Fasser Family Blog

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year!

I hope this letter finds you all well and in good health.  We are so grateful to have our friends and family and to celebrate another great year on this earth!

2011 started like so many years before with a celebration with our friends in the North Cascades at the cabin.  Our dear friends the Dennis’ and the Krystads came over to celebrate the New Year.  We enjoyed the snow and the beautiful mountains.  Mazama, truly is heaven on earth.

In February Jackson turned 9!  I still can’t believe it.  He and I took a trip to Santa Cruz during mid winter break to visit my family that month.  He had fun playing the big kid to his younger cousins, a role usually played by his big sister.   Jackson played basketball last winter followed by baseball in the spring.  This year baseball really changed as the boys were learning to pitch to each other.  To add to the challenge was record braking cold temperatures and rain fall in the North West.  This made the games nothing short of miserable for both the players and their parents. It also meant that most of the practices were rained out.  The highlight of the season was our last game.  The sun finally came out, as did the fans and the hot dogs!  While hanging out in the outfield with the other parents my boy hit a grand slam homerun! A real one!  As he rounded home his whole team came out to congratulate him and were just jumping up and down around him screaming!  It was so fun to watch!  After that game our unseasonably cold spring turned to a fairly decent summer.

This last summer Jackson had a blast participating in sleep away camp at Camp Sealth, lots of trips to Mazama with friends, Challenger Soccer camp and Rock Climbing Camp with Vertical World.  The summer went by way too fast as it always does and Jackson started the 4th grade this fall at West Woodland in Mr. Langley’s class.

Fourth grade, fall soccer, and rock climbing has kept Jackson busy!  He is super excited for Christmas, hoping for an iPod Nano from Santa.  Good luck kid.

Lindsay’s year was especially exciting as it was her last year at Seattle Girls School.  We took a trip to the cabin with her 3 best friends in January, our 3rd year to do so.  She played her last year of basketball with her North Seattle rec league.  In February she went to Costa Rica with her 8th grade Spanish class for a week.  The girls all stayed with host families and spent their time practicing their Spanish, volunteering in a local elementary school, learning to cook the local food, and enjoying the sight seeing.

This spring Lindsay graduated from Seattle Girls School.  We were so proud of her to be one of two students chosen to deliver on of the commencement speeches (can be seen on this website).

This summer Lindsay started training with the Ballard High School swim team, also attended sleep away camp at Camp Sealth and enjoyed rock-climbing camp as well.

This fall high school FINALLY started.  Our little freshman was extremely excited to become part of the BHS community.  We are really happy with how Lindsay has transitioned from her small all girls’ school of 125 to a co-ed population of 1,600!  Piece of cake for this girl!  Linz swam on the swim team and has joined SLAM club (Students Lives Always Matter) which is an anti biased group that educates students on suicide prevention and how to help a friend that might be suicidal.

Both kids continue to do well in school and are just happy, lovely kids.  Scott and I feel so blessed.   Dogs are great too if anyone really cares.

Scott is still with Optify and has really been enjoying his interface with the customers and being a support to the new employees that just seem to keep coming as the company grows!  He still has a few projects on the side so that he can continue to flex his creative muscles and help small businesses in our community.

This summer with the help of our good friend Giles, Scott built two zip lines at the cabin!  They are totally cool.  So cool that Jackson even crashed on one of them, split his shin open, and got his first stitches over Labor Day weekend.  Guess that was going to happen sooner or later.

Scott and Jackson continue to be very active in Cub Scout pack 144.  Scott has volunteered as “outings chair” this year and is currently planning the Mt. Baker Snow Camping Trip.  He also coached Jackson’s baseball team last spring.  This guy is such a great dad!

All three of my people did a climb in August while at the cabin with a local guide.  They did a climb called “fun rock”.  It’s actually part of a group of faces that one can climb at Mazama Rock, almost directly across the road from our place.  It was strange for me to see the kids scamper up the face of such an enormous rock!  It was scary to me but also really cool to see just how strong and capable they are as climbers.  It was awesome.

I’m doing great.  I feel like the luckiest woman alive.  The kids are getting big and I feel like it’s my time to try a little something new.  I was hired to do a Christmas Party this year as the event planner.  I’m working on a wedding for this June and I may be working on an event in September for the Little People Community here is the Pacific Northwest.  Fingers crossed that that happens!

The event-planning piece just happened because, well, I can just do it.  The really big news is I’ve started a little home business!  I am now a clutter consultant and home organizer.  I’ve actually been doing this for years for my self and for girl friends that get over whelmed by their spaces and their…stuff.  So, I figured, “why not?”  I’ve loved how flexible the hours have been and how deeply satisfying it is for me to come into a chaotic space and make it calm.  Hence, the name of my business is called Chaos2Calm.  (Girl friend Kristie came up with the name).  We will get the website up this winter and I’m putting the finishing touches on my business identity.

I hope you all enjoy this holiday season.  We love visitors so please come and visit.  Take care of your selves and each other.
We love you all so very much.

Michelle, Scott, Lindsay, and Jackson

This is flat out crazy. The 72 year old neighbor who lives up the hill from us – behind our house – and over one drove through his garage, through a hedge and through a fence to drop down and crashed into Mary and Spruce’s deck – on Spruce’s birthday! The driver emerged shaken up and un-hurt, but what a mess! Oh, he just got his license two weeks ago…

Lindsay is currently enjoying sun, food, spanish, dancing and community service in Costa Rica with the 8th grade spanish class from Seattle Girls School. The link below has more picture and notes on what’s going on. We miss her so much!

http://sgsincostarica.blogspot.com/

Merry Christmas to you all!

I hope that if you are reading this that you are relaxed, happy, and enjoying the holiday season. I sure am trying! Having Lindsay and Jackson around and seeing the excitement that they feel during this time of year is absolutely contagious and I can’t help but to love it all too despite all of the crazy preparation that we all go through!

It’s also a fun time of year to reflect on the last 11 months. For some reason, this year seemed to go by faster than then should be allowed. I can’t believe Lindsay is now 13 and a half and that Jackson is about to turn 9. Since I am crazy about our dogs I will just tell those that care, Cooper is 4 and Lucy is 2. We are all grateful for our health, home, for each other, certainly for all of our friends & family and last but not least our cabin in the woods.

This last year our place in Mazama was the reoccurring theme for us. The gorgeous North Cascade Mountains are the perfect backdrop for family memories. We started off the year the way we have so many times before with fun in the snow. Thank goodness the four of us never seem to tire of this ritual. With love in our hearts we manage to pack up all of our crazy at least once a month and make the trek 3 plus hours to spend time in Mazama. We have made some great friends over there and are really feeling a part of the community. Perhaps my favorite Mazama highlight this year would be seeing our lovely girl dominate at the summer pie-eating contest (what a lady!) while her brother coached and cheered her on. I also have some really fun memories of the first disco dance party outdoors, disco ball and all! Or maybe is was the little fire we lit on the banks of the Methow river this summer so the kids could roast their hotdogs outside, during the day for lunch.

I mentioned the kids are growing up. Lindsay has grown so much this year. She is now 5’6” and will probably pass me up by the end of 2011. She is still attending Seattle Girls School as an 8th grader. She is definitely ready and excited about starting high school next year. I don’t think daddy is ready for that yet.

Lindsay continues to do very well in school. We are so proud of her and her academic achievements. Lindsay ran cross-country for Seattle Girls School this fall and is planning to return to rock climbing after the holidays as well as her Ballard basketball team. Lindsay loves to go on runs with her lab Lucy. Lindsay is babysitting a lot now and is enjoying having her own money to spend. She is turning into quite the young lady.

Jackson is fabulous. He also is doing very well in school and has lots of really great friends. He is in third grade now at West Woodland Elementary (right across the street from home). He played basketball last winter, baseball in the spring, and soccer this fall. Jackson also tried his hand at rock climbing this summer and it turned out to be a fabulous fit for him. He is a little spider monkey at the gym! Jackson is really into his Rick Riordan books (Percy Jackson series), his Cub Scout Pack, West Woodland Chess Club and his Lego’s. His latest adventure is getting his computer drivers license at school so that he will qualify to join the West Woodland Robotics Club.

Scott is still enjoying success at Optify. The company has grown a ton this year and I know I can speak for him when I say that he is very grateful to be so busy during this uncertain time in our economy. Scott is still playing tennis though not as much as last year. His new fitness regime is all about hot yoga. He just loves it. My incredible husband still enjoys biking to work, coaching baseball for Jackson’s team and is very involved in Pack 144 (Cub Scouts). Since I get to write this I will just say that he is such an amazing father and husband. I am one lucky girl!

My year was great. I’ve spent a lot of time with my kids at the cabin as a family and big groups of their friends. I’ve stepped away from any PTA leadership roles and am instead focused on being in the classroom with Jackson. I am learning so much in the third grade! I volunteer at Lindsay’s school as much as I can. The need there is very different and doesn’t involve the girls so much. I actually could really learn a lot at her school!

I made a stained glass window this fall while taking a class. I haven’t made any stained glass in 15 years so that was really fun. I’ve been focusing on yoga and am finding it to be so amazing for me. Last winter I attended a yoga/cross country skiing retreat for women and just loved it. I was surprised and amused to learn that I have been skiing wrong for the last 13 years so that was interesting. I just tried to ski with Scott over Thanksgiving and had forgotten everything I learned at the retreat. Guess I need to go again this year.

Well, if you have gotten this far in my letter, thank you for reading it. I hope our Christmas card found you all well. On behalf of all of us, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah and a very Happy New Year.

With Love,
Michelle, Scott, Jackson, Lindsay, Cooper and Lucy Fasser

We love Mazama. Love, love, love it. The different climate from Seattle, the friends we have there, the cabin, the space, the neighbors, the river, the store and the friends we have over. We made a lot of trips over there this summer and had a blast. Some of the fun activities (chronicled in the pictures below) included:

• Our first trip to the pool in Twisp
• The Mazama Mom’s Weekend with all of the kids
• A rafting/tubing trip from the cabin down to the Mazama Country Store
• Disco party in the garage, under the party lights (new boom box!)
• Michelle’s birthday dinner
• Scott and Jackson cutting down their first tree (first two trees that is)
• Lindsay and Scott doing our first overnight camp out Louis Lake (catching fish in the AM!)
• Our neighbors Spruce and Mary visiting the Methow Valley for the first time
• Another dinner and disco party
• Our annual trip with David, Nancy and Roman Harto to the Winthrop Rodeo
• Meeting Kim and Steve who just bought the North Cascades Basecamp – Wonderful people and a great spot for lodging in the Methow Valley – Mazama

Enjoy the photos!

We had a great time in our trips to Mazama in the Spring including over Memorial Day weekend. All of the Memory Lane neighbors were there and the kids had a blast playing together, we went on a great hike up the East Branch of the Methow River – up where the Needles Fire was in 2002. The river is raging and the foliage is returning. We look forward to heading back for Michelle’s birthday weekend.

Enjoy the photos!

It’s hard to be back at work after such a wonderful 9 days in Mazama. We had 5 dogs, great snow, lots of good food, great downtime and visits with friends. We were able to ice skate (twice), cross country ski (three times), sled (lots – some with the dogs pulling), snowshoe, help light and watch a huge bonfire on New Years Eve (see other post on this), play games (Cribbage and Monopoly being the favorites) and generally lounge around.  Pictures of the week are below – I’ll post a second blog post just for the New Years Eve pictures.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It’s December 28, 2009 and I am sitting cozy at the kitchen table at the Mazama Cabin. We came over on the 26th and have been relaxing and eating every since. Tomorrow we swear we will get out side and enjoy this beautiful place, early. Actually it’s not entirely true that we haven’t been outside. We went sledding yesterday and made an attempt at skiing with the dogs today. Skiing was unsuccessful as the trail we decided to ski was technically closed and completely crusty and hard with no grooming what so ever. We chose this trail because we wanted to take the dogs. All four of them with us! We actually would have been out early in the day if we weren’t engrossed in an epic game of Monopoly. It usually takes us several sittings to finish a game. Today it was over late this afternoon with Lindsay as the victor. She smoked us.

What this cabin does for our family is such a gift. We sleep. And when we say sleep, we mean the 10 plus hour kind of sleep. After that, we nap. We read books from start to finish. We play board games, hike, ski, sled, drink cocoa, play in the river and drink ice cold beer. We visit with wonderful friends and explore this amazing part of our country. The dogs play until they can’t move and then they too sleep. We dry clothes on the clothes- line and build fires in the stove inside, as well as the fire pit outside. We eat truck-loads of smores and watch movies on DVD. We also have great disco dance parties in the kitchen. We wear pajamas more than street clothes and we shower only when it’s dire. We are so grateful to be here from the second we arrive and are always so sad to leave. This cabin is our biggest news to report and our greatest family joy. We sure hope that never changes.

We are dog sitting this holiday season in a very large way. We have Lucy’s littler mate Carly (yellow lab) as well as their cousin (mom’s are litter mates) Sammy (yellow lab, 2 weeks younger than the girls). Then we have our beloved Cooper (3 yr. old Havanese) of course and another small dog, Arielle (9 yr. old poodle). The labs are great and are having a ball. They might seem like a handful when you read this (3 one year old labs, are we crazy? Yes.) But at the cabin they play so hard and run around outside all day. When they come inside they just want to eat and sleep. There is a lot of dog hair from those 3 but other than that, they are lovely and they often try to curl up in one bed, just like they did when they were babies. We don’t know who loves it more out here, the big dogs, or us

This whole last year has been great for all of us! We added our lab Lucy (black lab) to our family, and we have been able to spend a lot of time out here in Mazama. We took a trip to Mexico, PV over spring break this last year, made a couple of trips to Santa Cruz and Michelle went to Hawaii with a couple girl friends to attend Jacqui & Greg Pfiffer’s wedding, but, we otherwise stayed pretty close to home and enjoyed the city and east of the mountains. We had a few visitors this year; the Dossett family from Portland, Scott’s dad, Carl from Houston, and Scott’s mom’s BFF Adrianne from Houston and our friend Stewart Dietz with her BFF Tracey, from the Methow Valley, on their way to France, oh la la!

Jackson is in the 2nd grade at West Woodland Elementary. Last spring he played baseball and Scott coached his team again. This is the 3rd year he has been with these players and they have all improved so much. Jackson played soccer this fall with his great buddies and even though they played up in their age bracket, they played extremely well. These guys are going to be serious contenders! This last winter just before the break, Jackson played basketball for the first time. He really liked it. In between sports he does Martial Arts and enjoys that as well. His other activities include participating on the West Woodland Chess team and playing the piano (his least favorite unfortunately).

Lindsay is in the 7th grade at Seattle Girls School. She is doing very well academically and socially. She has a much lighter homework load from last year and that makes for a very happy girl. She keeps in shape by swimming on the Cascade Swim Team 3 days a week. This is her first year and she is improving all the time (this is a very hard sport to learn!). She has not participated in any of the competitions yet. Maybe, she will consider it in the spring. She has also discovered a love of rock climbing (in a gym) and hopes to try a big rock outside this spring and summer. Lindsay is also learning piano and this winter is playing girls basketball with Ballard Community Center. When she has time she is also babysitting and has proved to be very good at it. She sure loves having her own spending money!

Scott has been hard at work at his new company Optify (www.optify.net) which he is really enjoying. The economy and lack of funding really hit his last startup so he’s excited to have solid backing from Madrona Ventures here in Seattle. He’s also been playing a lot of tennis, some time fishing (not much catching), coaching Jackson’s baseball team, beating his friends in poker games, teaching Lindsay the subtleties of cribbage and generally enjoying life while keeping our head above water during a rocky 2009.

Michelle has stayed busy this year trying to keep up with the kids. She planned her last auction for West Woodland Elementary last March, which brought in over 125K for the school. After 3 auctions she is ready to focus her volunteer hours volunteering in Jackson’s classroom, going on all of the class field trips and in the lunchroom (a total riot!).

This last fall she volunteered for two local political campaigns. One was for mayor candidate Michael McGinn (Lindsay’s basket ball coach) and Seattle City Council Candidate, Mike O’Brien. Both candidates won their bids and it was so much fun to play a very small part in it all. She is also staying busy but thoroughly enjoying decorating the cabin and even planted flowers over there this last spring. Gardening in the mountains offers it’s own set of challenges, which are totally different from those posed by gardening in the city so it should all be interesting to see what actually comes up this year. Most of Michelle’s time mid-week is spent shuttling kids from their various activities and participating in the car pool for Lindsay’s school. She has also completely enjoyed having Lindsay’s new puppy in the family and makes a point to get her some daily exercise at the local dog parks. Unfortunately the dog has not been great on a leash and therefore has not become much of a running partner but we are hoping to turn that around this year.

It has been wonderful hearing from all of you this holiday season. We love all of the letters and cards that you send. Thank you for checking out the website. We welcome all visitors and have plenty of room so if you think you can swing a visit our way, please don’t hesitate to crash with us!

Take care,
The Fassers

We just returned from another wonderful trip to Mazama for Thanksgiving. Michelle and Jackson went out on Monday morning while Lindsay and I came out after school/work on Tuesday. There was about a foot of snow on the ground and Jackson spent the whole day making snowmen. We had a bunch of fun in the snow including snow ball fights, snow men, minor sledding and walks in the crunchie white stuff.

We had Thanksgiving Dinner at Stewart and Phil Dietz’s place (because SHE has a dishwasher not named Scott) and were joined by Bernerd and Evaline Waltham and their two young children. We had a wonderful time and had the opportunity to re-interate how lucky we are and how thankful we are to have health, happiness and love.

We got in some projects around the cabin including re-stocking wood, cleaning up the wood storage area, moving the hot water heater inside and patching up some holes. I was able to get in some fishing on the lower Methow and we spent a fun night in Winthrop for the tree lighting and fireworks – which were amazing!

As Michelle said while we were there “I already can’t wait to come back”.

We just came home from Alicia Likkel’s piano students recital. Below is Jackson playing three pieces including the Harry Potter them and Old MacDonald had to rock. Enjoy!