Friday, January 1, 2010

Christmas and New Years

Our trip back to MN for Christmas was great. We avoided snowstorms, saw lots of family and people, bounced babies, and ate a lot. And also pooped a lot due to all the eating, which is good, you can't let that stuff sit in there. I've been having some (left) knee issues so I'd been taking a few weeks off from running to let it heal. After the holidays I'm several pounds heavier which probably won't help the knee once I start running again. It's a Catch 22 that will probably start a downward spiral which culminates in me being extracted from our bedroom via crane live on Discovery Health. We ate (abridged version): Manning's burgers with the Walkowiaks and Kovala, kim chi with herring (trust me, it's fusion) and Rulle Pulse (a Norweigan cured lamb slice of awesomeness) at my dad and Uncle Dale's bachelor pad, Famous Dave's with the Lees, Liz's aunt Coleen's annually awesome Greek spread, and Christmas day egg bake at Nancy's. I will not describe the poops out of respect for baby Jesus.

The kids had grown; Josie's cheeks are still epic, Nathan can still smile like a mofo, Reilly gave up a single goal in an 11-1 rout, and Emma can speak and ball crawl. Despite a full schedule, we relaxed a bit and genuinely enjoyed the yule. I even got to play junior high and stay up all night with Drew playing some treasure hunting video game. Family drama was non-existent, except for Christmas day night at the Niska's when my cousin Rory thought he was a turkey while on LSD. He started cramming stuffing up his "cavity" whilst singing showtunes. We rushed him to the hospital but unfortunately the doctors were unable to save him. They were able to recover most of the stuffing, however. You win some you lose some. Whoever thought of putting peanuts in stuffing was a genius.

We didn't send out x-mas or new years cards, so consider the following our yearly letter: When the Sherva family wasn't rolling around on our money pile or traveling the world philanthropizing children, we did a lot in 2009. Liz started a grad school program in preservation studies. Her division head called her the single greatest student she'd ever encountered in her 80+ years in academia, and her paper on our old neighborhood is considered the seminal work on Lafayette Square history. Me, I identified every genetic risk factor for every major disease known to man, which would have resulted in new cures for ailments from addiction to Alzheimer's if my research hadn't been covered up by the surprisingly powerful Big Casket industry. Oh well. We rung in the new year an hour before you did.

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