just found out he can double his enjoyment in life by crossing his eyes.  So if he comes to you and proclaims that he has two mommies or two daddies just look at his eyes and don’t be alarmed.  And yes, it was very weird for us before we noticed his inwardly focused pupils.

One of Riley’s favorite videos is the Backyardagains episode where the characters chase a dragon egg (Eggburt) until it hatches into a dragon and breaks into his favorite song ever towards the end.  At the playground yesterday we were playing with a ball which I threw at Riley who was at the top of the playground.  The ball hit the side of the wall, bounced down each step and slid down the slide opposite Riley.  He chased it all the way down the playground and at the end he said “Eggburt!”.  It really was just like a scene from that show.

We arrived at McDonald’s and walk into the playplace.  Riley immediately says at the top of his lungs, “Hi, I’m your best friend Riley” and commences the fun.

Came across these videos today on an old backup DVD.  Reminded me of how good life is, thought I’d share.

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Holy crap I have to blog this.

For the first time ever Riley and I sat down and played a game of halo together!  It was Shotty Snipe on The Pit (with infinite ammo so he can keep commenting about the fire coming out of the sniper rifle’s barrel).  Anway, on to the point of me blogging this…We were taking turns dying, which for Riley’s turn means me jumping around where he’s looking up at the ceiling until his shots happen in time with my jumps and I die (AKA he “kills the monster”).

Well, when the time came for his third kill on me, I walked towards him on the map and at the EXACT moment I stepped in front of him he threw a plasma grenade and stuck me in the face!!!  I couldn’t believe it.  I think he also no scoped me a couple of times later on in the game. He had a blast and so did I!

Here’s to many more games and fun times with you Riley.

April 3rd, 2009 marks the day I became or at the very least realized I had become a super ultra major mega nerd.  That’s right, I attended and thoroughly enjoyed the Major League Gaming (MLG) Pro Halo 3 multiplayer tournament held at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.  I was invited by probably the only great friend I’ve had since high school (besides the female one I married) Danny Tribbitt.

Friday morning we rendezvoused at the Tribbitt household to set up the Xbox360 and monitor in Danny’s mustang.  Then we drove to York, PA to pick up James at school.  Once we had James we fired up the Xbox and began relentlessly slaying each other, totally ignoring the person taking us to the event.  Haha, that sounds way harsher than it really was.  Danny was rooting us on the whole way.  Actually at one point James and I were 49 to 49 and in our final fire-fight when the screen went black and we realized we were “suddenly” at a gas station in South Jersey and Danny was refueling the car.  Haha, good times.

Once we got there I looked up from the screen and said “Look at all these nerds…” then resumed playing Halo in the car.  Oh, the irony.  The scene there was pretty crazy considering that video games have absolutely no good to offer the world.  I mean I enjoy playing semi-seriously on my seldom down time to relax, but to quote MAD TV, this was a “whole notha level”.  I was awesome seeing the hundreds of Xbox360’s linked up like one huge LAN party.  And watching the pro’s play is something special.

Anyway, I loved it. Pictures on my facebook. Thanks for the experience Danny!

I think I’ve been looking forward to today more than he has.  This most likely due to the fact that you just can’t give a two-year-old that much of a warning that something fun is “coming soon”.  They just don’t understand why they can’t have it now… you know.

Anyway, yesterday a new movie “Monster vs. Aliens” came out and today Riley and I went to go see it!  We had a great time and for nostalgic purposes I’m blogging about it.  When we were walking up to the actual theatre the first thing he said was “Monster’s castle!”.  I love the way his little brain works.  He draws his own conclusions based on the knowledge he possess.  Adults do the same but its just cute how new and innocent he is to the world.  It’s a completely different viewpoint.

We actually got there late but luckily there was another show in 20 minutes later than the one we planned on seeing so we got tickets for that one.  Riley wasn’t feeling too good so he wasn’t really feeling the candy or popcorn.  The soda though, he was all over.  We made it a little over half way through the movie when he started saying “Get out of here”. Haha.  There was too much dialog and plot building and not enough action.  So we ended up leaving which is totaly fine by me, I mean it was his little day so I’m up for whatever.  We left out the exit doors by our theatre which turned out to be the opposite side of the building from where we parked.  No biggie though, Riley loves the outdoors.  Actually the best part of the whole thing was while we were walking back to our van I said “I love you Riley” to which he replied after a moment of silence “I love you daddy”.  It was the most sincere I love you I’ve ever recieved from him.  Good day.

Genius. Pure genius. Now make the flying vee plane!

DO IT: http://www.artbeats.com/podcast

It’s not every day you come across worthy AE tuts.  This site is worth bookmarking fellow mographers!  It’s hosted by Steve Holmes, the Creative Director from Energi Design.  The tuts are setup in partnership with Artbeats so in every tutorial he gives you a great technique on how to creatively use their beautiful footage.

Definitely worth checking out.

This is very interesting.

For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s Christmas Eve flight.

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born. To listen to Colonel Shoup talk about the experience, click here.

In 1958, the governments of Canada and the United States created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD. NORAD inherited the tradition of tracking Santa.

Since that time, NORAD men, women, family and friends have selflessly volunteered their time to personally respond to Christmas Eve phone calls and emails from children. In addition, we now track Santa using the internet. Last year, millions of people who wanted to know Santa’s whereabouts visited the NORAD Tracks Santa website.

Finally, media from all over the world rely on NORAD as a trusted source to provide Christmas Eve updates on Santa’s journey.

So this year on Google Earth and Google online maps you can track Santa’s Christmas Eve route live! You can bet your apples I will be checking in on Santa and his astounding task of reaching every child in the world in one night!

For more info click here.