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

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