Happy Holidays!
After giving myself a break from writing the Christmas letter, I am back with a vengeance. This is partially to redeem myself, but mainly because Tazia’s draft wasn’t very funny.
Speaking of Tazia, she has had a very busy year at University of Nevada-Reno or UNR – as us southerners call it. Tazia completed her first year at UNR and promptly moved into an apartment. This involved us packing up all of her stuff, renting a U-Haul, and moving on a cool, 110 degree, July day. To thank us for sweltering in the heat in Vegas and Reno, Tazia paid us back by taking her cat with her. We returned from Reno and quickly changed Tazia’s old room into an entertainment room that houses Tina’s craft area and my Playstation and TV. We eventually felt guilty about not having a place for Tazia to sleep and converted a separate room into a guest room for her to stay in. Tazia has managed to go the entire semester without changing her major, which is quite a feat since she changed it weekly during her freshman year. She is double-majoring in International Affairs and Communication Studies with a minor Chinese Studies. I have no idea what she will do with this other than be a special reporter for CNN in China. Tazia is using this combination to plan on going to law school. When she isn’t taking 16 credits while working two jobs, she is planning her summer trip to Chengdu, China to study for 11 weeks. It is an exciting opportunity for her and it will be different not having her around next summer. It will be difficult to give her a hard time about the UNLV-UNR rivalry when she is so far away. Tazia’s new favorite question to be asked is “What color is the cannon?” It is red by the way.
Quinton has also been very busy. He turned 16 in June and got a tattoo for his birthday. Tina only agreed to this because the tattoo had to say “mom” in it – I have yet to agree to the tattoo. Can you guess who won that argument? He received his driving license in August. At first, Quinton was not too eager to learn how to drive, but eventually, I think he enjoyed giving Tina and I gray hairs (I have more than Tina). Quinton is a junior at Southwest Career and Technical Academy and is in the interior design program. While his motive for switching from entertainment engineering to interior design is not clear, I think it has to do more with the number of girls in his program classes. He has a great instructor who he frequently calls his “second mom” and often stays after school to help her. Despite being at the same school, he doesn’t stay late to help me. Quinton is still playing lacrosse. Last spring, he played attackman for Grizzly Lacrosse. I can’t remember how many goals he scored because his total changes every time you ask him. The total is somewhere between 10 and 1,000,000 and probably around the 20 goal range. This year he will be playing for Liberty Lacrosse due to some zone changes. He likes his new team and is back playing with many of his friends from middle school. Hopefully, they will be better at keeping statistics than Quinton is. Quinton has also found a new talent – singing country music. He recently sang a Blake Shelton song at the school talent show. In true Quinton fashion, he changed his song at the last minute and sang a song about sex, alcohol, and smoking. Tina and I are hoping the next time that he will sing something a little more school appropriate.
Tina was recently promoted to the Assistant Principal position at East Career and Technical Academy where she had previously been the dean for the last few years. As excited as we were about the promotion, her students were probably more excited since Tina is no longer in charge of discipline. She also worked in the Superintendent’s office this summer which I am sure helped her chances at being promoted. Shortly before her promotion, Tina was nominated and selected to be one of thirty educators in the Executive Leadership Academy for the state of Nevada. The Academy meets monthly for three days and provides guest speakers on educational leadership from around the country. What this means for Quinton and I is that once a month we get to eat out for dinner three days in a row. Tina spends her spare time crafting, painting, and finding projects on Pinterest. She recently modge podged a 100-year old cooking textbook to our kitchen table based on something she saw on Pinterest. After every project, Tina asks me if I think she is crazy. I always reply “no” and sometimes I mean it.
Last, but definitely not least, here is my story. After teaching for 13 years, I have left the classroom to work full-time as Southwest CTA’s community partnership coordinator. I have worked in that capacity part-time for the last two years, but took advantage of an opportunity to do it full-time this year. I miss the students in the classroom, but I definitely do not miss grading, writing lesson plans, or parent-teacher conferences. Tina swears my hobby, geocaching, has transformed from a hobby to an addiction. I think she is exaggerating. I only found over 1000 caches this year, had a streak of finding a cache on 32 consecutive days to make sure I received a souvenir every day in August, attended a geocaching Coinfest in Las Vegas, and drove an hour in each direction to cache a power trail of 500+ caches (it took me five trips to get them all). I hardly think these are signs of an addictive behavior. If she thinks it is so addictive, why did she agree to drive me there and had Quinton drive with me twice?
Despite our hectic schedules, especially Tina’s, we were able to do a bit of traveling and see both sides of the family. We went to Colorado in early June for Quinton’s birthday to visit the Statucki side of the family and get our annual dose of Chick-fil-A. My niece, Mattie, joined us in Las Vegas for two weeks of parent-free entertainment and 100+ degree weather. After Tazia was settled in, she drove to Vegas with Tasha and Briana to meet up with us and fly to the Virkus Family Reunion in Minnesota to join the rest of the clan. Tazia also used the trip to Minnesota to fundraise for textbooks by selling digital copies of the family cookbook. The day after we returned from Minnesota we headed to Lake Tahoe for a conference. At the summer conference, I was selected as the president-elect for the Nevada Association of Career and Technical Education. That means next year Tina will be sleeping with the president. We made two additional trips to Reno in the fall, one for Tazia’s birthday and once for Thanksgiving.
I am sure that you enjoyed this letter far more than anything Tazia could have written. In the spirit of The Voice, you may vote for next year’s author by voting at http://bit.ly/StatuckiXmas. We hope that everyone has a happy holiday season and a great 2014.
Happy Holidays!
Craig, Tina, Tazia, and Quinton