2011 is drawing to a close and I'm ready to declare it a success.

My sons are happy and healthy and getting good grades. I had the pleasure of watching my son Nick play basketball for Michigan State this year and I hired a personal trainer for Timmy this past summer, which improved his game a great deal.

This year, I co-authored my first book - Real World .NET, C#, and Silverlight [http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Real-World-NET-C-and-Silverlight-Indispensible-Experiences-from-15-MVPs.productCd-1118021967.html], which was released in November by Wrox. I wrote a chapter on ASP.NET 4, MVC, and jQuery.

In my day job at Sogeti, I spent most of the year at the same customer (a large auto manufacturer in downtown Detroit) and I've been able to deliver several different projects for them. My managers saw fit to promote to Manager Consultant at the end of the year. Among my new responsibilities are engaging our consultants with the developer community and promoting Azure within the region.

In November 2011, my two years as president of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group came to an end. I'm proud of what we were able to accomplish the past two years and confident that the impressions I made on the group will be felt for years to come.

I received some recognition this year. I was renewed as a Microsoft MVP in July and I was promoted to Senior Manager at Sogeti a couple weeks ago. I attended my first MVP Summit in February and March and I enjoyed it so much I'm planning to return in 2012.

I love speaking at conferences and user groups and I continued to do this in 2011. In addition to deliver numerous presentations at user groups and community conferences in Michigan and Ohio, I spoke at MADExpo in Virginia, at CodeStock and DevLink in Tennessee, at the Chicago Code Camp in Illinois, and at the Redmond .NET User Group in Washington.

I attended a few conferences at which I did not speak, including CodeMash, the Telerik Insiders Summit, the Microsoft MVP Summit, and DevConnections.

Not everything was positive this year. My father has fallen very ill and has moved to a nursing home near his home in Florida. And I'm still trying to figure out why a relationship lasted 5 years and ended so suddenly.

But all in all, my life seems to be moving in the right direction after some bumps over the past few years. I'm looking forward to the emancipation of my sons in the next 18 months as they graduate - one from high school and the other from college. Things may really get interesting then.