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| Christmas Card 2012 |
Merry Christmas 2012 and
Happy 2013 to All of us.
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And since it is Christmas,
I am assuming we all outlived the Mayan Calendar
This was a year of change
for us, but we are finding ourselves at the end of it with a lot to be thankful
for. Emerson Graduated from Del Norte High School in June, and while he
sent out a ton of thank you cards, let me say “Thanks” again. We had an
incredible outpouring of love and support that gave him a good start on this
year at college. Then he had worked hard and gotten good grades and
managed to get scholarships enough to allow him to start Fall at University of
California at Santa Cruz, as a UCSC Banana slug.
His girlfriend graduated
high school with him and is also going to Santa Cruz, so Emerson and Lula are
doing amazingly rapid growing up and changing every day and yet, staying steady
and wonderful through it all too. She is wanting to be a math teacher and
he is interested in math and in designing computer games. They both go to class
and work in the dining hall and the campus is a lovely redwood and deer filled meadow
parkland on the hills overlooking the Pacific and the Santa Cruz beach
boardwalk.
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Austin was working
at Ray's Market as a cashier and on the dock's helping take care of the Crab
boats loading and unloading Crab and shrimp, but now he has started going out
to sea with the crab and tuna trips of the Barbara Marie. No, I don't
watch "Deadliest Catch."
He has introduced us to a
couple wonderful people who have become a part of out family since July. Raelene
is Austin's age, and has been his girlfriend for 6 months but we love her for
herself too and she’s around even when he is at sea. She is the Mom of an 18
month old girl named Angel, and the two of them moved here from Arizona to live
with her sister.
Angel is a lot of fun to have when she visits and very different
for Greg and I after only having boys around. Raelene just started
working and then her daycare lady had a heart attack, so Greg and I got to
babysit some while a new place was located.
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Greg says this is the best
year he has had in a long time. He loves the classes that he is working with
this year. Most years he has some he loves and some that test him and try his
patience, but this year he keeps being amazed that they are all fun. He
is in that busy time of year, preparing for concerts at school, and in the
community Choir he sings with. He just turned 50! He is also setting up a
spring Train trip to San Francisco from Klamath Falls and being really
intensely into a computer game so that I have to get between him and the
computer before I have his attention.
I published my third
book this year. A different kind for me, in that it required a lot of research.
Double Time On The Oregon Trail, is about two girls, both traveling the trail,
but one in 1850 and one in 2002. This one is fun because the 5th grades
teach the Oregon Trail here, and one of the teachers ordered a class set, (36
books) to teach - and a book reviewer in India read it and raved about how
everyone should read it even though she had known nothing about the history
before.
This is Emerson’s View
from his Dorm. UC Santa Cruz is a long way from us, and every trip there ends
up being about 1,000 miles driving, so we are thankful for things like cell
phones and facebook.
Austin's Blind, loving dog, Ford (Pronounced "ferd")
stays
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with us while Austin is out at sea.
Austin has been in the boat or down in the harbor at Bodega Bay quite a
bit this Fall. He was amazed at
how many different kinds of dolphins he saw, and at the whale swimming under
them that was bigger than the boat.
He was way out at sea where the albatross fly and fishing for tuna but
crab season has not started yet. Raelene and Angel and Greg and I played with
Ford and went to eat and took Angel to the park and I realized how much harder
it is chasing a toddler than it was just 17 years ago.
So, the empty nest hasn’t happened, but it isn’t filled with quite the
same birds either. Speaking of birds we do still have a couple of parrots, the
Amazon and the green wing Macaw, and a cat, but the greyhounds died and Ford is
just an off and on replacement.
the changes have kept us on our toes and feeling pretty good about what
life is like this year. And when you like the things in your life it is easy to
be optimistic about the coming year.
Hope you have a wonderful 2013, For us, I hope we get to see family
again. It has been 3 ½ years since I saw my brother Brett and his kids and 2 ½
since we saw my Mom and Lance or Greg’s parents.
The miles between seem to get longer and more expensive every year.
Love, Dixie and Greg
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