I remember this photo being taken outside of our Great Grandmother Lucy's residence around Thanksgiving or Christmas (can't remember which) shortly after Ashley was born. I remember them talking about all the generations being present and someone suggesting a photo. I also remember heckling Micheal about his poncho and him jokingly remarking that I was just jealous because he was comfy.

As Christmas is quickly approaching, daily i have a flood of memories with Michael. We all know Michael was a big ole brat when it came to presents. He always wanted to know what he was getting and LOVED Christmas and birthdays. When i was about 6 or 7 I remember him giving me one of my first Christmas lessons. He came and woke me up late one night and took me to the Christmas tree. There he proceeded to show me how to cut the tape perfectly, so i was able to open my presents and see what they were. He was a master and had apparently been doing it for years! (sorry Mom!) He showed me how to put everything back and even replace tape if i had to. I outgrew this eventually and would like to say that Michael did too.....but he didn't. He may have quit cutting the tape just so-so but he still shook the presents and looked in closets, always on the lookout! 

Michael and I used to play a LOT of games together. I'm talking about any kind of game, RP games, video games, drinking games, etc, our favorite being Final Fantasy 7. Every time you saved the game, it would put in how much total time you've spent playing that specific game up to that point. You could load the game and continue your progress, adding to the time. Now...if you spent a few hours and died without saving your game, you would lose all your progress and have to start all over from the last save point. This happened...a lot. Our saved game for Final Fantasy 7 by the time we beat it was well over 150 hours, and that didn't include all the countless hours we lost to dying without saving. That's a lot of time devoted to 1 game. 

At any rate, the particular memory that I am going to share doesn't have anything to do with that game, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

One time we were looking around for a new game to play. I completely forgot how we came across it, but one of us came across the role-playing game called Shadowrun. This game functioned a LOT like Dungeons & Dragons. So yeah, embarrassingly, I admit we played a Dungeons & Dragons type game together. And even more embarrassingly, we liked it...so we played it a lot.

One night, we were playing it and drinking pretty heavy. Michael was telling the story of the game and just non-chalantly killed off all of the characters in the game. I asked him how the hell that happened and he looked at me with an evil grin and said, "I'll show you."

He walked out of the room and then walked back in to the room as if he were a different person. He said, "So, we're in the castle." He then proceeded to act out the entire scene that had transpired in the story, but in his living room instead. I laughed so hard I almost cried.

When the scene was complete, he just blankly looked at me and said, "I don't think you fully got all that. I tell you what, I'll do it all over again, but in slow motion."

So he walked out of the room and back in again. He stated, "So we're in the castle." Sure enough, he proceeded to drunkenly act out the entire scene all over again but this time in slow motion. The absolute look of feigned surprise and the slow groans that he acted out as the bullets hit him slowly are permanently locked into my memory. I laughed so hard at his performance that my stomach hurt the next day. 

For those of you who knew Michael well enough to know how terrible of an actor he was, I am here to tell you that he was actually amazing if he was drunk enough.

As coincidences go, they are issuing a complete remake of Final Fantasy 7 in HD for the playstation 4. I am buying it at launch and whether or not he is with me physically, I know that Michael will be there with me every step of the way.