Before there was fear factor on TV and before reality TV was even around.  You have our family.

In 1998, our family started a new gift giving tradition that some people call "White Elephant".  Its basically a pool of gifts and each person draws a number.  The first person chooses a gift and is stuck with it, but the next person may steal their gift or pick another.  The last person is in the best position.

Most of the gifts this year were pretty decent.  Barb, (Christmas Boss) just by chance got a couple of really crappy gifts and joke gifts.  One of which was some S.P.A.M and some pickled pigs feet.

Well after that I think my brother and my Uncle Dennis talked about how he would eat them for money.

This soon turned into all of the Brat Patrol (Me, Noel , Kevin , and Dan ) wanting a bunch of money to eat the pickled pigs feet.

I am sure some people really eat these things, but they stink like formaldahyde and vinegar or . . . Read More..

It was the end of my senior year of high school, I was 18 -years-old. A little background: I moved to Springfield in October of my senior year because my dad got transferred from his job. I was pretty fine with the move because for one thing, I had moved alot in my life, I didn't care for the small town of Kirksville, Missouri we moved from, and I loved meeting new people.
I was sitting at home bored one Friday afternoon and thought I would call my girlfriend Julie and see what she was up to. At this point I had never met Jeff, but he answered Julie's phone with "Hi, you have reached Boston Market, Julie speaking." I was really puzzled and told him I had the wrong number. Jeff laughed and told me he would get Julie on the phone for me. When Julie answered she told me that her friend Jeff was over and he was joking around. Julie told me she was going to the movies with her boyfriend Jake, and their friend, Jeff, and she invited me to join them.
When Julie . . . Read More..

I also went to the Rifle River on some of these adventures! One of my fondest memories of these adventues was playing Zombie Tag. I'm not sure who made-up the game or how it came to exist, but it IS AWESOME. One of the best versions of tag...in my opinion. It goes like this, on person is the "Zombie" and they must tag the other players. But, the person that is IT, or that is the "Zombie" cannot run. Of course everyone else can run from the Zombie.
Anytime that a person is tagged by the "Zombie" is now also IT and a Zombie. Now, this means there are 2 people that are IT. These two "Zombies" can now work as a team to tag/touch the remaining people that can run and are not it. The number of Zombies continues to grow as more people are tagged, until there is but 1 person remaining that is "Alive" or not "Zombified"/IT. I can't remember how the next person that is IT at the beginning of the game is decided, but I think the person that was tagged first is now the lone "Zombie"...if . . . Read More..

I was drifting through Rifle River memories and I came upon a great piece of the whole experience. A young man, maybe a little older than myself that went by the name: "Nathaniel". This guy was great. He looked kind of like a mixture between Donkey Lips from "Salute Your Shorts" and the actor that played as Macaulay Culkin's character's older brother from the movie "Home Alone". He was not all that bright as I recall and was kind of a Mook. But, it was fun to goof around with him and say is name in that certain way, "Nah-THAAAN-Yul". Anyway, just though of him...wonder what he's up to these days?!...

This one time I was hanging out with my family on vacation at my grandma Renne's house and my dad wanted to cook dinner.

He was rummaging around in the fridge trying to find ingredients and he came across a 15 or 20 year old lime juice in my grandma's fridge.

We cracked up so bad at this. Grandma still deny's just how old it really was.