The Swank Family Christmas Letter - 2022

 

God Bless Us Everyone!

Here we are.  Another year in the crapper.

  It feels like things will never get back to normal.

We still just can’t get over Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars.  

Dang Covid.

As for the Swank Family, we've had quite a year!

The biggest news for us was the boys moving out of our house making Todd & Sheri empty nesters again.  

While we do miss them, it's also nice to be able to walk around the house naked.  

Now Todd’s wish for Christmas is a full-length mirror.   

It’s become pretty quiet at home.  So much so  that we've started talking to the furniture. 

So far, the couch has been the most responsive.  

Also, the coat rack seems to be hitting on Sheri.  

It’s probably because she likes saying to it, 

“Are you ready to hang a coat or are you just excited to see me?”

The boys are renting a nice house in Shakopee with a couple of high school buddies.  

Luke started a new job as a financial analyst for US Bank and is enjoying the opportunity to put his finance degree to use.

He helps process transactions that can exceed more than $100 million in one shot.  

No pressure.  

We keep asking him if he can siphon off a little bit for his old man, but he replies that wouldn’t be ethical.  

Not sure where he learned that garbage.

Avery is still working as a software engineer for Rocket Mortgage and just received a promotion to cap off a great year.  

He programs functions for their website to do things like process mortgage applications and loans.  

We keep asking him if he can funnel a little bit of that action into dad’s bank account.  

He says that wouldn’t be legal and he’d get fired.  

We don’t know what’s wrong with kids these days.  

They’re just not willing to take the kinds of risks we did when we were their age.  

Sad.
  

After a brief stint at Stibo Systems, Todd has returned to Oracle and is now selling Cloud Solutions to fast-growing software companies.

He's a cloud whisperer, soothing the skies and bringing sunshine to even the stormiest of clients.  

The AI tool, Chat-GPT, wrote that last sentence.  It seems pretty smart, so it must be true.

Sheri has more free time now that the boys have left, so she spends it daydreaming about shirtless men on horseback. 

Of course, all the men in her fantasies happen to look exactly like her husband Todd, but hey, a girl's gotta have something to keep her entertained while she's doing the never-ending list of household chores. 

And honestly, who wouldn't want to ogle a shirtless Todd while tackling the laundry? 

It's a win-win situation.

Our golden retriever, Blue, is now almost eight years old and is starting to show his age with all the grey on his face. 

He’s also starting to refuse treats and instead has a preference for Viagra pills.  

Not sure what that’s all about.

 

Our big event this year was an eight-day trip to Alaska, where we saw bears, moose, killer whales, and even a glacier.

Not all at once, though.

 Our new year's resolution for 2023 is to start a business in the field of artificial intelligence or, as a backup plan, artificial idiocy. 

The demand is high, especially among politicians.

 "Artificial Idiocy: because sometimes pretending to be intelligent is just too much work."

The Swank Family