My July

 July is my favorite month every year. Maybe because my birthday is in July. Definitely because my school isn't in session in July.  The old June, July and august summer has seen school encroaching well into mid June and starting again Mid August but my July is still family time, outdoor time, ME time.

 This year my husband started a new job, and so did both of my adult sons.  My granddaughter and I have had the long summer weekdays to explore together, taking her to swimming lessons and the beach, to soccer and the local aquarium and the almost local zoo. it hasn't been too smoke filled or too foggy unlike some summers and the home area is cool but just up the river it is hot and swimmable

 imagination rules at four so we have been Maleficent and her daughter Mal, or a Doctor and Patient, or a wide variety of monsters and princesses and super heroes

Last 4 posts of Autobiographical Challenge

Becoming Men Collage

Life changes fast when your children are only a year apart. You have two babies and then you have none. You live at the grade school and then you never go back. Two high school students consume your life and then the house is empty.

Suddenly the boys are men, and unlike the teens I knew, are full of smiles and laughter and easy hugs. They have women in their lives and one has a child. Now I am dong other things than being a Mom, but being a Mom was the biggest joy of my life and watching the boys turn men, and my husband and I turn into grandparents has been amazing. Sometimes I feel too lucky, scared that everything I ever had on my bucket list has been accomplished so what comes next? I knew I needed new goals, “me goals” or I would turn reclusive and never be able to pry myself out of the house.

Well Hello, Baby

No matter what you think you want from your life or when you expect it to happen, there are some things that take you by surprise and demand their own timeline and insist on happening, not according to your plan but JUST RIGHT NOW.
Our babies were like that, not even close to when we planned to have children, so why would we expect our granddaughter to be any more cooperative. Daisy didn’t arrive on anyone’s schedule but her own. Yet like some of the best gifts that life gives you, her arrival, surprise that it was, filled us with joy and laughter and hope for the future. All those wonderful gifts that babies have been bringing to the world since time began came with this little girl.
It is nice to be reminded tht there is nothing in the world so important that it can’t be set aside for a moment, or a month or a year, while you ignore everything but the chance to make tiny lips smile and tiny eyes crinkle and tiny lungs burst into giggles. When time slows down, in that old, ordinary way, Life can be extraordinary.

Author Presentation

Here I am, in front of a classroom like I have been many times since becoming a student teacher, then a teacher, then a substitute teacher. Now a writer and story-teller. Now I am not telling kids that they have to pass a test to succeed in someone else’s definition. I am telling them that they can define what success is and reach for their own dreams. I am telling them that if the bullied and terrified girl can grow up and talk to rooms full of children, and if the shy, bookworm can turn those early crayon illustrated notebook “Novels” into published books, and convince school districts to use them to teach from, then they can also find a way to share the things they love with the world. I tell them they may never get rich doing what they love, and they may need another job to put food on the table and a roof over their head, but that they should never give up on doing the things that make them feel glad to be alive. I tell them that if you find something that delights you and makes you interested, other people will be interested and delight in it too. It’s all about recharging your energy so you have energy to help recharge our darkest days and let the rest of the world see how beautiful it can be just to share this big blue planet with each other.

Finding The New Trail

Well, when we first met, we were half the people that we are now. Finding someone I could love this much when I was just 18 is a pretty rare and amazing thing and I never take it for granted for a moment. We had so many dreams that we used to talk about as we carpooled to those first college classes back in 1982 and the strange thing is that all of those dreams have come true. We have raised two incredible young Men, we have travelled and taught and loved and fought and made up and kept going. Now we are back where we started, a couple on our own, in the uncharted waters, for us, of dealing with aging parents with weaker by the day, health issues and new grandchildren, and sons who didn’t see us as perfect parents and so have to learn to be their own guides now. We have had to go through another lonely Thanksgiving and Christmas even more depressing than the ones just after we got married. We had to go camping with just us, and find conversation through 3,000 mile road trips without anyone interrupting. We still have less stability than we should, we are in debt and not seeing a way to keep up on the maintenance that out old house and cars need. We have moments of being scared and lonely and wondering what the future holds, but every night when I drift off to sleep I still hear him breathing beside me, and that makes everything good. 

1998 Christmas letter and taking time off to be parents

The portrait session just happened to be on the same day as the Redwood School Carnival for Halloween

MERRY CHRISTMAS 1998

Dear Friends,

Finally I can sit down to write a Christmas letter without any bad news about anyone in our family.  In fact, remembering 1998 will always be a pleasure. It isn't that we don't still miss Papa Paul.
We always will, but this year we had so many opportunities to spend time with people whom we really love.  The best thing that we have done is taking the time to really enjoy our family.

Easter Egg Hunt in Brookings Library

When 1998 began, Dixie was in the middle of s years leave of absence with the school district.  From January through June, I stayed home with Austin and Emerson, if you can call it that.  I had them enrolled in a dance and tumbling class and in June their class performed the role of the gingerbread boys in Hansel and Gretel.  We also took them to swimming lessons several times through the winter, and to a story/craft time at the library in Brookings, Oregon once each week.  Then we had a season pass to Ocean World here in town and spent a lot of time there pet tin tide pool animals and Leopard sharks and watching trained sea lions.  Emerson, Austin and I spent part of every week making sand castles or fishing or hiking in the redwoods and I taught them some of the things from my old preschool class so they could earn field trips to parks and places like the peering zoo to pet baby possums, skunks, bearcats and tigers; and the Sumeg Indian Village with its Dance Pit, redwood slab houses, and sweat lodge and dugout canoe.  In Wyoming as a child I never quite believed a dugout could be made to carry a person but here they are easily big enough to carry an extended family.

The school year flew by for Dixie although it was a bit of a struggle for Greg. Then in June we drove up to Salem to visit Aunt April and Uncle Vince on our way back to Wyoming. We basically moved in with Grandma Scilla and Uncle Lance and sweltered through six weeks of 100 degree weather except when we were 10,000 feet up in the Beartooth mountains having a snowball fight in July.  The boys and their Cousin Lacy did T-Ball and Swimming Lessons. They also played every day with LUke and lacy at Grandmas in a wading pool or at Brett and Shannon's on the trampoline.

Grandmas captured by Emerson

Lance and Priscilla also went with us to Newcastle where we spent a wonderful week invading my in-laws.  Harv took us out on the prairie for a wonderful time looking for arrowheads.  Grandma Mimi explored the Black Hills and Custer State Park with us and we saw lots of bear, wolves, buffalo and Burros.  We went miniature golfing at Pirates Cove in Rapid City which is an adventure all its own.  We saw the new and unimproved area around Mt. Rushmore and wept at the loss of the old Natural beauty.  We went to a play at the theater where Greg and I spent our first summer as newlyweds. In short we did all the tourist things.  Then Grandpa Harv took the boys out  on the oil patch to work with him and also out on his boat where they each caught a trout.



 On our way home from Wyoming we spent a day playing, swimming and riding roller coasters and cable cars through LAGGON outside of Salt Lake City.  That is an incredible water fantasy place which was even more perfect as the temperature was over 100 once again.  The park is filled with water slides, hot tubs, volcanoes, rivers and of course lagoons, all of which you can climb on and in as you swim through six acres of heated canals.

Once we got home the boys started another swim lesson session and soccer.  Austin was aggressive and scored a goal every game and three in one game.  Emerson loved to be the goalie and made several saves, and we won't mention the time that he got so excited that he had stopped the ball that he turned around and flung it into the goal himself.  They were on the Dalmatians team with several friends they already knew, so we enjoyed it for the seven weeks before the last three games were rained out.

At Uncle Brett's with the cousins

Dance Art Studio

From Hansel and Gretel

At our house with Aunt April

Once September came, Greg began his year off from teaching and I started a new position teaching emotionally disturbed children in a classroom sponsored by the school district but on the grounds of the county mental health building.  I really love my job and especially love not having to work for my old principal and my new one is wonderful.  I have eight students who all go to different schools in the morning so I travel around working with them. Then in the afternoon they all come to me for some school work and a group therapy session with a mental health employee.

Austin Started kindergarten and has been very successful.  He's reading at about the same level as most first graders and the teacher says she always  uses him as a role model.  He hasn't been in the time-out chic yet which, considering his energy level, must require a lot of self control.  His teacher is also our neighbor and Greg babysits her three sons after they get out of school each afternoon.  Both A and E also started Music lessons. Em is taking Violin and Austin is playing the Cello. They love and hate it both.

We saw Keiko the whale the day before he was flown to Iceland.  Greg joined a church choir.  The boys are still dancing.  If our life right now seems to be filled with our boys, that's because that is exactly how we chose it and want it to be.  They are growing so fast and constantly delight and amaze us, as they keep us seeing all the wonders of this magic world through their eyes.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM

DIXIE, GREG,

AUSTIN and EMERSON