This Year's Christmas Letter

"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list." - Susan Sontag

If there were evidence that things are getting back to normal after the whole "world falling apart" thing, it's that we've been once again able to travel. Visiting new places has long been our thing, and this year we did it up. We were lucky enough to see some of you along the way. In March, Rob went to Scotland, quickly followed by a week with the whole family in London and the Cotswolds, where Jean lost herself in every field full of sheeplings we came across. In June it was off for a ridiculously fun couple of weeks in Munich, Prague, Salzburg, Murren, Switzerland and Zurich. We got to hike the alps, watch some cows, have a Mozart opera dinner, drink some bier at the Hoffbrauhaus, take a bike tour of a 13th century castle, ride a cable car, visit a BMW factory, and so much more. On our return, we headed to Taos for a family reunion in the desert summertime with 3 generations of Swendimann-folk. Late summer found us in Delaware at the beach house with Jean and family. Rob and Jean both snuck in solo trips to Jersey City and Upstate New York respectively. And after Thanksgiving Jean and Rob went to Vegas for a week of not gambling, drinking, or carousing! And there's more still on tap? We're heading out to Colorado with Chad and family to see Rob's mom for her 80th birthday!

So we're back, baby. we're lucky to have the opportunity to see so many things and experience so much fun travel together. Both kiddos came with us for most of the trips, except for the Vegas trip where they stayed home together. When we got back, they'd decorated the tree, and caught the TV on fire. They said Joe Pesci tried to break in the house, and it was the only way to scare him off. A true Christmas miracle.

In other news, neither Jean nor Rob nor Aly nor Jack changed jobs/schools this year. An amazing accomplishment! Full disclosure: there's still 23 days left to go this year as I'm writing. In fact, Jean was promoted to Associate Director at Accenture, a promotion long overdue given her continuous rock star performance among the sales analytics literati of the northeast market unit. Other than that, she's done a lot of sailing with her new Argentinian ship captain, Alfonso and his wife. We've been out on their boat several times and Jean has captained while Rob has been the Assistant to the Regional Bos'n. Rob is still in his forever job at the FinOps Foundation where he continues to promote good cloud cost management. If your cloud spending is out of control, call Rob, he can help. He's also been active again in the HOA, mostly focusing on caring for the trees and landscaping in the neighborhood. Aly has continued to thrive at Creative Planning, managing a growing bunch of clients. She has been traveling even more than the rest of us, taking several trips to major league baseball cities and Charleston with her boyfriend Dan. Jack is in 11th grade this year, still at Loudoun County High School, home of the angry parents! He's taking 4 AP classes, Spanish 5, and personal finance where he's learning key economic precepts like "Buy Crypto!" He's playing club soccer with Great Falls club where mercifully Jean is not the manager and Rob is not the videographer for at least this season, and doing well there, and looking forward to the spring when he will be on the high school team again. He'll also be heading to Costa Rica at Spring Break with his Spanish class, so the travel thing has apparently rubbed off fully on both kiddos.

We are looking forward to the future, and we are lucky to be healthy and happy and have all of you around us as we slog out of the last couple of years into a more hopeful time. Next summer we will be again traveling. We may be trying a long stay somewhere, but we'll see. As always we'd love to see some more of you along the way, so stay in touch, and have yourselves a happy holiday wherever you are.

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