Merry Christmas 2022

December 2022

Time once more to wish you a Merry Christmas 🎄🎁 

A Joy Filled 2023 New Year

And all the Happy Holidays you can fit into these dark winter days

My best reason to smile is these Grandkids 

Daisy, Gavin and Trinity 

So my dear friends, family and beloved people chosen to be blessed with my wordy newsletter, I have to say that 2022 wasn’t a boring year. I might not do it Justice here, but it was interesting.

Just remember, when the ancient Chinese told someone, “May you live in interesting times, they were not blessing them.”  However even in the darkest of times you can look for the light and try to be the light for others. OMG. I am sounding a bit like Dumbledore there. 

Then again, the Harry Potter books have invaded our world 🌎 

Completely dominating July through November. 

Emerson told Daisy that she couldn’t watch the movies until after she read the books. She was angry and declared to anyone who would listen, that her Dad was unreasonable, mean and WRONG. But then we had a long trip in July, and that meant lots of long hours in cars and airplanes and boring waiting in airports and motel rooms, so we read the first book, and by the time she watched the movie she was psyched and ready to declare all the same things we had said twenty years earlier about, “they changed that!” And “they left that out!” And “that scene was perfect.” And that was all it took. One book, then a movie followed by book 2 and the movie and I planned to stop after book 3, thinking she wasn’t ready for the darkness and deaths in the last 4 books. So we read a couple fan fiction novels that rewrote the first two books from Hermione’s viewpoint, but then she declared she wanted to read book 4, just as she began third grade. And by November she had read through all the books, plus the script for “The Cursed Child”and seen 8 movies and 3 Fantastic Beasts Movies and obviously understood them all because her conversation was non stop analysis of the stories and questioning “what if”  and “why” even though none of her friends knew what she was talking about. 

Greg’s sister Laura died unexpectedly this spring, and her boyfriend had her cremated. The ashes were sent to Greg’s last remaining sister, Wendy. In July we flew to Salt Lake, via LA, and spent a day in Lagoon, the amusement park/water park near Salt Lake, before renting a car and driving across Wyoming to Laramie. All the brothers came to Wendy’s house, and then the family went to a beautiful waterfall on private property in the forest of Wyoming. There they turned Laura’s ashes free and each said something kind in farewell to a sister who had had a difficult life. While we were there in Wyoming I also turned 59 and Greg’s sister made roast elk and antelope for my birthday dinner. 

Emerson and Daisy came with us to Wyoming and Greg’s brother, Matt brought his wife, Andrea and daughter, Remi and her boyfriend, Gabe. Wendy’s sons, Connor and Colton were both there, along with Connor’s girlfriend Stephanie and Colton’s wife, Brittney, but Harv’s wife, and our Austin’s family were not able to be there, so it wasn’t a complete family reunion, but it had some good times, and was overall a fun but emotional visit. 

The rest of the summer, we stayed closer to home. Daisy took swimming lessons, Gavin and Trinity had birthday parties. Greg and Emerson and Austin worked a lot and got in some outdoor time as well. 

The Remaining Goode Siblings

Austin and Trisha

Greg and his siblings, past and present

Emerson, Daisy and Trinity 

Family collage 

Austin and I at Gold Beach

School began and Daisy was in third grade, Gavin in first and Trinity in Preschool. Austin’s family learned that their landlord had decided to sell and they needed to be out by January, so they started looking for a house to buy. The requirements were important that they have space from their neighbors and room for the kids to safely play both indoors and out. They also needed space for their high school age niece to be able to move in with them because she had been living with Trisha’s grandma, but the grandma died and her house left the family. 

I’d say that they were successful in their house search. They got a sweet couple acres with two houses and fruit trees. I like that it is close to us, and has a farm house vibe that just says people have lived good lives here over the years. It seems right to me that Redwood school staff gave Greg a baby shower in 1993 for Austin and held it in the house across the street from Austin’s new home. 

My Brother on a Boat Ride in Tennessee 

Greg and I watching the sunset in the harbor

This year Daisy got into the Harry Potter stories

Reading all 7 books and the Cursed Child Script

Nothing is better than having grandkids 

I haven’t mentioned my health. It’s still unknown exactly what I have, but I have further referrals for new neurologist to try and find a diagnosis. Last year I had a lot of tests and next year looks like more of the same. Greg says when they do diagnose me, they will probably name it after me. Anyway, pain and muscle spasms aside, I’m doing well enough that I went to two weddings in the spring, a memorial service in Wyoming in the summer, and a three day weekend at a cabin in Gold Beach in the fall for my husband’s 60th birthday. 

That was nostalgic in a cabin we first stayed in 37 years ago, and the interior is so strangely familiar but it’s all been redone, walls were wood, now white, used to have a real fireplace but this is the second fake one, new minimalist art and furniture but we have been there as newlyweds and with a foster daughter, and the night we got our adopted son and then with friends and both sets of our parents and the night my Dad died and with our premie son and my mom and brother and with our young boys and then our teenagers and now with our grandkids. It always relaxes and refreshes us. It’s nice to return to a calm place and replenish the peaceful memories. 

So once again, I send you love and wish you all the best.

In a art piece by a man I’ve admired for years, Brian Andreas, he said, “there are things we do that may make no sense and they may make no money but they may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other’s cooking and say it was good.” 

 I wish you a year filled with good food and people to share it with. 

All ways, Always I love you. 

Dixie