Lindsay has embarked on a five month study tour of South America. She is starting in Ecuador, progressing to Bolivia then Peru and finishing in Argentina where she will be in a study abroad program in Buenos Aires. You can follow her blog at http://adelanteyarriba.blogspot.com/ as well as follow her on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/lindsay.fasser. We’re in contact with her almost daily (thank you Verizon International Plan + WiFi/Texting!) and she is exploring some amazing towns in Ecuador and meeting some new friends.
Fasser Holiday Letter – 2016
December 2016
I love this time of year when we look back & reflect on the last 12 months. Fortunately for us, we have mostly good memories of 2016. I was struck however, when it came time to find a photo of the 4 of us together for our Christmas card, I actually couldn’t find one! It seems the Fassers were often not a dynamic foursome! That doesn’t mean we didn’t find time to be together, or that there is a lack of closeness. I think it is more of just the reality that our kids are getting older (and bigger!) and sometimes we have to divide in order to enjoy them while doing their various activities and pursuing their interests.
Lindsay happily returned to USF as a sophomore this year and has had a fabulous time at that school. This last summer she worked as a camp counselor at Camp Sealth, something she has always wanted to do. She worked most recently at a darling bakery/café called Heart Baker in San Francisco. She just wrapped her fall semester where she has chosen her major in International Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies with a concentration on Latin American Studies. She will be home with us for the next 4 weeks and then will be leaving on January 17th for Ecuador where she plans to travel for 4 weeks. In February she will arrive in Buenos Aires where she will begin a semester abroad in Argentina.
Jackson is awesome! He is a freshman at Ballard High School. He has grown so much this last year, its almost painful to watch! He continues to train and work at his Parkour sport and Free Running. He has just finished level one at the Olympic Ski School where he will work as an assistant snowboarding instructor this winter. This last summer he spent 12 days on the trail at Philmont which is a high adventure Boy Scout camp in the mountains of New Mexico. He is still working toward his Eagle Scout rank.
Scott & I are having a blast watching it all and sharing our time with the kids. Scott was fortunate to have accompanied Jackson and 40 other scouts from Seattle to Philmont. For both our guys this was a life changing experience. Scott is an adjunct professor at UW teaching a digital marketing course at the Foster School of Business. The three of us (no Lindsay) took an amazing trip to Belize over spring break! We snorkeled, rode zip lines and rafted in caves! We enjoyed the beaches and the delicious food.
We hope this letter finds you well. If you would like to see pictures from our last year please go to our family website (recently updated!) at www.fasser.net.
Merry Christmas!
Michelle and the Fasser Clan
Fasser Family Holiday Letter 2014
December 21, 2014
The shortest day of the year and the longest night. How perfect that it is finally the moment that I have a minute to write. Mostly because this year has been the busiest, most wonderful ever! I also had the most amazing afternoon with my friend Nancy seeing a show on Capitol Hill only to come home to watch the Seahawks win easily over the Arizona Cardinals, now dubbed the “angry birds” in our household. Short day but a great one indeed.
2014 started off as best it could. We left Seattle on December 26th to drive down to Lake Tahoe. It’s a place so dear to me and it was the first time Scott got to see it. It wasn’t as snowy as it should be. Skiing at 9000 ft. on man-made snow was totally weird but the lake always lying below is majestic and beautiful as ever. What made it even more special is to have my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin (Ron, Jill & Claire) join us for a long weekend. It was a great way to start off the year!
To suggest that 2014 has flown by is such a cliché but Lord is it true! One indication of that, our Christmas card has a major typo! Turns out Lindsay is actually 17, not 16. Ooops. How did that happen? She is a senior at Ballard High School. She is a great student and is enjoying her post as Student Body President. She is also involved in SLAM (Students Lives Always Matter) a suicide prevention club, LINK CREW (welcome committee) and she continues to enjoy her involvement in Unified Sports and acting as a TA in the Special Ed department. This has been a great year for Linz and she has submitted her application for early acceptance and University of San Francisco. Graduation is June 12th and we are super excited that Lindsay will deliver the commencement speech to her class.
Jackson is just awesome! His soccer team just finished their last game yesterday (thank God). They made it all the way to the finals and they just ran out of time! Their second place win was well deserved. The Knocknoodles are a heck of a team and Jackson has really enjoyed playing defense for them. His latest passion is Parkour. Specifically Free Running, which is a fabulous combo of gymnastics, climbing, and running in an urban environment. It is super cool and we will hopefully have some videos posted on the website for you to enjoy. He’s equally passionate about snowboarding and thank goodness, the forecast looks like he will get some boarding in over the holidays. He continues to be a great student at Hamilton Middle School and looks forward to playing Lacrosse in the spring. He also continues his involvement in Scouts. He earned his second class rand and has committed to doing a 50-mile hike this sumer, which will count toward his Eagle Scout rank.
We are so proud of both the kids. They are healthy and happy people with a fabulous sense of humor! We are lucky parents for sure.
Scott’s still at Hacker Group and he loves it. He continues to enjoy that he is a huge part of the digital growth in the company. It is so fortunate that his expertise has made him such a valuable individual to companies moving to a digital marketing strategy. Scott also just finished his first quarter of teacher for the University of Washington’s Continuing Education program as an instructor for Digital Marketing Analytics. He had 31 students signed up for the course, which just ended last week, and he absolutely loved it. It was a very rich experience for him.
As for me, I’m actually working on a pretty regular basis as of this fall. I’ve never had weekly clients before and they came to me when their regular person left the country for a year. The 3 of them could not be more different and each one of them has changed my life in the most wonderful way. I could have never imagined in a million years how much I would enjoy them and how much they would mean to me. It’s a big change, as I haven’t worked every day in 17 years! But I do like it. A lot. I’ve learned more about my self and I think it’s actually been good for the family. I get a LOT more help now! I’m super happy.
We continue to spend loads of time in Mazama, our heaven on earth and we leave on the 23rd (in two days!) to spend our Christmas holiday and New Years there (in a rented house). Our little cabin will be sitting empty this winter as it’s getting a kitchen make over thanks to some failing plumbing that has actually been an issue for a while. It was decided this Labor Day that we needed to deal with the plumbing issues. We are super excited about the project and will look forward to being at the cabin again later this spring.
We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and an extremely Happy New Year.
With Love,
Michelle, Scott, Lindsay and Jackson
Fasser Holiday Letter 2013
December 2013
Seasons Greetings! I hope that our letter finds you well this year and that you are enjoying the magic of the season!
Good news to share all around with us. Each of us has experienced some big firsts this year and a few fun changes. The kids continue to do well and we are all looking forward to our holiday break from school and a much-needed family vacation, which is a first since buying the cabin!
Lindsay is in her junior year at Ballard High School. When they say that the junior year is the hardest, that is indeed true. She is taking AP (advanced placement) and honors courses, which are challenging but good. She has amazing teachers and she is doing a great job keeping her grades up. In 2013 she had her first boyfriend, did her first college tour and as of today got her first drivers license! Lindsay is president of SLAM (students lives always matter) Club at school and is also the communications director for the ASB. She organized the homecoming assembly for the school this year and hit it out of the park! I was able to attend the assembly and it was awesome. She participated on the BHS Swim team and is playing Unified Basketball and Unified Soccer. Unified sports are a program at Ballard that has teams of kids with emotional and physical disabilities partnered with kids who do not in conjunction with the Special Olympics. She LOVES playing unified sports and is having a ball
Jackson is growing like crazy. Since this summer his shoe size has grown 2 ½ sizes! He is still so lovely and we really enjoy his dry sense of humor. He started a new school this year and is going to Hamilton International Middle School for the first time as a 6th grader. He played La Cross last spring for the first time and has decided to let baseball go. He also went to beach camp for the first time this summer where he learned to “drop down” on a skateboard ramp and do flips of a trapeze that sent him hurtling into the frigid Puget Sound Water! He takes the city bus now to school all by himself for the first time and he has even done a little babysitting! Jackson is still playing soccer. His team the Knocknoodles are currently undefeated in the semi playoffs. He is very excited about snowboarding this year and is signed up to take the ski bus from his middle school in January (also a first!).
Scott continues to do very well professionally. He left Optify 9 months ago (just in time as they closed shop in Sept.!) and went to work for Hacker Group. It is the first time that Scott is working for an agency and he is really enjoying the creative energy of that environment. He works with some very smart, amazing individuals and he loves the challenge and the big changes. For the first time he is sending Jackson to boy scouts without dad as boy scouts is totally boy driven. Kind of sad but cool too. He had to drive with his daughter for the first time and is glad to have survived it. He built a beautiful “napping house” in our garden this summer for the first time and it turned out perfect! We celebrated our 20th-wedding anniversary in July and are very proud and happy about that.
I am working for the first time in a very long time. My business is still small but I have plenty to do and I’m enjoying making money again. For the first time I feel inspired to grow my business this year to add more of an event planning aspect as I seem to keep getting calls for that. I picked up another wedding for this summer, which I’m very excited about. I booked two Christmas parties this year (one up from last year!) and I like it! For the first time I actually think I can buy myself the couch of my dreams. Yes, I dream about couches and other home furnishings. For the first time in a very long time I got back up on a horse! Having been a horse girl as a youngster I have really missed that part of myself. I went to Bull hill Ranch this year with a girl friend for a week and rode horses and wrangled cattle and it was FABULOUS! I can’t wait to go back.
For the first time in 15 years we will not be spending New Years in Mazama. Instead, we are leaving on December 26th for a ski trip to Lake Tahoe. It will be Scott’s first time there and the first time the kids and he will ski there. This is where I learned to ski and where I used to visit my dad as a kid. We are all so excited to get in that van of ours and take it on the road! My Uncle Ron and Aunt Jill are meeting us there with my cousin Claire.
I hope 2014 brings you many firsts and that you enjoy yourselves and your loved ones.
Merry Christmas,
Michelle, Scott, Lindsay, Jackson, Lucy (lab), Cooper (Havanese)
Fasser Family Holiday Letter 2012
Happy Holidays to our Friends and Family,
Wow, has it really been a year since we lasted posted something on this blog? Yikes.
The Fassers are all doing well. We have had a really fun year as a family. The kids are growing up so fast and they are both such great people.
Jackson is 10 now. He started snowboarding last winter, making the switch from skis back in January. He’s got a new board this winter and is ready to get up to the mountains. The snow has been falling steadily now and we will be getting lots of skiing in over the Christmas break. Jackson played basketball last winter, baseball in the spring, rock climbing throughout the year and soccer this summer and fall. Jackson joined a new soccer team this fall called the Knocknoodles and just last weekend the Knocknoodles won the championships for their age division. This was extremely exciting.
Jackson and Scott continue to be active in Cub Scouts. This is Jackson’s last year as a Cub Scout and he plans to move on to Boy Scouts this spring.
Lindsay is 15 now. She loves being a student at Ballard High School. She is very active in student government acting as sophomore vice president. She is secretary of SLAM (student’s lives always matter) club, which is a student suicide prevention group. Lindsay joined the National Honors Society this fall and she participated on swim team for the second year. She just joined the BHS inclusion basketball team and uses grow taller ebook to get even more taller than she is, which is a league that integrates students with special needs and they participate in the Special Olympics. Last spring Linz played fast pitch softball for the first time and she absolutely loved it. Her greatest wish right now is to get signed up for driver’s ed. so she can get her permit and start driving!
Scott continues to be a fabulous husband and father! He works very hard to provide for our family, which the kids & I appreciate so much. Scott is the den dad this year for Jackson’s Cub Scout troop and he is coaching Jackson’s basketball team this winter. He had meniscus surgery this fall and recovered beautifully. He was quite productive at the cabin putting in new flooring in the guest bedroom and updating the bathroom. He also did an amazing restoration on our 1946 Monarch stove (at the cabin). The thing actually works now and it is so nice to be able to cook over there (used to take about 40 minutes to boil water!).
I’m still enjoying being a stay home mom. I am starting to work a little outside the home. I started a small business last spring doing home organizing and clutter consulting. I also planned a holiday party for Ocean Beauty Seafood and planned a lovely wedding in June. I love who the kids are growing into. Our family didn’t travel this last year out of state but we spent a ton of time at the cabin and we enjoy that time so much. We are heading over on December 27th and staying through the 5th of January.
We wish all of you and yours a very Merry Christmas. We hope that the New Year brings you health, wellness, and peace.
With Love,
Michelle, Scott, Lindsay, Jackson, Cooper & Lucy