{"id":421,"date":"2025-12-18T02:16:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T02:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/statucki.com\/?p=421"},"modified":"2025-12-18T02:55:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T02:55:13","slug":"holiday-letter-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statucki.com\/?p=421","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Letter 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Happy Holidays from the Slightly Wander-lusty Statuckis!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Before you settle in, a brief disclaimer: this is less of a holiday letter and more of a lightly peer-reviewed research paper. It was clearly influenced by excessive travel, questionable scheduling decisions, and\u2014yes\u2014written with a little help from ChatGPT. Citations are missing, conclusions are debatable, but the data (largely travel-based) is sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If 2025 taught us anything, it\u2019s that \u201chome\u201d is whatever zip code our suitcase\u2014or rolling home\u2014currently claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year began with Tina heading to DC to help Tazia \u201csettle\u201d into her new place. By settle<\/em>, we mean wallpapering. After tackling accent walls, corners, and patterns, Tina has officially decided she is now qualified for an eighth career as a professional wallpaper installer. A January trip to Minnesota for Tina brought puzzles with the Prickly Puzzlers (Tazia, Paula, and Jenna), along with much-needed family time with Barbie and Andrew\u2014full of long conversations and laughter. Tina also dove into her bread-making hobby, producing loaves that ranged from \u201creally good\u201d to \u201cthis is why we no longer buy bread.\u201d Professionally, she remains impressively bad at retirement\u2014continuing as Executive Director of NVACTE, contracting with the Nevada Department of Education, teaching for Western Nevada College, and consulting. She even roped in her sister Tasha this summer, proving that professional expertise, mutual respect, and a lifetime of sibling sarcasm can coexist in a business relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, Craig kicked off January with a new role at the Council for Chief State School Officers as a Senior Project Manager\u2014a job that includes travel, working from home, and mastering an ever-expanding alphabet soup of acronyms (the learning curve felt like learning a new language). He also continued serving as ACTE\u2019s Region V Vice President, which added more meetings\u2014and yes, more acronyms\u2014to the calendar. Tina also successfully coerced him into helping with some consulting work. Along the way, geocaching remained a favorite side quest, and the Lego collection continued to grow quietly\u2026 and sometimes not so quietly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In spite of mechanical issues with our Travato (which spent a very committed nine months in the shop and was still laid up there), we still squeezed in a short San Francisco trip in February. A few weeks later, a DC work trip unexpectedly rerouted to Colorado in March after the loss of Craig\u2019s dad, a man of few words whose actions, kindness, and steady heart said far more than words ever could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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April brought a week in Vegas for work, followed by a reflective May. We returned to Colorado in May for Dale\u2019s celebration of life, surrounded by family, memories, and stories that reminded us just how many lives he touched. We gathered there with Tazia, Quinton, and Zoey\u2014sharing stories, laughter, tears, and the kind of hugs that linger longer than usual. The weekend was filled with warmth, love, and boiled peanuts\u2014exactly the kind of send-off he would have appreciated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Soon after, we found ourselves back in DC for the National Policy Seminar, officially confirming that our luggage now recognizes several TSA agents on sight. Craig traveled to Minnesota for work while Tina spent more time with Barbie and Paula\u2014unhurried conversations, shared laughter, and the comfort of simply being together, moments that would later take on even deeper meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere between the emotional moments and nonstop travel, we made a pivotal stop in Las Vegas: we traded in the Travato and met Mo<\/em>, our new rolling home. As we wrote on the 2KeyTravelers blog<\/a>, Mo isn\u2019t a camper van\u2014Mo is a Mobile Office. With a kitchen, washer\/dryer, recliners, solar, and serious comfort, Mo is less \u201ccamping\u201d and more \u201croad-worthy condo.\u201d We\u2019re officially logging fewer flight miles and more road miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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June took us international\u2014Craig\u2019s first time! With Tazia as our cheerful third wheel, tour guide, and planner, we explored Vienna\u2019s museums, caf\u00e9s, and palaces before boarding a small cruise ship along Croatia\u2019s Dalmatian Coast. Think turquoise water, stone villages, seaside pizza, and sunsets that didn\u2019t seem real. We loved it so much we\u2019re already planning a return in 2027. Tina continued on to Ireland with Tazia, while Craig headed home to supervise Tazia\u2019s cats\u2014demanding but furry bosses. We zipped to Vegas to pick up Mo and drive her home for the first time. Before the laundry was finished, Craig was off to Denver, followed immediately by another DC trip for ACTE. We stayed with Tazia for the Fourth of July and spent 14 hours at her rooftop pool\u2014just to be among the 40 people allowed up there\u2014watching fireworks explode over the Capitol. Completely worth it. All of it. Even the sunscreen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Summer flew by. Tina ran the annual Lake Tahoe summer conference while Craig attended for the first time as a non-participant. Afterward, Mo passed her first true shake-out trip to Eagle Lake with flying colors. August brought more milestones: Tazia visited to graduate from UNR (again!), which we celebrated by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Later that month, Mo carried us back to Minnesota\u2014this time to celebrate Barbie\u2019s life alongside her husband Andrew and the rest of the family. True to Barbie herself, the celebration was joyful, colorful, and unapologetically her<\/em>, complete with a Barbie theme that felt less like a gimmick and more like a perfect reflection of the sparkle and joy she brought into every room. Karaoke was, of course, part of the program\u2014one of her favorites, and a reminder that even in remembrance, there\u2019s room for laughter, music, and a little off-key singing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fall layered work trips with exploration. September took us to Philadelphia, where Craig worked and we unsuccessfully searched for Freemasons\u2019 treasure. October brought Mo to Cathedral Gorge for hiking and warranty work, followed by San Diego\u2014where we visited the decidedly not-haunted Whaley House and the truly massive USS Midway<\/em>. Before Thanksgiving, we stopped in Loveland to visit the family, then headed to DC and Richmond, exploring Jamestown and Williamsburg and reminding ourselves just how young this country really is. We headed back to DC for another work trip, lingering a few extra days with Tazia, who remains an exceptionally patient and generous host, before heading straight to Nashville for our final trip of the year – probably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019re home for the moment, though Mo looks ready to roll at any time. Our bags are perpetually half-packed, and we\u2019re grateful\u2014for the miles, the memories, and a year full of unexpected turns. This year reminded us that the miles matter\u2014but so do the moments in between. We\u2019re especially grateful for the time we had with Dale and Barbie, whose stories, laughter, and love continue to travel with us, no matter where we land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s be honest. Many of you are really here for what comes next because some of you would much rather hear about the kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So with that, we hand things over to Tazia and Quinton, who had a year full of adventures, milestones, and stories of their own. We\u2019ll let them take it from here\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tazia\u2019s Year in Review: Bingo, But Make It Extreme<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tazia spent 2025 living inside her own self-assigned Bingo Card Challenge, which she has been literally crossing off throughout the year like someone who believes life should come with achievement badges. While mere mortals aim for a single row, she appears to be going for a full blackout. Taz and Sage have become the household\u2019s unofficial bingo auditors, ensuring she never forgets who truly runs the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professionally, Tazia maintained her bold experiment of juggling two demanding jobs at once\u2014law firm associate and GW Law adjunct professor. Despite her busy schedule, she still managed to finish her Executive MBA and earn the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. At her graduation celebration, loved ones optimistically suggested this could be the final degree, but anyone familiar with Tazia knows better than to wager on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel, of course, remained a cornerstone of her bingo strategy. She ventured solo to Iceland and the Dominican Republic\u2014two destinations that share absolutely nothing in common except having their names stamped into Tazia\u2019s passport. She also joined Tina and Craig for a European medley of Austria, Croatia, and Ireland, with an itinerary she organized and her parents happily embraced (see Craig\u2019s blog<\/a> for details). The trip was such a success that she\u2019s already booked the Croatian cruise boat for August 2027; let Tazia know if you’d like to join the waitlist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the year\u2019s most iconic feats was her cross-country road trip after purchasing her grandparents\u2019 car. Tazia and Tina drove it from Colorado to Virginia, creating a wholesome mother-daughter odyssey that included a pilgrimage to the St. Louis Arch, some excellent BBQ, and Tina driving the vast majority of the miles. This is because Tazia prefers not to drive at night, or in rain, or near construction zones, or on unfamiliar highways, or\u2026 really in most circumstances involving a steering wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She kept her brain equally busy, competing in jigsaw puzzle competitions at Minnesota\u2019s Winter Carnival with Paula, Jenna, and Tina. Then it was on to the U.S. Jigsaw Puzzle Nationals in DC, where Jenna joined for the puzzles and the bragging rights, as both advanced to the finals and proved that speed puzzling is a legitimate sport. They fully intend to repeat that success\u2014and improve their times by at least 10% (per Jenna\u2019s official 2026 performance mandate)\u2014at both competitions next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for some of the bingo squares she attacked this year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n