Christmas, 2025

Behold! We bring you tidings of great joy….well, maybe

Dear Family and Friends,

Behold, we bring you tidings of great joy, or not, which shall be unto all people, for unto you this day is the annual Franklin Family Holiday Newsletter.

Joe was sworn at…IN… to his second term as a Manhattan Beach City Councilperson this past January. Nancy continues to chant, “Four more years! Four more years!” as she dances around the house, secure in the knowledge that Joe is going to be out of the house for…FOUR MORE YEARS!

Joe continues his quest to maintain fitness in his golden years—boxing, weight-lifting, and going to the gym. Then he comes home and wonders why stuff hurts, to which Nancy helpfully answers, “Because we’re OLD!” which Joe can finally hear because he got hearing aids in BOTH ears, not just the ear furthest away from Nancy.

Speaking of Nancy, Neil deGrasse Tyson would describe her weight gain as “the big bang.” Her face is melting faster than the Nazis’ in Raiders of the Lost Ark. She continues writing, and a couple of her screenplays won awards this year; Probably in the same fashion that AYSO and Little League give out participation trophies, but Nancy wanders the house like a specter anyway, muttering, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”

Taylor has made it her responsibility to check in with her elderly parents. Mostly to ensure her inheritance. Nancy and Joe continue to chum her with, “It will be HUGE(ly depleted)”. Taylor is now the Assistant General Manager of the Hotel MdR in Marina del Rey. She has settled into hospitality like Leona Helmsley around an untucked bedsheet, but her parents ignore that in favor of the “friends and family” discounts her job provides.

Also, according to Taylor, the cheapest way to get to Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives is on your parents’ airline credit card. Unfortunately, your parents have to go with you. However, once there, you can cajole your fellow hoteliers into getting you your own deeply discounted or comped rooms so you don’t have to share a room with your parents and listen to them argue over how your mom is going to get all her souvenirs home. Taylor would like you to know that, apparently, Sri Lankan gemstones fit nicely into small compartments, including your father’s anal orifice if he argues with your Mom about the necessity for buying them.

Jimmy and Christie continue their idyllic life in North Carolina. In keeping with the new Linda McMahon-inspired Department of Education curriculum, they’ve enrolled their kids in Jiu-jitsu, which, Joe and Nancy guess, prepares them for their higher education in the school of “hard knocks” or a sibling cage match on the White House lawn.

The “grands,” Maci, Caroline, and Liam, turned 11, 9, and 6, respectively, this year.  Joe and Nancy made several trips to N.C. to see them, but the highlight may have been bringing them to Washington State this summer to visit Nancy’s sisters and friends.

Aunt Elise and Aunt Carol compete for “favorite aunt” status like the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills at an insult Olympics—nothing is off limits. Aunt Elise’s snack stash was an airport Hudson’s relocated to her pantry.  Aunt Carol lives on the water and has every beach toy imaginable.

Aunt Carol has four grandkids and doesn’t seem to care if the seven sand-encrusted second-cousins-once-removed are eating gummy worms in her hot tub, poking twigs into a hornet catcher, or driving her boat across Puget Sound like Evel Knievel at a monster truck rally.

Aunt Elise does not have children. Aunt Elise worries about unsupervised, free-range children. A lot. Aunt Elise gets a text at 6:30 AM from her neighbor about a 6-year-old back-holler Houdini escaping from her front door, barefoot, wearing only a pull-up. When the little escapee is recaptured and interrogated, Nancy and Joe learn that Liam was just going outside to find Aunt Elise and ask if he could have a snack from the glorious snack selection before breakfast. So much for sleeping in.

And it’s always nice to be in Wal-Mart and hear, “Nancy and Joe Franklin, please return to the dressing rooms for three left-behind items,” when you asked your husband to stay with the children while you went off to pick up some much-needed Advil.

After the Franklins were evicted from Aunt Elise’s and Aunt Carol’s, they headed to Seattle, where they spent time at the Pike Place Market and Seattle’s new waterfront. The “grands” insisted on splitting one $79 Dungeness crab for lunch, enjoying only $5.37 of it before deciding they’d rather have $5 corn dogs. Although it’s nice to know that their palettes have expanded beyond “pavement gum,” it was still nice to stand at the airport window and wave at the plane that was winging them back to their parents.

This fall, even though Joe and Nancy are “Day of the Dead” every day, they decided to go to Oaxaca for the real “Dia de Los Muertos” celebrations. They were barely out of the airport before they had stepped out of their cab, joined a parade, and walked a mile drinking the finest mezcal poured by the locals from plastic gasoline containers. The next four days were a blur. The Franklins must have had a good time because they came back, tightly wrapped in two rugs, looking like stale burritos from Taco Bell.

After a trip to Las Vegas to see The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere and making a substantial donation to the Las Vegas Gaming Commission, Joe and Nancy headed to N.C. for one last pre-holiday visit with the “grands.” This trip can best be described by singing the last few stanzas of The Twelve Days of Christmas:

Five in a car…

Four days of ice cream

Three pizza dinners

Two kids threw up

And one peed the bed in the room!

This year, Joe and Nancy lost some good friends. They are thankful for the time they had with them, and grateful for their own health, their home, and the abundance of joy and love they feel from all of you. May your 2026 be full of love and peace!

The Franklins,

Joe and Nancy, with entertainment provided by Jimmy, Taylor, Christie, and “the grands.”