Christmas Letter 2024

Merry Christmas 2024

and Happy New Year 2025

Christmas 🎄 🤞🎆 

Martin Luther King Jr. "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope"

Dear Family and Friends,

I almost decided not to write one of these this year. It’s been a year that flew by and yet it’s also been filled with so many things, good things yes, but often I’ve been too distracted or depressed to appreciate the good things. It isn’t a year with actual tragedies like several recent years. I have the same number of people in my family as I did when the year began, and still it felt heavy and cold and loneliness was my most common companion. Living is hard, yet I love my life. Enough feeling down bad and crying. 

 So one thing I have done consistently this year is paint with the watercolor set my granddaughter, Daisy gave me for Christmas. It was a challenge to myself to not just stick it in a box of my other craft materials with the intention of getting to it later. I’ve never done much watercolor before, and my days of constant art classes ended in 1986 with a weaving lab that I ran while in college in Ashland. But I gave up that job when Greg and I decided to go to China as exchange students. 

I also have been feeling better, still undiagnosed but some meds have reduced the symptoms enough that I can stay awake and not having as many muscle spasms means I’ve done things like shorter, 7 hour or less road trips, and attending plays and concerts again. I also take a lot of breaks on the road  to move around, so like with the painting, I paint every day maybe an hour total but usually in ten minute stages. And I’ve been volunteering in the granddaughters’ classes at times. But it exhausts me enough to know I really couldn’t teach even a half day anymore. I used to read books, even write books, but now I tend to start them and then abandon them. My concentration is also more short term and more visual like photography and art and less wordy. Writing this letter is really hard and I rarely write actual Facebook posts but just share pictures and other people’s posts  

I have been blessed by helping at the very beginning as people came together to create a “stiff Person Syndrome, and related disorders support group.”  I have friends there who understand what I’m experiencing. Even though I haven’t gotten a definite diagnosis, the symptoms we share are so close that they have suggestions for things that really do help, and encouragement when I get exhausted assuring everyone I’m “fine” even though my fine is so much less ok than it used to be.  

Greg, I guess he’s still doing good. He seems tired but liking the things he does. His friend who conducted the community chorale got sick and retired and no one else stepped up, so now Greg conducts three community singing groups, and is starting to plan a chorale trip to Europe for 2026. He also is still teaching full time at the prison. Our oldest granddaughter is in both the kids choir and the youth choir as well as having played basketball and soccer and started in band with playing trombone and in a chess club. She loves working with her grandpa on music. So anyway, he’s maintained the hundred pound weight loss all year, goes biking and swimming for exercise and goes camping, mushroom hunting, out on a friend’s boat and on road trips for fun. Emerson and Greg took Daisy to the San Francisco area to amusement parks and The Great Wolf Lodge at the end of June. That was one trip I knew I couldn’t handle physically. Lately Greg has been working on the not fun task of replacing the ancient plumbing in our house. We had our 40th wedding anniversary on May 21st.  

Emerson and Austin are hard at work on the same jobs they have had for years now. Plus Austin and Tricia are raising chickens and a gorgeous garden and going hunting   And all the grandkids are in the grade school years between first and fifth grade, so that is both fun and exhausting. Emerson took on coaching Daisy’s soccer team and that turned out great, both he and the team grew a lot and plan to be together again next season.  I see the girls the most because they are in the same school, go to the same assemblies and activities a lot. My grandson is in a different grade school so when I’m really missing him I have to get out of the daily routine and go find him but he is worth it. He usually lights up when he sees me and gives me a brief hug, but pays me lots of quick smiles and giggles. He’s non verbal but pretty good at communicating nonetheless. He teaches me to be patient and appreciate every smile or glance or high five  

Everyone who knows me knows I wanted Kamala to win and am very nervous about the future. So that said, I’ve never hoped to be wrong more than I do now. I have “seen the past and love today” so I haven’t lost all hope yet. May we all have a happy and safe 2025. 

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

Nostalgic Christmas 1987

In 1987, Greg and I went to China as exchange students from Oregon. We went with about 15 other Oregon Students and 30 from SUNY. It was challenging and life changing. When we came home at Christmas time we really felt like Santa and the Mrs., because we had gone with two suitcases and came home with 14. Mostly filled with gifts. We were blessed to have both of our families close enough to each other that we could spend Christmas with one set, drive seven hours and spend Christmas with the other. 

Back then it felt like we would have these wonderful homes to return to every Christmas. Now of course they are both gone, and the memories are tinted with the knowledge of what and who has been lost, but even in the sadness is a new understanding of how lucky we were to have the older generations- missing their own childhood families and homes, but still recreating the magic for us. 

Merry Christmas 2020

 Greg and Dixie Goode

Crescent City, CA 

Merry Christmas 2020 and We Wish You a Blessed and Happier 2021

Just listen to the sound of that! Happy New Year 2021!

There has been so much about 2020 that we will all be glad to see in hind sight. Most of us could not have predicted last Christmas, what we would experience before the next Christmas rolled around. It was a roller coaster of a year.

Before mid March, we were having a good year, Daisy was in Basketball on Saturdays and loving Kindergarten during the week. She is very social and loved the class full of kids as well as the teacher. I loved volunteering in the class and working with the same teacher who had been teaching Austin and then Emerson 20 years ago. The class loaded an incubator with chicken eggs and began to plan St. Patrick's Day activities. And then between Friday March 13, when things were quite normal, and Monday when schools were closed and Daisy has never returned to in person classes. I've enjoyed having her here with me, teaching her and working with her as she learns to read and write and do all kinds of math and science and creative things is fun, but we both miss other people.

Emerson got promoted to manager where he works at New Dawn, which is good, but just as hard on Daisy as on him, when he has to work double shifts or gets called to leave town, or has to have his day off interrupted to take a client to the hospital. He works in homes with handicapped people and with them out in the community at large, and since his job is essential, the state closing down for a pandemic hasn't effected his hours at all.

For Greg, his students at the prison were already doing college work and he was the intermediary between getting the work to them and getting it back to the colleges, so he changed to doing what he could from home, with limited at the prison time each week. Now he just got out of the college position which he wasn't too fond of, and back into a classroom of academic work. He much prefers the business of actually having student time.

Also for Greg, one of the joys of life is his music, and having to indefinitely close down his children's choir has been so very sad for him. I hope that he will be able to restart it once children are able to be vaccinated. He did throw himself into designing a choir t-shirt logo, and that fed the creative need briefly, but he still misses both his kid choir, and the local community choir he sings in.

My health hasn't improved, the more staying at home I do, the stiffer and more awkwardly I move, and the more basic abilities I see falling away. I did manage to see two neurologists this year. The cognitive specialist evaluated me with five hours of testing and declared that there were no problems there, which is a relief, but the motion specialist did a few simple tests, talked rudely to Greg and I, and said to come back in 4 months. I tried getting a referral to a different one, but they are few around here, and Portland says they have closed down to new patients living more than 100 miles away. I know I couldn't be teaching anymore, even if I wasn't staying at home with Daisy, so of course the schools are having such a substitute shortage that they bumped up the sub daily rate by $50 a day through the end of this year.

I'm trying to think of the highlights of 2020. There were some parts that were worth the struggle. The Grandkids of course are high on my list of worth it, so one of my favorite memories is the day Trisha and Austin were camping up at Dry Lake and invited us to meet them there. We got to walk around the lake, watch Austin and Gavin Kayaking, push Gavin in a huge swing and snuggle Trinity. We got lots of sunshine and flowers and hugs. Speaking of the Goode-Pitt branch of the family. They got new truck and a new camper (well both in nice, used but new to them, shape) and they got deer tags, and went camping and hunting. Trisha got a deer. Gavin is going back to in person school and so far the county hasn't had ay school to home Coronavirus transmission. Some people at the in person classes have tested positive but gotten it elsewhere so the school precautions seem effective. I think Daisy would do ok going back as well, but she does well on Zoom and I would be high risk if she brought it home.

Because the idea of her having a 6^th birthday party during lockdown, was so sad, a Redwood School teacher, who is also a fireman, brought a big firetruck to our house for Daisy's Birthday. Then for the summer we did sign her into swimming lessons and she made great progress. It was in the outdoor, chlorinated pool in Brookings with one teacher and three students, so there wasn't a very high risk, especially since all summer Del Norte and Curry Counties had almost no Covid cases. Sadly that is no longer true. 

This year, more even than most, Consider this letter as a paper hug. I wish I could hug you in person.

Happy New Year, I finally see 2020

I Hope You Had a Merry Christmas 2019 and We Wish You a Blessed and Happy 2020

Just listen to the sound of that! Happy New Year 2020!

I keep thinking, “now I have finally managed to see 2020, why am I still so grateful for my eyeglasses?” but things look quite as foggy and out of focus as they always have, or at least since I first got glasses back in 4^th grade. I’ve always been near sighted and this is very much how the year seems too. If I look at the distant pictures and news, everything is confusing and unclear, but when I focus on the close to me, every day life, things get clear and beautiful and filled with love.

Greg and I celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary in May, just 12 days after our only grandson turned 3. Of course that brought a lot of nostalgia and the memories of people who were around when we married, but are gone from this world now. It’s unreal to me that this year our 36^th will equal as long as my Mom and Dad were married before he died. They would have loved my grandbabies and Brett’s. It’s just how my brain has always worked and sometimes it annoys Greg that anniversaries never go unthought of, and days and years since or until something are something I’m always aware of. I didn’t even consciously count it out, but I knew and was sadly aware that Epiphany Day in 2019 was the Day Greg was exactly as old as his oldest sister, April, on the day she died in the Grand Canyon. It feels so eerie to me that now April is younger than all the other 5 siblings. 

I have had trouble with my brain this last year. While the exact diagnosis of what is going on with my health has passed through from possible Fibromyalgia, to Rheumatoid arthritis, to Lupus, to Inclusion Body Myositis, and now the investigation seems to be looking more like Parkinson’s, and that is scary on it’s own, but more so knowing how my mom went through hallucinations and dementia, and a gradual freezing of her muscles in a Lewy Body Dementia which is closely related to Parkinson’s.

I keep finding that I can’t focus for long, I start books but never finish them unless I’m reading them to Daisy. I don’t really write anymore, although I’ve had a book partway finished for about 5 years. I couldn’t get started on this letter for the longest time, and I read very little so even the Christmas cards We received are sitting in a basket, unopened, waiting for me to find the energy to read them. I have been on Facebook and a photo a day project online, plus having two blogs I write, wrote but for quite a while now I mostly read what others post and reshare that if it interests me. Or share the pictures I take without writing much about them. On the photo project I used to write about each picture with several paragraphs and comment on other people’s pictures, but now sometimes I just put up three days photo’s with titles at one go, scroll through the other pictures without commenting and fall asleep in my chair.

We got a new van and the backup camera helps me still be able to drive safely, but sometimes I have to circle a block because I can’t turn my head enough to see the traffic coming from the other direction. And one scary moment, I was driving to pick up Daisy from daycare, like I had done hundreds of times, and there are two long streets in part of the route. Suddenly I knew where I was going, but nothing looked familiar, and I couldn’t tell which of the long streets I was on, so I had to pull over and park until my heart stopped racing and it passed. Then I was fine.

Austin and Trisha’s daughter Trinity turned one in August, and she is so happy, and smiley. It’s a delight to have her around. Gavin at three is wonderful, high energy and curious, and difficult for me to keep up with, but every time he turns to me for a hug I just melt. They have my heart so enamored with their children. I have always loved preschool children, but this grandmother connection is the purest joy.

Greg still likes working at the prison but they just changed his job, so instead of being a classroom teacher, he is going to start being the college co-ordinator. Helping inmates register for classes, getting the materials they need as it comes into the prison, and then verifying that the work is done and returned to the college. He doesn’t even grade it. He thinks it might make for longer feeling days, to not have the actual students but hasn’t begun in that position yet. He is still active in the community Chorale and has the Youth Choir that practices once a week, so the touch of music hasn’t quite left the family. Daisy loves to sing and always gets annoyed at grandpa for not inviting her up on stage at his concerts to sing a solo. At 5 she has to wait until 10 to audition. That doesn’t sit well. I tell her that when he was finally old enough to audition, her Dad didn’t get in the first time he auditioned and had to wait until he was 11.

Daisy started in the same room, with the same kindergarten teacher where both her Dad and Uncle Austin went to kindergarten. She has loved it every moment, but even though I hope I’m wrong, the Del Norte schools look to be heading into their first teacher strike, starting as early as Jan. 15^th 

Frozen 2 in Brookings, OR

Greg had inherited some money from his parents, and decided to use part of it to treat the family to an amusement park filled December. Austin and Trisha wisely chose to pass and maybe come when their two are older, and it was an exhausting trip, even without carrying toddlers and chasing three year olds. We had a great time but We still missed them.

We flew Medford, Oregon to Seattle, WA To John Wayne airport in Santa Ana. Daisy loved the planes and boats on this trip. We spent two days in Legoland and the Legoland hotel was amazingly designed with kids in every step. Enough that Daisy’s favorite part of Legoland was the dance party in the elevator every time you got on. There was even a whoopie cushion printed on the hall carpet that farted if you jumped on it. Also she loved the kid only peephole on the bedroom door and the fact that every night two small bags of legos were locked in the safe in each room, with a scavenger hunt around the motel leading the kids to the combination for the safe.

We did Disneyland for four days, well, I took one day off and stayed in bed in the motel, and Universal Studios for one and flew home on the 22nd but didn’t even get a tree. It felt like we had already done Christmas. Certainly the theme parks had overwhelmed themselves with decorations.

2020 looks like more swimming, acrobatics, soccer and basketball with the granddaughter. Praying for peace and health for you and for the world. Remember to look for the good in each day.

Dixie and Greg

Christmas 2018

Merry Christmas 2018 and May you have a Blessed and Happy 2019

And yeah, Wow! 2019 does mean we are only one year away from 2020

which sounds more like a vision test result and less like a year I ever even imagined

I'm going to start by saying that I sincerely hope that the old tale that things happen in threes, is correct, because I'm ready for the end of this current cycle of three Holiday seasons. For the third Thanksgiving/Christmas season in a row, Greg and I have lost one of our parents. His Mom died The day after election day in 2016 and Greg and I spent Thanksgiving with the Goode family in Newcastle, Wyoming having a memorial get together and laughing that this life long Democrat just didn't want to hang around for the next term of Republican presidents. Then after we bought train tickets to spend Christmas with Greg's Dad in 2017, he passed away unexpectedly of pneumonia on December 4^thand our Christmas visit featured his celebration of Life service as well as a chance for Daisy to meet more Goode's and go out in the Black Hills in the snow to get her Christmas Tree with Uncle Harv and her Dad. Then this October, Mom, who was weakened already and wheelchair bound, but content in her assisted living center near Brett and Lance, developed Pneumonia herself and never recovered, so on November 4^thwe lost her as well.

We traveled by car this time, only Greg and Daisy and I, meeting my brothers and nephew, nieces, sister-in-law and cousins aplenty. The family gathered in Cody, Wyoming and laid Mom to rest beside Dad, in the same Riverside Cemetery where her parents and several other family members are. So I'm officially an orphan at 55 and it's strange and sad. I don't like it. But there were some really sweet, happy moments in the celebration of Priscilla Slack Miller. We had a wonderful feast in the Cody Club, with the cousins and friends, laughter and conversation and food always being a part of every good moment with Mom. We even found that one of the murals there featured her uncle Clarence wearing her Dad's wooly chaps in a snowy landscape. With a four year old with us we did a lot of the very things Mom most enjoyed, hot tubs and Motels, waterpark, and the Oregon Zoo and Multnomah Falls. People ask how the trip home was, and it feels odd to say, but all three trips home for funerals have been good, happy, family filled visits. I just hope that the next time I get together with family, it isn't for a funeral.

Right after we got home, Greg joined the Crescent City Chorale for a two week tour of Italy, Germany and Poland, so Daisy and I left him at the Portland Airport and stopped at a waterpark in Springfield on our way home for Thanksgiving. That was a dud holiday, the power went out so we had no cooking, or water, or lights and ended up waiting for Emerson to get off work and eat Dinner at Denny's

It has been a year of both loss and births, so Mom will be missed, but the family has a new Granddaughter, Trinity Revae was born on August 3^rdto Austin and Trisha, and joined our grandson Gavin who had just turned two in May. Trinity is beautiful, alert and has an adorable laugh and smile. Gavin is sturdy and strong willed and a real charmer. I don't see them as much as Daisy, and can tell you that living with one granddaughter is such a delight, I'd never known how wonderful being a grandmother could be before her. She is in preschool and is smart and kind and funny. This year she has done swimming lessons and soccer and a lot of art and playgrounds.

The extended family is growing too, so Daisy had a couple new cousins born this year and my niece has another due early next year. I guess that is good, if I don't watch too much news and get too fearful of the future this world holds for today's children. I reassure myself by remembering all the times that I heard my Grandmother, Grace laugh at the fears of parents when I was a child, in that good old days of the Vietnam era. She swore that parents are always convince that te world is a dangerous place and ending soon and that this is the worst time ever to have a child and that children themselves are much more horrid, but they have been saying all those things since Socrates at least and probably since cave men days.

I had a couple of long term sub jobs where I had a class of my own for months, and in June Greg finished 27 years teaching music and started teaching basic skills, GED prep skills, to inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison. I'm liking the fact that he no longer commutes to the next state to teach, as the prison is only 4 miles from our house, nor does he have to be out of town many weekends and evenings at various competitions and concerts. It isn't a job with summers off however, as the prison of course, runs year round.

Healthwise, I haven't been doing very well. And as of yet I've only been eliminating possibilities rather than finding answers. Negative tests and a lot of time between visits make it a slow process, but I'm moving slowly and stiffly and things happen like popping my achilles tendon and tearing my rotator cuff. It isn't Lupus but may be some form of Rheumatoid arthritis, but even more likely not, and may be IBM (the disease, not the big company) which is a type of muscular dystrophy.

Anyway, this aging time of life isn't for whimps, but I guess it's undeniable when you are a grandmother, with no parents of your own left above the surface of this beautiful planet.

I'm still writing my books and doodling in my free time and most of all helping raise a wonderful girl who adds so much joy to my life, but really misses her own Mom and doesn't understand that, but then neither do we. If you are one who prays, as I am. Pray for the children and this wonderful, troubled world and every now and then, remember us.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and

“God Bless us, everyone!”

Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas 2017 and May we all enjoy a Happy and Healthy 2018.

This was a year that went much smoother than the last several for our family. No new births or deaths, although typing that makes me want to knock on wood since 2017 isn’t over yet.

The highlights of the year, as almost always, had to do with family.  Greg and I took 40 High School Band and Choir kids to LA for spring break. We had the craziest schedule and it almost killed me, but it was fun. “Julius Caesar” at Shakespeare in Ashland, then overnight bus ride to Disneyland, a shower and walking to the park from a nearby motel, then a day at Universal Studios, where I reveled in the Harry Potter area, and a vocal lesson at UCLA and three Disneyland days and a dinner watching knights jousting at medieval times, and another overnight bus ride home.

  I hadn’t seen my Mom or Brothers since summer 2013, and this year I ended up teaching almost full time between two long term substitute jobs.  That gave us enough money that Greg and I could Fly to Washington DC and spend two weeks including Mom’s birthday, The 4^th of July, and my birthday too.

That was great, and before I forget, let me give you their contact info again. Lance has a cell phone (540)-359-1413 and you can send cards and pictures and letters to them at the same address

  Lance Miller /PO box 865/ Middleburg, VA 20118

While we were there we were taken to a couple plays, and spend a day in DC at the memorials on the Mall 

and riding the subway with Lance and My friend from High School, Tricia, whose Dad worked with my Dad for years. Her son, Michael was wonderfully patient with Lance’s slower, post surgery pace and we all had fun.  We also baked in the sun while watching the Washington Nationals get destroyed with Brett and Emily.

We spent several afternoons with Mom, and while she gets confused, she is much easier to talk to now that she is settled in a home where she is comfortable and her meds are controlled, than she was 4 years ago when she was frightened and hallucinating. 

She went to a musical, and a movie and her Birthday lunch at red lobster. She told Greg, “I don’t know who you are, but I know I love you.” And she always knew me. She was clean and calm and basically relaxed. She recognized old pictures and we talked a lot.  If you write to her, she may not open the envelope, but if you send a postcard, she will know what the picture is of, and recognize your name.

In the summer Greg’s sister, Wendy and her husband, John and one son and his girlfriend came and camped in our yard and we did all the local, redwoods, beach, lighthouse, fern canyon, kind of things. Daisy had a blast and wanted to keep Colton’s girlfriend, Brittney when they left.

Then right as school was starting, a big fire blew up from a few hundred acres to 100,000 and Greg’s school start was delayed two weeks, while mine was filled with smoke and school issued filter masks.  As the smoke cleared, Our former Brother-in-Law, Vince and His wife, Marcy came for a brief visit, and sat around the fire pit and ate Crabs and escaped the hurricane hitting their Florida neighborhood. They had just done a bike trip around San Francisco and Marcy’s planned flight home was delayed by Irma.

A year after my Mother-in-law died, we are planning to go back to Newcastle for Christmas and visit my Father-in-law.  Emerson has custody of his daughter, and has permission to bring her along.  That has been an emotional year. Daisy is now getting visitation with her Mom, and their relationship is getting a chance to develop, but it has been all her and Daddy for over a year now, and she is a happy, confident and beautiful, 3 ½ year old.  This year she went to a traveling dinosaur exhibit called Jurassic Quest and dove in and rode the robotic Carnivores with delight. She went to a pumpkin patch and drew her own witch face on her pumpkin, and she loves Poppy from the Trolls movie.

Austin and Trisha’s son, Gavin is 1 ½ and very much an outdoorsman in the making. He has a smile to melt the iciest Grandma’s heart.  Austin will be crabbing so they can’t go to Wyoming with us.

I love Christmas and the gift of going through my family and friends list each year and remembering why you are so special and important to me. I hope that this finds you weathering the changes and remembering the blessings.

After I wrote this, and made my multiple copies yesterday, we got a call late at night to let us know that the Flu had turned into pneumonia and Greg's Dad was in the hospital in Rapid City, SD with a Do Not Resuscitate order on file, and would not survive long. Before another hour passed, Grandpa Harvey died with his name-sake son holding his hand. So our Amtrak tickets and adventure will now be spent going to a memorial service and a sadder Christmas. Still, wishing He had met his California great-grandchildren, but knowing that his love and spirit is carried in them and always shall be.  We are so lucky to have had this hard working, hard-playing, loving and loyal family man for so long.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dixie and Greg

Christmas 2015

Merry Christmas 2015 and May A Happy and Healthy 2016 Be Heading Your Way.

This was a year of changes for our extended family, it was a scary and emotional roller coaster at times, but we are finding ourselves at the end of it with a lot to be thankful for.

First of all, as we have had so many of you asking about Mom

and Lance,                         

 let me update you on what has been happening with them this year.  Lance and Mom were living in Virginia with Brett and his wife, Emily. Mom’s dementia got really bad and she was hallucinating, and paranoid and unable to take care of basic hygiene. She tried to run away and got lost, so she has been in assisted living, not far from Brett and Emily’s home, for over a year. The first home really made her worse and messed with her meds, changing her from just insulin and blood pressure meds, to 27 different medicines a month later.  The home she is in now, she likes, but she fell in June and broke her hip and was in a hospital and rehab before getting to go “home.” She is weaker and needs a wheelchair and once when Brett went to talk to her and asked her if she was worried about Lance, she answered, “I’m worried about him, but I don’t know who he is. Did I meet him here?”

 

The reason Brett asked about Lance is that he has been really sick since mid August, and in the Hospital, in ICU and a Rehab Hospital again and again ever since September began.  He was nearly dead (not an exaggeration) before the Dr. decided to do emergency exploratory abdominal surgery starting at 10 PM. He came out of surgery around midnight, and they had found his bladder blocked and holding 800 ccs of urine when a normal adult male would be uncomfortable with 300 ccs. They cleaned out the infection and put in a drain, but that only began the journey.  He has kept getting sick when he leaves ICU and they reduce antibiotics.  He has had his gallbladder removed and had a bad case of staff infection in his lungs.  He still has need of the Rehab hospital, the staff infection in his lungs is gone, the gall bladder cured the need for the drain in his abdomen, but he still can't eat much beyond ice cream without vomiting and he still needs a catheter, so he still has an appointment for micro-biotic robot cameras to scan his abdomen in the end of December. He can walk, but has no stamina so needs a wheelchair when Brett takes him out. Three months now has been a huge financial drain on Brett's family. He'd be able to take mom out too, if he had a wheelchair Van, but of course that would be another big financial hit, so probably won't happen. Anyway, Lance sounded excited to be out of ICU, happy to talk and more energetic than I've heard in ages when he talked to Greg and me on Thanksgiving. Brett had sprung him from the rehab hospital to go eat Turkey with Mom at her Assisted Living Center.  Mom doesn’t really talk on the phone anymore, but Lance has a cell phone (540)-359-1413 and you can send cards and pictures and letters to them at the same address

  Lance Miller /PO box 865/ Middleburg, VA 20118

Then in October we had to face the death of the daycare grandma who had helped us raise our boys when they were toddlers. Nadine was a large part of who they became and of why we have a family of daycare cousins and their parents here in Crescent City. It was such a blessing to have had her so long.

So, now for news about the rest of us.  Greg and I have not changed as much as the other people in our families.  He is teaching again up in Brookings, OR. (year 10 I think.)  He only has choir this year, and with a local choir on Monday evenings is working with kids age 9 to High School.  He is also singing in the adult community Choir in Crescent City.  In February he flew a bunch of kids to Spokane for the All Northwest Choir Festival, while I went to Gold Beach for a writer’s conference.  I am still substitute teaching, and writing, and finished my sixth book this November which I hope to have edited and available by the beginning of February. This summer he tried his hand working with Special Ed. and taught a summer school class before we drove to Wyoming to visit his family.  Mimi and Harvey were both doing great, and had celebrated their 65^th anniversary in June. All of Greg’s surviving siblings were there, but the only one from our children’s generation (The grandchildren) who made it, was our niece Remi, at age 15, just back from touring China with the Tucson Girls Choir.  Mimi and Harvey have three great-grandchildren, but none of them could be there either. We did manage to get to Laramie, and saw our nephew Colton there as well. 

Emerson and Lula’s daughter, Daisy turned 1 on April 28^th, and we were able to spend a lot of time with her between April and September when she was living part time with Emerson and us, and part time with Lula. Now we are happy to say that Emerson and Lula are back together and Daisy is happy being with both parents, but selfishly, Greg and I miss having the little Miss Daisy here on a daily basis. She has totally stolen our hearts. Emerson and Lula both work as assistants in the School District where I sub, and they both had summer jobs as well.

Austin and Trisha seem happy and busy but we don’t ever see enough of them either.  It has been hard going from being Mom and Dad to being empty nesters for Greg and I. Still we are lucky that they live in the county here, so we do see them a couple times a month at least.  They have been keeping us in firewood, and have gone to dinner, or celebrated a holiday with us occasionally.  I am excited to see Trisha’s baby bump growing and to welcome our second grandchild in May of 2016.  Austin is still working with the crew he supervises at G & H outreach, a group of handicapped adults. He seems to enjoy the fact that a lot of their work is outside and active. They appear to be happy and that is really what parents want most of all I think.

So that is the news, and I hope next year is less newsy and more peaceful. Merry Christmas!

Love,

 

 

Dixie and Greg

 oh and PS. I did get my novel finished, at least the first draft, in the NaNoWriMo month of November. Yes!