Todd Swank: Swank Family Christmas Letter 2012

December 30, 2012

Swank Family Christmas Letter 2012

Merry Christmas!

I guess we can’t really say that any more. Since the Mayans say the world is going to end on December 21st, there won’t be a Christmas this year. So let’s just say Merry December 18th instead. It was nice knowing you all.

We seriously can't believe another year has already gone by. Since not nearly enough exciting stuff has happened to us to fill a whole new Christmas letter we've started stalking more interesting families. We wanted to steal ideas to make it seem like our lives are better than they actually are. We didn’t get a lot of ideas, but did have the cops called on us a couple of times which spiced things up a bit.

Luke and Avery keep us really busy. Although it’s mainly with the same boring stuff we told you about last year. They do robotics and Boy Scouts and Honor Band and ski club and golf club and stuff like that. Although if you asked them, they’d say they only do those activities because we force them to do it. If given a choice, they would play Black Ops on the Xbox 18 hours a day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. They think this gives them all the skills they will need in life. Mom & Dad know this is a Bunch of Beeswax, but secretly are kind of happy about it. Just in case some day a massive virus strikes the planet and the world is overrun by zombies, we know they will be able to protect us. Those boys got good aim!

They did get to do something new a couple of months ago when they went to Washington DC with a couple hundred of their 8th grade classmates. Unfortunately, their mother and father didn't get to attend, although we kind of felt like we participated when it came time to pay the bill for their trip. It cost almost as much as if we'd planned a whole family vacation together down there. So that was nice.

We did get to go on a family getaway to Florida for a week in the spring. Our hope was to go dolphin fishing, but apparently that's frowned upon. Instead we went to Kennedy Space Center and loved seeing all the huge alligators in the ditches on the drive there. Todd wanted to pull the car over, get out, and take pictures, but one of the NASA employees said the beasts could run 30 miles per hour and had a fondness for people whose arms look like flippers. So we decided to take photos from the car while driving by instead. Unfortunately, the pictures are pretty blurry, but at least we're not out any more fingers.

Our summer was spent boating and golfing and figuring out ways we can blame the 1 percent for our lots in life. If only our government would tax them more, we think all would be much better.

Todd did get to go to the Pebble Beach celebrity pro-am tournament with work this year to see some of the ultra-rich in action. He watched Tiger Woods, Bill Murray, Tony Romo, Andy Garcia, and many other superstars play golf. He tried to stand in front of them looking cute and desirable, but unfortunately none of them offered to take him home to live with them. Maybe next time.

Sheri continues to spend her days as a paraprofessional at a local elementary school working with children and then spends her nights at home working with more children. She constantly has multiple people demanding her attention at the same time which makes her a bit crazy. She’s been trying to figure out a way to clone herself to solve the problem, but keeps falling off the copy machine.

Our golden retriever Sunny continues to age gracefully. His golden fur is slowly changing into a stately white. He thinks it makes him look very distinguished and keeps his head held high at the dog park while the other dogs sniff his butt.

Our goals for 2013, are still a bit flexible. We haven't started working on our underground shelter yet, so we gotta get going on that before the meteorite hits on the 21st. We then plan on avoiding earth’s surface for at least a couple of years. Then when we emerge, if there are still people around we'll seek out careers in either politics or entertainment. If people are scarce then most of our focus will be on hunting and gathering.