kumba

another key chain from the family visit to busch gardens in florida. this one is the animal used to represent the roller coaster called 'kumba'. we had a great time here, i remember loving all the rides and the animals they had around. if i remember correctly, though, i think my favorite attraction was the air conditioning...

mackinac bridge

on the trip we took with my family and uncle and aunt, we stopped at the mackinac bridge on our way to the upper peninsula. right next to the bridge is an old military fort that my dad and i got to tour together. it was cool to see the wooden fort walls and the cannons they used to use to keep the bypass into lake michigan safe. the bridge itself was really impressive as well.

snoopy

another key chain from the family visit to mall of america. this mall was amazing- it had six floors with tons of shops on each, it had a movie theater on the seventh floor, and it had a small amusement park right in the center of the mall! at the time the park had a 'peanuts' theme, and even had a snoopy roller coaster in doors. my dad and i even got to go on it! at one of the booths inside the park i got this cool snoopy key chain.

dont bother me

while in utah i taught at a school that had quite a few foreign students. almost all of them had come from south korea. i tried my best to make them welcome and i always enjoyed having them in class- they always had the craziest sense of humor! i must have done something right, because when ever they would return from a visit home, or when they would leave at the end of the year they would always give me stuff from korea. this is one of the gifts i received. its a key chain thats kind of strange: its got a korean symbol on it and around the symbol is says 'dont bother me'. i guessing its one of those things where they love anything that has english on it, no matter what it says... also, for some reason, there is a string with strange beads and red things that look like peppers. those crazy koreans...

los angeles

im not entirely sure how i got this one. i think its from when my dad had to go to l.a. for a business trip and he brought it home for me. ive been to l.a. before, but only this past year, so i know i didnt get it for myself. hmm...

busch gardens

another key chain from my familys visit to busch gardens. this one is one of those key chains that has a picture in it. when we first entered the park there were photographers near the entrance who worked for the park and they would ask us to take a photo, and by the time you leave the park at the end of the day they would develop it and put it in this key chain and you could buy it if you wanted. we wanted. i really have to find a way to get that picture out and scan it so i can post it too because it is so bad! we all look so funny in it! my mom is wearing a fanny pack, my sister has bangs that go a mile high, and i look like the kid from 'two and a half men'!
priceless!

olympic mascots

this is a rubber key chain of the three mascots: powder, coal, and copper, used for the 2002 salt lake city winter olympics. i have some great memories of the olympics while i was there. at the time i volunteered at a christian coffee shop that was down town. every night during the olympics were crazy! we always had a line out the door, from when we opened at 8:00am until we closed at 2:00am! walking down the streets during those two weeks was as close as ive ever seen to what new york city is like- there were thousands of people walking around and at any given time you could hear six different languages being spoken! truly a once in a lifetime experience.

oh, canada

another family vacation we went on was up to canada! i remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever, we were leaving not just our state, but our whole country! now i was an international traveler!
we went to wheels inn in ontario. it was the coolest- they had an indoor waterpark and everything! i remember my parents telling me that they had an indoor pool that you could swim in, and it was connected to an outdoor pool! this just blew my mind. 'so i can get in the pool inside and get out of the pool outside?!?' i couldnt quite wrap my brain around this one. when we got there the pool wasnt as amazing as i had built it upto in my mind, but we still had a great time!

great smoky mountains

man, i sure got a lot of these on our trips to florida, huh? im thinking thats around when i first started this collection...
this one is from the great smoky mountains of tennessee. we never actually went to the smoky mountains, but that didnt seem to stop me from getting this at a gas station.

shark and gator

another key chain from our florida trip. im not entirely sure why i picked this one up, but its a shark and an alligator chatting it up on the beach. the shark is saying 'i sure love tourists, they taste great!' the gator responds 'theyre less filling!'
hilarious, huh? didnt think so.

nashville chain

another souvenir from our florida trip. we headed through tennessee along the way, even stopping in nashville to check things out. ive been back there a couple times, and it is really a cool town! i dont remember much from this visit, but this key chain proves i was there!

wooden elephant

on our trip to florida we went to busch gardens for a day. we rode the rides and enjoyed the animals- they even had the budweiser clydesdale horses there! one of the sections of the park was dedicated to animals from africa, and its there that i saw this cute little elephant carved from wood.

kentucky duffel

a wonderful example of my poor taste in key chains...

for years my parents would promise us that we would go to florida, and finally, they made good. we headed down to go see my grandparents who had a winter place down there. on the way we went through many different states, and i tried to get a key chain from each of them. at one of the gas fill ups along they way we stopped in kentucky and i picked up this gem: a black leather duffel bag key chain with pink trim. im sorry, i have no explanation why. it just is.

tehquamenon camera

another great vacation we went on was up to the upper peninsula of michgian. the whole family went with my uncle, aunt, and my cousins jeff and kelly. we went up through traverse city and the mackinac bridge. one of the places we checked out was the tahquamenon falls, a cool state park with some really beautiful waterfalls.
i thought this was one of the coolest key chains they had, you can look through the eye hole and see photos of the falls. the photo button even works and it slides ahead to another picture. there are about 8 total photos to see in this key chain, and all of them are really beautiful.

mall of america

the summer after my sisters senior year of high school we took a special family vacation. my parents wanted to go on one last trip before she moved off to college. it was great, they wanted it to be a surprise, so they didnt tell jill anything about where we were going. the morning of the trip we all packed into the car, jill still unsuspecting of what was ahead. we started driving, and arrived at the airport- she was so confused! then we checked in to get our tickets and she saw that we were going to minneapolis- and she was still confused! thats when my mom and dad told her what was planned: we were going to the mall of america! she almost fainted she was so excited. she loved to shop- and now we were going to the biggest mall in the world! she was on cloud nine! we had an amazing time and stayed for about four days. my parents gave her an envelope full of money and told her it was hers to spend how ever she wanted. now thats a dream come true for any young girl, huh? they gave me an envelope too, so i wasnt too jealous...
we had an amazing time there! it was a great trip and such a great way to spend one last vacation together.

indy racing

when i was about 12 my dad, uncle, and cousin jeff went to the races. we went for the day to michigan international speedway and watched an indy car race. ive never been a car guy, but we had a good time there anyway. it was a summer day that was terribly hot, i remember sitting in the stands and just dripping sweat. the race itself wasnt very interesting, the cars would just zip by, and then a minute later, they would zip by again. lame. there werent even that many crashes! i remember walking around the merch tables checking out all there was to see. my dad had given me some money, and jeffs dad gave him some, so we parused all the different booths looking for just the right souveneers. for some reason this particular key chain caught my eye.
after going to this event it solidified my views of racing as a sport: it isnt one.

steelcase truck

my dad has worked at steelcase all my life, his father had worked there for fifteen years before him too. it is a top of the line office furnature maker. i remember when i was growing up going over to my grammas house where she had a huge steelcase truck toy that was about two feet long. when ever we would go over there it was the first thing i would rush to get. when i was about six it was the coolest thing in the world- a toy of the place my dad worked! in high school i still looked back fondly at that truck. my parents were looking for some new office chairs for their desks at home, so we went to the steelcase employee store. and there, sitting on one of the shelves was that same giant toy truck! at this point i was too old to play with it like i used to, but i did get this littler version to put on the shelf in my room. its only about 6 inches long, but every time i look at it i remember the great times i had growing up in my grammas house.

rubics cube

the whole rubics cube thing always interested me. i remember getting the regular cube once from gemmon's, a hardware store that my dad and mom would always drag me to. in middle school there was a bit of a resurgence in its popularity among my friends, i remember nathan kuperus was really fascinated by them. we would spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the sides. he was pretty good and could get multiple sides at once. i always remained a novice and could only ever get one side at a time. a few years later i remember coming across another version of the cube, but this time it was cut at different angles and had lopsided bits to try and figure out! i am even worse at this one. every once in a while i will still pull these out and give them a go, making absolutely no improvement, then frustratedly throwing them back into the storage bin i found them in.

reindeer

im not entirely sure where this came from. for some reason i think it might have been from a fast food joint as a christmas toy with a kids meal. its basically a beenie baby reindeer before there was such a thing as a beenie baby. im not sure why, but i really loved this thing! i would spend hours on end playing with it, trying to get it to stand, throwing it up in the air and catching it. i was pretty young, so i must have been easily ammused. this was not actually my original reindeer, i think this one is actually my sisters. my original one somehow got ripped. one of its legs got ripped and the little plastic beans poored out. i was so sad, so i made a splint for his leg out of cardboard and rubberbands. i was a strange child...

money clip

for a while my dad used to use a money clip instead of a wallet. one of the clips he used was this one, which had an etching of a couple guys playing golf. he had gotten a new one, so i asked him what he was going to do with his old one. he hadnt thought about it. so i asked him for it. i never ended up using it myself, i was too attached to my old makeshift wallet to ever trade it in, but i kept it anyway...

gumball mascots

the second year i lived in salt lake city, utah, they hosted the winter olympics. they had three mascots they had created for the games, and i received these creations from someone. they are gumballs with colored sugar icing in the shape of each of the mascots. strange, i know. they were too cute to ever eat, and now i think they are too hard to even attempt it.

ornament

back when i lived in salt lake city i had made many good friends, among them was a girl named jessica, she was a ballet dancer, and a real sweetheart. i always liked to spend time with her, she and i were very different and i always loved to hang out with her because she always had a different perspective on things. my second (and last) christmas there she gave me this christmas tree ornament that she had made herself. i was very thankful, but i have never actually used it yet! since i live alone and am always in michigan with my family, i have never actually put up a christmas tree in my own place, so i have no place to put ornaments! but ive still got it, waiting for the day when i set up a tree of my own...

edward scissorhands and crow

among my (many) obsessions growing up were these two movies: 'edward scissorhands', and 'the crow'. im not entirely sure why i was obsessed with them, but i was.
i saw edward scissorhands when it game out on tape and i really loved it, i even got my dad to watch it! i remember many times day dreaming about what it might be like to have scissorhands, i think i might have even gone so far as to make a fake pair out of cardboard and playing around in the backyard imagining i was trimming the bushes into different animal shapes.
my fascination with the crow is a little harder to explain. the movie was rated R, so my mom refused to let me see it, but for some reason i was still obsessed with it. i think it might have stemmed from the fact that at the time it came out i was just starting to explore the world of comics beyond superheroes, and i remember paging through a few issues of 'the crow' comic book and really being entranced. im sure some of my interest in the movie was also brought on by the death of the actor brandon lee during the filming of it. i must have had some morbid curiosity to see it that i just couldnt let go of. years later mcfarlane toys made figures of these two characters, which i obviously had to buy. the figures i still have, and they came with these weird looking mini poster holders. i guess they were so that you could display them behind the figure? i dont know, but i kept them anyway...

cutting boards

in my old room at my parents house i used to love putting up pictures of things i liked. i would put up posters of movies or bands or comic books i thought were cool. i would also get the magazine 'wizard' every month. it is a magazine devoted to comic books, and it always had the coolest pictures in it. i would really love those pictures and would want to put those up too. the only problem was that those pictures were too small. being the industrious young lad i was, i didnt let that stop me! after i had read the magazine i would pull out an exacto knife and cut out all the pictures i loved and put them on the wall individually with a small ring of tape on the back. my mom wasnt too keen on this idea. after much persuading, she said i could put up the little pictures in the closet if i wanted, as long as i could shut the closet door and no one else had to see them. no problem! i spend many many hours in my room on my drawing desk cutting out little pictures that i liked and plastering my closet with them! no matter how small the image, i could cut it out- i became quite a whiz with that exacto knife.
by the time i headed off to college, i had every single inch of that closet covered with images- i had even gone so far as covering the ceiling with pictures as well! these two heavy stock paper boards were what i would slip under the pages while i cut out the different images.

x-men figures

i always loved action figures, and i really loved comic books, so it was a dream come true when they started making action figures of x-men characters! at the time i really thought they looked great. whenever we would go to the store i would try and get my mom to buy me a new one, shes a bit of a push over, so i had a ton of them!
pictured here are cable, one of my favorite characters at the time; longshot; magneto, who had real magnets in his body; cyclops, which i won from fox (explained here); wolverine; and on the back are two characters who i have no idea who they are... these guys always came with the craziest accessories, which were always fun to play with, but the one thing that annoyed me was that most of the accessories would only fit the hands of that particular character and none others. that always struck me as poor designing...

micro machines

one of my favorite toys growing up was micro machines. all they were was just littler matchbox cars, but for some reason i really loved them. i know these things are still being sold in stores now, but they were a ton cooler back then. they used to be a lot smaller then they make them now, they were about the size of a penny, and surprisingly detailed.
i would play with these things for hours! i had a couple play sets to mess around on, so they kept me busy for hours. there was even a time when my friend joel and i would build play sets of our own. we would spend hours and days building race tracks out of paper and tape for these things to whiz around in.
one really fun thing about my micro machines is that i still have most of them, and my little nephew jackson plays with them now, so they are still being enjoyed!

fox kids club

back in the day the local fox affiliate did a great job of enticing children to participate in different promotional offers. one of the things they did was the 'fox kids club', which was what they called their animation block each afternoon and saturday morning.
i was really into it because a friend of mine, adam, used to work for fox and was a host of a live action kids show that they would play on saturday mornings called 'fast forward'. i went with him a couple times to the taping of the show and was in the audience for the show and actually saw myself on tv a time or two! to an eleven year old, this is truly amazing.
because of my love for all that stuff, i figured i should join the club. they always had giveaways and other fun kid stuff around town. you could save some money or get free stuff at the movie theater and other places if you showed your kids club card. one of these giveaways i actually won- at the time the x-men cartoon was new and you could win all kinds of x-men related stuff if you sent in your name. a couple months later i received a cyclops action figure in the mail! it was the greatest thing ever: i got toys for free!!! how can you beat that?

transformer

this is my first transformer, or at least whats left of him... i remember getting this for christmas. my brother got one that year too, i got the cop car, and he got the race car. we both loved getting them, and for me, this started my life long love of all things transformers!
this one is from back in the day, back when they used to make the outsides out of metal instead of cheap plastic like they do now.
almost all the transformers at the time had one transforming move in common: the waist swivel. almost all the vehicles included twisting the top half around and making it face the other way. it was a cool twist, but unfortunately, it made the middle of the figure very weak and easy to break, as is evident by what remains of this poor toy...

an explanation

im a bit of a pack rat. always have been. if i ever come across something that i think is cool i keep it. if i have anything with even a hint of sentimental attachment, i keep it. i keep everything. that creates a problem though- i'm out of room to keep this stuff!

in an effort to de-clutter my house, and break myself of this pack rat mentality, ive decided to do something about it. most of the stuff i keep i have stories attached to, and holding on to the thing allows me to remember the story. so, instead of keeping the thing, i figured i could take a picture of it and tell the story. that way im still able to periodically go back and reminisce, but without taking up my closet space. some of the things talked about here i have still kept, others are in a trash heap somewhere. either way, they are a part of my story, and i'd like to share that story here.