Christmas Letter 2011

2011 Has been a dramatic shift from our typical mundane, hum-drum, run of the mill years we’ve collected so far; turn on some background music and get comfy-- we’ll tell you the few parts that make us sound cool.

Jack had an occupational change in January: he is now a judge. You’ve got to admit that’s pretty darn impressive for someone his age, right? Not a traditional judge, mind you. Jack works in the Quality department and judges his co-workers for a living, but let’s not nit-pick the jargon—a judge is a judge.

Dayna continues to be a constant at Westmore Elementary School where she is the most desired Title One Teacher’s Aide. In fact, both her and Jack are so valuable that their businesses are paying 200% the rate of half of what they got a year ago.

Dayna also continues to thrive in an industry of tax dodging, back door dealing, crafty-types known as crafters. She has been able to get quite a following based on her performance at the annual Holly Fair, and that keeps her busy almost year round doing custom orders for a hefty fee. She also accepts money in exchange for nothing.

On one boring afternoon, Dayna started worrying that we perhaps were running low on debt. Since everyone is worried about the housing market and economy, we decided to give our money to the people who need it the most: large banks. After looking at approximately 3,189 houses in Utah County, we still lived in an apartment in a neighborhood that Charlie Sheen once called, “Trashy.”

We toured dozens of houses formerly lived in by families of cats who clearly work in the meth production industry. “The ceiling is collapsing in the living room, and the basement ceilings are six feet tall in this one.” Jack said. “All we’ll need is nice crown molding.” Dayna would say, her unblinking, blood-shot eyes scaring even our new realtor, and this guy was a survivor.

On the brink of losing hope, Jack agreed to submit an offer on one of the least gross places they had looked at. Immediately after faxing in the paper work, Dayna got a call from competent realtor man (should we do another code name? Why not? His name is now Phil.) Phil called and said that the house which she and Jack had desired the most had accepted their initial offer. Dayna responded with a high pitched noise that most likely reward Phil with a hearing aid later in life. Jack felt the same way as Dayna though, but expressed it through much lower pitched, manly noises.

With a new house around the corner, the reality of hairy animal living with us—something we all dream of-- was about to come to fruition. There was a hitch in the plan, though. Earlier in the year—before the reality of actually getting a house had fully set in—we had purchased tickets to go to Disneyland.

The dates we would be in “The Happiest Place on Earth” (Editor’s note: what if you got the flu there? Wouldn’t be the happiest place, obviously) took place about two weeks after we moved into our new house. This meant we would need to, as responsible adults, wait until after our California trip before purchasing a puppy. JK, we bought her right away.

Anne (named after the character from Arrested Development) is our little Pomeranian, who isn’t spoiled. She never barks, is potty trained, loves everyone and won’t bite even if you stole food from inside her mouth. You may think that you’re detecting some sarcasm here, but she’s genuinely a great dog and we’re really grateful we got such a sweet puppy. I wish there was something funny to say about her, but she’s just adorable and we love her. Hopefully from the very pained expression on her face from our included picture will bring you your own holiday LOL; she really hated that outfit.

Our new house was not as dreamy as we had imagined it right away, but soon after doing several months of exhaustive renovations, we felt like all new home owners do; we don’t know where the previous owners are, but we sure hope that they’re homeless and sad now. They’ve earned it.

We are less fat than a year ago. We realize this is blatant bragging, but last year things were looking a little bleak for us. While asking for donations during a fund raiser last year, we actually had someone say, “Hey, Jabba. Look, I was just on my way to pay you back, but I got a little sidetracked! It's not my fault...” Although we did immediately refer to that person as “Bantha Fodder,” I should also note that this story is completely made up and just a lame excuse to include fat jokes, Star Wars references and back door bragging in our Christmas letter. Between the two of us we’ve lost over 100 pounds, or the weight of two dead Ewoks. We look so pretty now.

Also notable this year: Dayna directed and co-starred in a yet to be released Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Jack secretly dated Country Superstar Taylor Swift while pretending to be Taylor Lautner (which involved a lot of hunching, unnecessary shirtless time and terrible, terrible acting) and our dog Anne released Miley Cyrus’ new album, which Rolling Stone called, “substantially better than her other stuff.”

So as the year winds down we are pretty grateful for our boring lives, and those of you who continually help to keep them that way. We hope this Christmas finds you all safe, happy, healthy and living far enough away to not cause any serious damage.

Merry Christmas!

Jack, Dayna and Anne