Valentine's Day 2016

Valentine's Day 2016

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for February 21, 2016

Valentine's Day came and went again this year and with it another year of being married for Todd and Miss Sheri.  This time it was our 22 year anniversary that we were celebrating.  Technically we were married on February 12, but by celebrating our anniversary and Valentine's Day together, it makes things much more romantic.  At least that's what I've convinced to my wife.

We invited both of our mothers over to celebrate our anniversary because, really, what could be more romantic than having a home cooked meal with our mothers.

Since we won't get to spend Grandma Leona's birthday with her, Miss Sheri surprised her with a cake so we could celebrate it early.  She had no clue about the surprise which became pretty evident when we pulled out the cake and started singing "Happy Birthday" and she started singing it with us!

  

Cousin Karli was excited to come to the Twin Cities because she had the chance to see one of her idols, a guy who goes by the name of Issa.  He's a famous YouTuber who has a channel called Twaimz which gets millions of views.  He travels around the country and visits his fans who love his videos.  I swear I missed my calling in this world.  

On Saturday night, we went to Outback.  Because that's what we like to do.

Luke had his 6 month check-up for his Pacemaker and with the cardiologist this week.  All seems to be going great which definitely makes us happy!

This Saturday, we headed to downtown Minneapolis to watch a Timberwolves game and stopped by Cowboy Jack's for some Happy Hour appetizers.  They were pretty darn good, too.

It was Ricky Rubio's Bobblehead giveaway night, so we had to show up at the game to get our little ceramic statues.  We just love Ricky.

We also love Karl-Anthony Towns, the Wolves #1 draft pick and a leading candidate for the NBA's Rookie of the Year award.  Karl made history last week at the NBA All Star weekend when he won the Skills competition.  It was the first time they allowed the "Big" guys in the competition like Karl.  In previous years, the event was only for guards so it was a big deal that Karl came in and dominated.

But the main reason we love Karl so much is that his dad sits directly in the seat behind us during games.  And he is FUN to listen to throughout the entire game.  First of all, he's a very nice man and is always willing to talk to us about his son.  He's very proud of him as he should be and loved telling us the story of the Skills competition.  After the games start, though, we don't bother him because he's very intensely watching and shouting out instructions to his son.  This week we heard him deliver classic lines like "He's going to be doing some push-ups tonight" after his son missed a free throw.  He also was quite upset with Karl after he received his second foul early in the game.  He paused for quite awhile and then finally signed and exclaimed "He just doesn't listen to me!"  It's just so interesting to hear and we find ourselves quoting him often in the Swank Household.  As a matter of fact, "Come on, Karl!" is probably our most commonly chanted quote we have in 2016!

The halftime show was interesting.  Some hand balancing guy from America's Got Talent along with his dog.  God definitely didn't make me to do this kind of work.

Our opponents for the evening were Carmelo Anthony and the New York Knicks.  They also have a rookie superstar named Kristaps Porzingis who was fun to watch.  He also got into foul trouble early so I'm sure somewhere in Latvia his dad was pretty pissed off as well.

It ended up being a pretty ugly game for the Wolves.  They lost 103-95, but they trailed most of the game by a higher margin than that.  It wasn't due to a lack of effort from Karl, though.  He ended up with 24 points and 8 boards.  I hope his dad didn't make him do too many push-ups.

Kevin Garnett hasn't been playing for us the past couple of weeks.  Something about an injury to his leg.  He did look pretty good in his suit, though.