From the rooftop of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

It’s that time of year… welcome to the Fuller’s 3^rd Annual end-of-year recap (2007, 2008)!  This year Julie and I were so busy leading up to Christmas break we didn’t even have time to send out regular greeting cards in the mail.  So don’t feel snubbed if you didn’t get one from us since nobody did.

However, we did receive an array of cards and letters from friends and family and enjoyed them all.  But even the best of those cards pale compared to the multimedia extravaganza you are about to experience: if it wasn’t for Avatar, surely the critics would be calling this post 2009’s trend setting, technological entertainment marvel.  Probably.  And now for our last post of the decade…

The year began quietly enough with January and February quickly rolling by with school, the girls playing basketball and some family visits from Omaha.  My work with Point B transitioned from one client to another and Julie helped to put the finishing touches on another Bal Swan Children’s Center fundraising event.  Julie and I welcomed a well earned ski weekend away in Breckenridge, CO leaving the girls to enjoy time at home with Aunt Kris and Grandma Cindy.

By March, the pace had started to pick-up.  With the commencement of soccer practice, our 6-day-a-week soccer habit was reinstated.  Between weekday practices and weekend games, it seemed like there was hardly time for anything else.  Still, Julie and I found time to attend the Bal Swan Ball together while Julie continued her tireless support of PTA activities.  At the end of the month, we jetted off to paradise to enjoy spring break at our favorite spots on Maui.

April and May continued with more soccer and I managed a few work trips to Hartford, CT.  The girls hit the books and finished their school year ready for the summer holidays.  Meanwhile, I became more and more engaged in extracurricular Point B activities.  With a tough economy, it was all hands on deck to help drive the business.  While a lot of work, I learned quite a bit about networking, consulting and it created opportunities for me to spend more time with a fantastic group of colleagues: I can’t say enough nice things about the great people I work with these days.

Erin, Grace & myself atop Vail Pass

In June, I gathered a new soccer coaching credential, sacrificing a weekend in exchange for my USSF State E-License (following the NSCAA State Diploma I’d earned in March).  Meanwhile, Julie and the girls began an action packed agenda of soccer camps and summer leagues, CARA Track at the high school, summer reading and math programs and near daily trips to the neighborhood swimming pool.  We hit the road to spend Independence Day in Bismarck and made time for an early August weekend rendezvous in North Platte, NE with Julie’s family.

In between, Sam the Dog celebrated his 13^th birthday (oh my!) and the whole family took part in supporting the Courage Classic, a multi-day charity cycling event which raises money for The Children’s Hospital in Aurora, CO.  Each year, Point B sponsors a rider’s aid station at the top Vail Pass (elevation 10,662’).  Julie played a major part helping with preparations this year’s station, covering my butt while I was away with client related travel.  The girls had a great time greeting hundreds of riders as they finished the long climb up the pass.

In late August the girls also returned to classes at Aspen Creek K-8 School: Grace to Mrs. Dery’s 4^th Grade class and Erin to Mrs. Kallsen’s 1^st Grade class.  Grace is showing a real talent for research, which dovetails nicely with her love for science and writing.  Erin, meanwhile, has become a legitimate book worm and has been part of the advanced math group since early in the term.  Late in the month, Grace celebrated her 9^th birthday with an outing to Boulder’s Northern Colorado Fencers.  She and her gang of musketeers learned formal techniques like lunge, parry and riposte followed by a traditional “spazz-out berserker” style battle commonly seen on the school playground.  No one was injured, so we considered it a highly successful outing.

Deep fried fowl

While September was pretty quiet, a clear hi-lite was seeing Jason Mraz play a sold out Red Rocks Amphitheater.  The tickets were a late 11^th anniversary gift Julie and I gave ourselves.  The venue was cool, the music memorable and my date was a babe.  Would could be better?

In October, Grace’s soccer team competed and earned the U10 Girls “Bronze” division championship at the annual Colorado Youth Soccer (CYS) Cup soccer tournament.  Also, at the end of October Erin celebrated her 7^th birthday at the local roller skating rink.  Erin’s crew swarmed the concrete to display their mad skating skillz (ahem), then attacked the birthday cake with vigor.  After more than a 25 year hiatus, Julie and I found our return to roller skating sort of like stepping into a time machine.  Very little has changed aside from the emergence of in-line skates.  Everything else from the music to organized games (skate limbo!) and snack bar was pretty much as we remembered it being in junior high school.  Scary.

With November’s arrival, another festive holiday season kicked off by a Thanksgiving dinner attended by Denver-area family members Kris, Scott, Denise and Cindy as well as long time friends Raghu and Maruthi with their daughter Laya.  For the second year in a row, we had vegetarians in attendance, but that didn’t stop me from tackling my first deep fried turkey out in the driveway.  It was good, but not great.  However, I learned a lot and I’m looking forward to my next fry attempt.

Which brings us to the end of the year.  As I look back, perhaps I spent a little too much time working this year, but that’s life sometimes.  I’m optimistic about the future and looking forward to a year that was better than the last (which wasn’t too bad).

And now a final holiday message from Grace and Erin (the aforementioned “multimedia extravaganza”):

Season’s Greetings including Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Muharram and Joyful Kwanzaa.

As has become tradition (2nd year in a row!), the Fuller holiday missive will be published on-line so friends and family far and wide can get the scoop without relying on the US Postal Service. Plus I can write way too much and have links to other websites and all sorts of good stuff that I can’t do in a paper letter. Huzzah for the Internet!

Where to start? Well, we moved in January. After a decade on Monarch Trail, Julie and I decided we’d finally outgrown our home having collected two children and a metric ton of stuff over the years. Of course, we’d fallen thoroughly in love with Broomfield and didn’t want to leave the area. After a couple months of searching, we had the good fortune of finding a home in a neighborhood nearby and within our same school’s boundaries. We’re now residing comfortably in a bit larger home (that includes a REAL office for daddy) and we’re only 1 block from the neighborhood swimming pool, 2 blocks from school and 3 blocks from a large park with a soccer pitch, roller hockey rink and basketball court. Ideal.

In February, I began an interesting personal / business adventure when I took on a consulting project for a client in South Africa. I began a 7 month commute between Denver and Johannesburg, which I chronicled over on my OpenKimono blog so I won’t repeat it here. In all, I made 7 trips to South Africa, racking up about 135,000 frequent flyer miles and viewing 26 movies along the way. I made a number of new friends and learned a lot about both business and life in the developing world. I can’t really explain the impact this project had on me personally, but I can say that EVERYONE should go spend time in Africa, South America or some other developing region of our world. It’s an eye opening experience and it will forever change your view on America’s influence in the world and it’s responsibility to become a more engaged and thoughtful member of the global community.

Dave and a kitty

In April, a musician joined the family as Erin began taking piano lessons. For as long as I can remember, Erin has been into singing and dancing, often howling along with the kiddie pop music singers on XM’s Radio Disney. Over the months, Erin’s piano skills have improved to the point where she had a couple break-through “performances” in December. First, she auditioned and was selected to perform in the talent show at Aspen Creek K-8 School, where she and Grace attend school. One of only a handful of kindergartners, Erin performed in front of several hundred audience members across three different shows. Even though she was pretty nervous (and I may have been even more nervous), Erin did a great job. Check out a video from one of her performances below. A few days later, Erin acted in the role of accompanist during a piano recital held at a retirement home when all the kids from her piano classes took a break from playing to do a couple Christmas sing-alongs. Not bad for a 6 year old.

In the last couple months, Grace too has become interested in music. While she doesn’t care to learn piano, she’s obsessed with guitars, drums and singing off-key. I guess that makes her a budding rock n’ roll musician, but it’s hard to tell at this point where she’ll end up. She does seem to have a penchant for writing lyrics: she has already penned a number of songs with a surprising amount of angst for an 8 year old. And she’s a natural organizer having already formed a band with her 3rd grade school mates, including auditions for band members via teleconference. At some point, they may actually have to learn to play instruments and maybe get some voice lessons, but the gang is having fun for now.

Grace penning a song

In July, we hosted a semi-annual gathering of Fuller family members. We had a great turn-out with Grandpa Dennis, Grandma Rita, Brother Kyle and Cousin Darian making the trek from North Dakota; Great Grandpa Fred and Great Grandma Dottie joining from New Mexico; Aunt Nancy flying in from California and Brother Scott, Sister-in-Law Denise and Sister Kris entering the fray from here in Denver. It was finely tuned chaos with croquet, bar-b-ques, July 4th fireworks and buckets of frozen mojitos. Check out some photos from the weekend here. After 4 days of festivities, we were glad for things to quiet down, but it won’t be too long before we rally the troops for another Fuller assault.

Pancho and Sancho

At the end of the month, we took our sole vacation for the year, heading west to San Diego. We rented a house in Ocean Beach and hit the sites including SeaWorld, San Diego Wild Animal Park and, of course, the San Diego Zoo. We also got a lot of quality time with Aunt Nancy including a couple dinners with Cousin Sean and a surprise encounter with Uncle Phil who was working in San Diego on a company project.

Erin & Grace in Old Town San Diego

Also in July, our senior citizen Sam the Dog underwent arthroscopic surgery to clean out bone spurs in both front elbow joints. Sam is literally on his last leg having had the canine equivalent of a blown right rear ACL a few years ago. Sam turned 12 this past July and it’s hard to tell if he see his 13th birthday. But he’s shown a lot of resiliency over the years, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself commenting about him in next year’s holiday letter.

Sam chillin

In August, I decided it was time to call an end to my journeys and put my business, NaviGo Global, on hiatus (see September below). This same month, it was back to school for the girls: Grace entered the 3rd grade while Erin made the big move from pre-school to kindergarten.

In early September, I joined Point B in their Denver office and I couldn’t be more pleased so far with the firm. Good people and a positive, open culture. Point B is a project leadership consulting firm with expertise in a lot of areas (M&A Integration, Process Improvement, Major Business Change and more) and emphasizes execution, problem solving and knowledge transfer back to our clients. It’s really great to be home most nights in time for dinner because Point B only works with clients local to their offices.  It’s also meant I could commit more time to family activities like coaching soccer.

Erin on the ball

Speaking of soccer, it’s now become a four season sport for the family. Both Grace and Erin competed on teams during the spring and fall seasons this year and each attended soccer camp during the summer. Now that winter has arrived in Colorado, the games move indoors with Grace continuing to play weekly with her teammates in an indoor league. While Erin isn’t playing in a league, her team is going to participate in a tournament over the holidays. Both girls enjoy their games, but strangely, seem to enjoy practices even more. I guess that’s a sign of good things yet to come. I’m also playing these days. I started with pick-up games a year or so ago just to learn more about soccer so I could improve my coaching. I’ve really grown to enjoy the sport and have graduated to a more formal setting to play on an indoor team this winter in an adult CoEd league.

Grace making the save

In November, we hosted another gathering, this time a mix of family and friends. Sister Corey, Brother-in-Law Alex and their son Jameson flew over from Edinburgh and spent Thanksgiving week soaking up some gorgeous Colorado weather. Alex, a son of Scotland and a lifelong resident, was basking in the sun and I think maybe he didn’t really want to return home to the soggy weather at the end of the trip. Also joining us were Corey’s friends Cindy and Christian, who traveled from Seattle for the festivities. Grandma Cindy, Scott, Denise and Kris were also able to make it and rounded out our dinner guest headcount at 13 . Accompanying our turkey was a dizzying array of side dishes, so even the vegetarians among us (there were three) found a way to achieve the requisite food coma. Check out some photos from the week here. Erin and Grace also put on an impromptu musical performance showcasing their dance moves and singing abilities. All in all, we had a great week and perhaps it will even become a tradition.

A happy Thanksgiving

Through-out the year, Julie has remained the anchor of our family. While I was jetting back n’ forth to the other side of the world, Julie was holding down the home front, hustling kids to soccer and other activities, continuing her work as the secretary of the Aspen Creek PTA, expanding her volunteer time in the classrooms of Grace and Erin, as well as a myriad of other things that came with relocating our household during the spring. Her flexibility and energy enabled all I was able to do career-wise over the past two years and I can’t imagine there are too many other spouses out there that would survive, and in fact thrive, in such a situation. I am truly blessed and thankful for her support.

Christmas Portrait

I think that about covers the hi-lites. A busy year and I expect another busy one to come in 2009. To all our family and friends we wish you the best of health and the best of luck during trying economic times. Keep your heads up and pushing straight ahead as things will improve eventually, they always do. Cheers!