Happy Holidays!

This year has been insane for the Statuckis and I am not even talking about pandemics or elections. We are now redefining the “new normal” in our households.

Just prior to state closures, Tazia and Quinton joined Tina and I in Colorado to visit my family for a few days over President’s Day weekend. It was a fun trip, but we would have never guessed that it was going to be our only Griswold family trip of the year.

In March, I left my job at East Tech to take a position with the Nevada Department of Education as the Director of Career Readiness, Adult Learning, and Education Options. My first day in the new position was also the first day school buildings were closed. One of the “perks” of my new job is that it is located in Carson City. So, during the beginning of Nevada’s pandemic closures, I was transitioning to a new job, finding a place to live, and moving my stuff from Las Vegas to Carson City. I will say that I am getting pretty good at driving between the two cities.

Tina continued to work at Northwest CTA while I was working in Carson City. She only had three years to retirement so we figured that we could take turns commuting. How bad could it be? While the commuting was tolerable, working for Clark County was not. Tina spent her summer break with me in Carson City, and after a few weeks of nice weather and evening walks together, Tina started to look for jobs in northern Nevada. In late July, she took a position as a virtual teacher for the Churchill County School District. Now that she is no longer working in career and technical education, Tina was awarded the Nevada ACTE Lifetime Achievement Award for her hard work and dedication over the years. Tina has also embraced her skills as an interior designer and spends the weekends remodeling and decorating our Carson City home. 

We are really enjoying living in Carson City. The area is beautiful, relatively quiet, and we now both have jobs that allow us to have some “us” time every evening and weekend. You can follow our adventures in Carson City on Instagram at @2keytravelers. In addition, we are closer to Tina’s sister and Quinton. Well, we were closer to Quinton for a few months.

Quinton apparently decided that Carson City was too close to him in Reno, so he found a new job in Las Vegas. He now works for a diesel truck fleet company and is living in our Las Vegas house. Tina and I have become landlords! While Quinton misses his friends in Reno, he definitely does not miss doing road calls during a snowstorm to fix broken down trucks. Quinton moved right before Thanksgiving so we were able to have our first Thanksgiving in Las Vegas in about a decade. Tazia joined us for the week, though she and I took turns having Zoom meetings in the laundry room the whole time. Some of you are wondering whether Quinton will convert our dream home into a party house; luckily, we still get the Ring doorbell notifications so we will know when Quinton hosts a party. 

While many of you think Tazia is the stable one in the family, you would be wrong. Tazia works for the same law firm, but she switched from the corporate practice group to litigation in order to argue with more people. She has been working from “home” since the shutdowns in the former epicenter of the pandemic, New York City. Early in the shutdown, Tazia decided to embrace the crazy cat lady inside of her and adopted a kitten, Sage, to keep her and Taz company. Tazia also figured out that if she was going to be working remotely for an extended period of time that she did not have to pay New York City rent, so she moved back to Washington, DC for now. She is closer to her law school friends and saving money to support her addiction to buying pet toys for her cats and Silver.

Speaking of Silver, he enjoyed Carson City, but not the smaller place with no yard. He is also not a fan of colder weather. With Quinton moving back to Las Vegas, Silver has turned into the snowbird that we will become some day when we retire. The tentative plan is for Silver to live with Quinton in Las Vegas during the colder months and live with us in Carson City during the  summer.

To recap, everyone moved, everyone changed jobs, and everyone is healthy, safe, and happy. 

We hope that you all have a wonderful socially distant holiday season!

Craig, Tina, Tazia, and Quinton