A colorfilled summer

This summer has been pretty much the exact opposite of what I imagined that it would be.  I was going to have lots of quiet mornings at the keyboard to work on writing my novels, while my husband taught summer school 4 days a week for 5 weeks.  But of course the computer chose the last week of school to give up the ghost, and my son took on two jobs so, I ended up being grandmother for up to 16 hours a day, which is delightful, but not quiet or conducive to writing.

Newcastle, Wyoming Sunset

Then the members of my husband's family got it together for the first time since 2010, to have a family re-union, and his parents are far, but both still there to celebrate 65 years of marriage. So we had to drive nearly 3,000 miles round trip in a car that lost its air-conditioning about 1/2 way through the trip.  Also, I'm 52, and when I was 15 and learning to drive, I was really bad at stick shift. And my Mom's car was an automatic.  My 3 year old brother, (With Down's Syndrome) would point at me and hold his hands like he was steering, and jerk and jump and refuse to get in my Dad's pick-up if I held the keys.  So this summer, on the trip back, I insisted we take my husband's car, with standard transmission because I finally wanted to learn.  And I did, but I used every cuss word you can imagine, multiple times.

Sylvan Lake, Black Hills

Sunset on Granite Spires looks like fall leaves

 So we saw my niece who is 15, and had just returned from a Tucson Girl's Choir trip to China.  She plays the Guitar and composes her own wonderful tunes and was only 10 the last  time we saw each other.

Echo Canyon, Utah

Magpie

 I love birds, but when I was a child in Wyoming, we were told to never shoot at anything alive, unless we planned to eat it, or unless it was that crop pest, the magpie.  Now I regret the target practice they provided.

Moooo for the Granddaughter

 My Granddaughter loves cows, and animal sounds.  The latest fascination is Dinosaurs.

Cow Watching at Sunset

Darlingtonia

 Close to where I live there is the Darlingtonia trail.  These knee high pitcher plants thrive in serpentine bogs, where almost no other plant can find enough nutrients to grow.

Darlingtonia (Cobra Lily) community

Smoke and sunset

 The fires have been thick and my lungs hurt from it, but the sunsets are at times spectacular because of it.

Anyway, school starts before labor day this year, and the computer is up and running again, and I am hoping to get back into the routine of dreaming stories onto the keyboard.  Hope you all have a wonderful Fall.

Dixie

2010 Christmas Letter filled with family re-unions and my first book

Working through the family letters has brought me to another year filled with Joy and Family.  Goode-Stock at Custer State Park, a trip up above Yellowstone to Hell's A Roarin outfitters, a family re-union with Austin and his Birth Family. Lots of Family re-unions this year

Wedding Day
Greg, Vince, Marcy, Dixie, Austin, Emerson

The Crescent City, Goode family

Vince & Marcy

Emerson and Grandpa Harvey

Merry Christmas and Happy 2011 to you

 from Dixie and Greg, Austin and Emerson

                  

Raft Ride at Cody Wyoming

Christmas 2010

My Family at Vince's wedding

Lance at Hell's A Roarin' Outfitters

Pahaska teepee

Austin gets my Dad's Truck

In Fern Canyon

Goode-stock

My Boys

Vince and Marcy's wedding

Hello again, 

     The year has once again flown by and left me wondering where it went.  Sometimes I think that I could just copy the letter from last year, because we keep plodding along in the same yearly routines – but I like that.  This year, I feel the end of those routines following my every footstep as I realize that my baby boys have turned into young men, and the time when we have two children at home is slipping away so fast as to be already gone.

     Austin is going to turn 18 at the end of March, and Emerson will be 17 just a couple weeks after that.  By June 2012 we will be done with the High School Days.  Except for Greg who is in his fifth year teaching High School Band and Choir across the border in Brookings, Oregon.

Austin with his birth family

     The highlights of our year were mainly about family.  The first really exciting one happened on March 29, Austin’s 17^th birthday, when he flew to Nebraska to meet his birth Mom, her husband, his sister, and three younger 1/2 sisters.  They have always been in touch, but this was the first time, since he was a month old, that they have been able to hold each other.  We have been so lucky to share him with another family who loves him as we do.

         The next major event was that Emerson started driving and his Grandma Mimi  gave him her car, and now I have even more reason to worry.  Honestly, The person who said that deciding to have children meant deciding to always have your heart running around outside your body, had it right.

     In May, Greg and I celebrated our 26^th anniversary, Austin started working at Burger king and Emerson earned an academic Letter at del Norte high school.

     June was a happy month.  Three years after we lost Greg’s big sister April, her husband Vince remarried.  The wedding was a delightful celebration, with a few intense tea filled moments of bitter-sweet memories.  We love April still, but Marcy is a wonderful new member of our family, and it is great to see Vince so happy again.

     Then we drove back to Wyoming to celebrate Mimi and Harvey’s 60^th anniversary with a family reunion in Custer State Park.  That was a great visit, followed by a visit to Cody to see Grandma Priscilla and Uncle Lance where she gave Austin my dad’s old Ford truck.

     Everyone managed to get together, except we didn’t see my brother Brett and his kids, or our nephew Cody’s children.  Mom and Lance did get back to see Brett and family at the start of December. Greg and I rented our favorite Gold Beach Cabin for Thanksgiving and our nephew Connor, and Vince and Marcy came there to join us.

     My other news, is I finally managed to publish one of the many writing projects that I have always been working on.  My fantasy novel, with a 9 year old boy with cerebral palsy as the main character, goes from a school shooting to a life changing journey to another world.  Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, can be ordered by any bookstore or library, and is available on Amazon.com.

Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog

2009 summer trip

Fawn

At Cody airport

Evan's Plunge in Hot Springs

My Mom and Austin

Buffalo Bill Dam

Dam that's a long way down

Emerson on the hot 4th of July

Mom took Austin Fishing

Heart Mountain

Up on Chief Joseph

Mom and I

Yellowstone "Buffalo"

Lance on "Red Devil"

Sunset

Heart Mountain

Beautiful

We hadn't made it back to Wyoming since my sister-in-laws memorial service in August of 2007 and things were not going particularly well for a lot of our extended family. My brother had divorced and his kids were having a hard time dealing with that. My Mom and Younger brother, who is wonderful and has down’s syndrome, suddenly the only ones still living in Cody after my other brother moved east, made my Mom pretty depressed as her 70th birthday approached. My husband’s family wasn't doing too well either, his sister was so depressed she wasn't getting out of bed for months at a time and his Mom had fallen down steep concrete steps, one full story and been in the hospital a couple of months with no real therapy or progress, just sitting there, wearing a catheter and saying the world would be better if she died.

Sooo. . . anyway we knew we needed to get there, but at the same time, my husband needed 7 1/2 credits by August to keep his Oregon teaching credential so he got on-line and signed up for any choir type educational grad units he could find, but they were all over the Northwest.

Brief as I can make it - here is an overview

June 18 - Pack and leave around 11, drive 415 miles, from the coast, through Medford to Klamath Falls through the desert to Burns, Oregon by 9 PM

June 19 - Drive 500 miles to just past Swan Valley Idaho to "Falls Campground" on the overflowing Snake river by the Wyoming Border.

June 20 - Saturday we drove 400 miles across Wyoming through Jackson, and into the snow

 then on to Riverton, Casper, and Wright and to my In-laws home in Newcastle on the WY/SD border. We got there by 6 PM and went to see My MIL in the hospital, and out to eat with my FIL - we were staying with my husband's brother and his wife.

June 21 hospital visits and a steak dinner for Father's Day

Mon, June 22 we checked MIL out for a couple of hours and talked her into visiting her house. She had to come in a wheelchair but could use a walker inside. Dad-in-law couldn't pull the chair up the steps.

June 23 My DH, (Dear Husband) had to drive about 80 miles round trip to get lumber for a wheelchair ramp. YIKES! Wood is expensive and that was $1000. Newcastle is small and lovely but even a McDonald's or KFC or Taco Bell is over 80 miles away in any direction.

That evening we brought MIL back to the house and invited her sister, her Step-Mom and all her in-town family and had a big spaghetti feed.

June 24 Doing Laundry and removing sod where the ramp will go

In Custer State park

It was hard Working here
much better visiting

June 25 – MIL and FIL’s 59th anniversary More ramp building and then a trip into the Black Hills to the Black Hills Playhouse for "Sugar Bean Sisters" and a swim in Legion Lake. Musicman and I spent our "Honeymoon Summer"  working at the playhouse 25 years ago.

June 26 and 27 Finishing the ramp, Our two teenage boys helped a lot and also went fishing both days. Now that Austin can drive he had a lot more freedom and got sent on a lot of trips to the hardware store.

June 28th We spent the morning at the hospital and then went to Hot Springs South Dakota - home of mammoth bones and Evans Plunge. My Mom's paternal Grandmother got married there just a couple years after the plunge opened. 1892, Saw a lot of buffalo in Custer state park and swam for hours

June 29 we drove from Newcastle, up I-90 to Billings Montana. Met my Mom and Younger brother, and my  other brother and his three kids, and my cousin  and her husband and their two teens. We got rooms with hot tubs and a pool and went out for BBQ and started the celebration of Mom's 70th birthday

Inside teePee pool

June 30, more swimming, Red Lobster, and drive to Cody, WY to the first ever KOA. Sadly my Mom has packed her house too full of stuff to have room for visitors so we put up a tent. Brother 1 had to leave to drive back to the East with his kids. I'd expected heat but everywhere we went was cool and rainy

Hail

Hail Storm

July 1 - July 5 

We stayed around the Cody area but drove a lot with Mom and brother, We went over to Thermopolis

Thermopolis Wyoming

My cousin's Mom plays Calamity Jane
She is related to C. J.  

and the booths at the city park and to the fireworks on the 4th, we went to a rodeo

4th of July in Cody

Up on the Switchbacks of the Beartooths and chief Joseph Highway

and up Chief Joseph Highway (Yes, I'm glad the name was changed but it will always be Dead Indian in my head) through Yellowstone and up to a Mountain top Ranch above Gardiner Montana to visit a friend of my son's from high school here who was working for her uncle there. My brother got to ride "red Devil" there and it was a really intense drive up a gravel road in a lightning laden downpour to get there.

July 6, 7, 8

Baby Bison are camouflaged if you see in black and white like a predator

Three days of driving through Mountains in torrential rain and wind and lightning. The 6th we crossed the bighorns on 14A through Powell and up by Lovell to Newcastle again. The 7th we came down to Laramie and stayed up til 1 AM visiting Greg's sister and her husband and two son's - plus the oldest son has a very nice girlfriend from Cody who actually remembered my Mom and Brother. June 8th We drove to Denver, Colorado to visit Greg's Mom. She had been moved to Porter's Hospital on the 4th.

July 9th, My 46 birthday, we mostly visited at the hospital and then my youngest son bought us all tickets to see Transformers in IMAX that evening.

July 10th Greg's sister came down from Laramie and I stayed at the motel with the boys to catch up on laundry while they were at the hospital again

July 11 we visited MIL in the morning then drove I-70 through Vail, to Green River, Utah

July 12, Drove from Green River to Ontario, Oregon. I usually get sick from the heat but it was cool and almost green. Every river we saw this entire month was up to or beyond its banks.

July 13 - Drive all day to Tacoma, Washington

July 14 and 15 Greg takes a music conference for 2 credits and then we leave at 5 PM and drive home by 3Am and collapse.

I saw so many places I wanted time to explore and was so close to other cousins and friends that we never managed to get in touch with. My Mother-in-law was still in Porter's in Denver although she has since gone to her house, back to the Newcastle Hospital and over to Rapid City’s Hospital. My husband  left July 20 for a three day class in Billings, then went go back to Denver.

This time the boys and I stayed home to work on a yard sale, and save some of the expense. As a teacher we get no pay between the middle of June and the end of September and this has been draining the bank account.

On the way home I did hear an appropriate song,

“Sounds Like Life To Me”

( Darryl Worley, Wynn Varble, Phil O’Donnell )

...

He said I don’t know where to start

Sarah’s old car’s about to fall apart

And the washer quit last week

We had to put momma in the nursing home

And the baby’s cutting teeth

I didn’t get much work this week

And I got bills to pay

I said I know this ain’t what you wanna hear

But it’s what I’m gonna say

(Chorus)

Lots of storms this trip

Sounds like life to me it ain’t no fantasy

It’s just a common case of everyday reality

Man I know it’s tough but you gotta suck it up

To hear you talk you’re caught up in some tragedy

It sounds like life to me

....

Wyoming Traffic Jam

Living in Cody

In the Black Hills

Legion lake, SD

reminds me of the Donkeytail plants my Grandpa used to grow
or the "Stone Crop" my 8th grade science teacher had us eat

Don't know what, but very un-redwood

Love Pilot and Index

Pilot and index peak up by Cooke City, MT

Map of our travels

this shows the insane loops and backtracking we did, and then my husband had another class in Billings and had to drive it all over again.

Up on the Switchbacks of the Beartooths and chief Joseph Highway

Grandma Mimi

and she is the real reason for all of this.  I wish I could give her even a fraction of the strength and support she's given other people in her 77 years.

 But months later she is still in the hospital with no real solutions, although this 4^th hospital says an MRI scan showed fluid around her brain, and that a shunt should allow it to drain so the brain can expand to normal.  Not sure, but hoping that it might let her spirit expand to normal as well.

and now 5 years later, she has been in a hospital/Nursing Home ever since. Really since 2006, Her mind returned as strong as ever but her body is weakened by the time spent in hospital beds.  Still, when we talk she sounds like our Mimi, and can remember and converse like always and we are grateful to still have her.