Christmas 2014: 30th Anniversary and Becoming Grandparents

Merry Christmas and A Happy 2015 From Dixie and Greg

Greg and I can't count all the blessings and all the love and all the changes and sorrows and joys that we have shared since we got married but we both agree that we never suspected that 30 years could pass so quickly.  Yet, here we are - no longer 1984, and no longer thin or flamingly red-headed, or young.  Still thirty years with the only person who knows me at both my best and worst and still is willing to stick around for another 30 if we get so lucky.  It is possible, after all, my in-laws just celebrated their 64th anniversary this summer.

So after 30 years together, we find ourselves firmly in the "sandwich Generation" as it has been named to describe those years when you are one of the Generation who still has health and strength and has established some stability, and is sandwiched between kids and grandchildren who still need some help - and aging parents who can no longer be your strength but now need you to be there for them.  It is a time when you are acutely aware of the passage of time and the fact that you are still lucky enough to have this much family, but also coldly aware that it can't last much longer.  You want to spend every moment enjoying being needed and wanted but every time you are one place you feel guilty for not being in at least three other places at the same time. 

      Speaking of being in not enough places at a time, My Brother Brett is amazing at being there for Mom and Lance. Lance still lives with Brett in Virginia and was delighted at the flood of birthday cards that he got, but he is also old enough to remember both Grandma Grace and Dad as they got sicker and died. So he understands illness enough to be very worried that Mom might die.

Mom became more and more confused and paranoid, and she couldn't do the basics of taking care of herself anymore. Then she ended up in the hospital, and from there into a nursing home that she hated and was afraid of.  Since then Brett found her another place, still not far from Brett and Lance, where she is comfortable enough that she has relaxed and calls it home. However she did fall and fracture her vertebrae and need 4 staples in the back of her head.  The first nursing home had her overmedicated and she is doing a lot better with her blood pressure and diabetes better monitored that she was getting.  Dementia is a cruel disease and it is nice to hear her being more happy than she has sounded in months.  She even went to Brett's for Thanksgiving and then said of her room at the manor, "It was good to get home."

Mom and Lance at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian

For those of you who remember the many Christmas cards and letters she has always sent, her new address is at

Priscilla Miller

Greenfield Of Berryville

413 McCellen Street

Berryville, VA 22611

Phone (540) 955-4557 (Not her room but the manor number)

Lance after receiving his birthday cards

His address is Lance Miller
PO Box 865
Middleburg, VA 20118

Thanks to everyone who took the time and money to make him smile like that.

So what else happened in 2014?

I got a couple long term teaching jobs at the school where I taught full time for 10 years, and Emerson is working there now too, so I have seen him a lot more.  And Emerson and Lula made us Grandparents on April 28th when Lula gave birth to Daisy Grace Goode

Greg and I have done a bit of traveling together without the boys for the first time really since we became parents.  This summer we went back to Wyoming and visited our Goode family relatives including Greg's parents and one brother, and both surviving sisters.  We also visited a couple nephews and Aunt Melissa and Rose.  It was low key and fun mainly.  We let our easy going way dictate the pace, and read Harry potter novels to each other while we drove, we went to see the sights like the Rocks at Vedauwoo and then visited Fort Laramie in a downpour and that seemed strange since out temperate rainforest home is in a drought.  But I had never been there, even though I wrote about it based on research in my Oregon Trail Novel.  We went to the Black Hills Playhouse (where Greg and I worked that long ago summer we were married) with my Father-in-law and had a couple picnics in the gazebo at my mother-in-laws nursing home.

We went Camping with friends up by Oregon Caves,  and we went to see "Into The Woods" at the Shakespeare Festival.

    In one week in August we had three friends die here in Crescent City, one our next door neighbor for the last 18 years, and one a fellow music teacher with Greg and a very dear friend since we moved here 25 years ago.  They were all older friends, more our parents generation than ours, but they were good friends and our world is emptier without them.

     I managed to publish two picture books for kids. One, Rainbows around Us, is a book about colors using my photographs and the other, Moonrise, is a lullaby I used to sing to the boys 20 years ago, along with finger paintings I did on the table top and lifted as prints.  So now you can google Dixie Miller Goode and find five of my books on-line or available for your local bookstore to order.

    Greg has changed back to straight vocal music instead of doing just high school band and choir, he does 5th grade through high school Choir this year, and as Christmas gets closer he has an incredible number of performances scheduled, but he ended up with a record number of his students being selected via blind audition to go to the All Northwest USA choir festival, as in RECORD (Triple the  number he has ever had before)

    Austin and his girlfriend Tricia are around quite a bit and are always working. They have kept us in firewood while also helping her family while Austin is driving for GH Outreach.  He drives handicapped adults to work and helps supervise them on the job sites. They pick up recycling and do yrs wok and he seems to really enjoy the work.  I kind of blame Lance for the fact that I have so many years teaching Special needs kids and now both of my sons work with people with handicaps.  Once you have known Lance, you realize that people need to be given a chance to be their own best self.

     Anyway, life is still LIFE, busy, happy, sad, crazy, wonderful and exhausting. It looks like we will make it to 2015 with a smile and a prayer that you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy 2015.

Much Love,


Dixie and Greg

Flat Stanley Came to visit

4th of July here at the Crescent City Display

I was finally sailing on a tall ship with my fifth grade class when Lula texted me, "My Water just broke" 

The Lady Washington

Dad, Grandpa and Daisy

Camping with family 

exploring only 4 miles from my house

Austin and Tricia

Family in Laramie, Greg's Sister Wendy and John, and their two boys 

Me, at Fort Laramie

Mother and Son

Harvey (My FIL) front and center

At Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The two picture books I published this year

Which makes 5 books published and more on the way

My Beautiful Angel

Emerson, Daisy and Lula on Halloween
Could you guess?

Being Grandma

Greg with Gasp 52 candles!

Singing Happy Birthday

Uncle Austin and Daisy

The Christmas lights getting turned on at Ashland Oregon

Dixie, Marc and Thomas

Already getting ready to run

What December looks like here.

Christmas 2013 Visiting Mom in her New Home and Facing getting older

Ausin found that glass float at sea
Emerson and Greg and I
  photo by Aunt Laura

Dixie and Greg Goode


Merry Christmas 2013 and Happy 2014

Photo Card 2013

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

As things and people grow up and grow older, and move in and out of our life, we find ourselves with a lot more time to rediscover the relationship we began when we got married thirty year ago (May 21st) and the fun part is that we still find out that there is much we enjoy best of all when it is just the two of us.

When the year began, we had my Mom and Lance still living in Cody, Wyoming where my Mom and her Dad had both grown up, as did my brothers and I. Since spring, her health became so bad that she really couldn’t continue to live with just Lance. That was sad for Lance because he had to give up the job he has loved and been proud of for 19 years, but things have a way of adding blessings when other things are taken away and they have been living a new adventure in Virginia with my oldest, younger brother, Brett. Lance has even learned to drive around to take care of animals on the farm there.

I got to go visit them for ten days in July and then this Fall, Brett married Emily. Emily and her two teenagers, were really nice to me when I met them and wonderful to Mom and Lance. I am glad to have them in the family.

Greg’s Sister, Laura came to visit us at the start of summer, and that was wonderful. She is always energetic and fun to have around. Then Greg’s other sister, Wendy scared us by wrecking her motorcycle and getting some serious facial injuries but she has recovered ok, or so we hear as we didn’t actually make it to Wyoming to see them or Greg’s parents.

We also had our former Brother-in-law, Vince and his wife living only 5 hours away, in Salem, Oregon when the year began, so visiting family was possible any weekend – but now they have moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. So we find that family has spread apart from Coast to Coast and we are more thankful than ever for the speed of contact allowed via phone and text and internet.

And at the start of the year, Austin was together with a girl we love, and her 18 month old daughter. Since then they have broken up and maybe that was best for them. But remembering how my kids were adopted by their daycare grandparents, and just had three sets of real grandparents, we decided that simply because we got to be Angel’s grandparents because our son met her Mom, didn’t mean we had to give her up when they broke up, so we have stayed friends with the mom and daughter and see them sometimes more often than our boys.

Emerson and Lula were in their Freshman year at UC Santa Cruz as 2012 began. As it ends they are living here in Crescent City and taking time off from college as they await their own child, due in May. Emerson has gotten hired by the school district to work with handicapped children and seems to be getting along well there.

Austin has been out of town, both up the coast at Westport, Washington fishing for tuna, and down the Coast at Bodega By, California crabbing. He is on a fishing boat called the Barbara Marie which is supposedly based out of Crescent City, but the harbor still is undergoing rebuilding from the tsunami damage. Maybe someday he will be able to fish from home.

Greg has been active. He started a new youth Choir here in Crescent City in the evenings on Mondays and sings in the Crescent City Community choir on Wednesdays. His school classes expanded to include a period of Drama as well as the band and choir he was doing, so he is pretty much on the go non stop.

I have been writing, and when not writing have been trying to market my books. I got a set sold to a school district so the 5th grade can teach from 38 of the Oregon Trail books. I have done school presentations as an author and am working with one class to try and publish their class writing by the end of the year. I have been researching Pompeii and Mt. St. Helens for my next novel and really having fun with the small successes that are coming more frequently. I have had favorable interviews and reviews from Europe and India, just a couple but enough to smile and call myself an international author, and my first novel, Duffy Barkley is not a Dog, won a “Betty Award” for favorite tween series.

We devoted some time this summer to trying to save the local drive in theater from going defunct after the movies all switch to digital projectors, a change which would cost them about 80 to 100 thousand. Honda had a project to but projector for 9 theaters, but we didn’t manage to win that. So unless we find a miracle that era ends. I haven’t given up on miracles yet however.

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.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dixie and Greg

New Years Goals

Brookings High Music Trip met up with a couple college freshmen

I have lived 1,000 lives

Trying to Save Red's Drive in
at Honda's Project Drive-In

Crescent City Harbor

Greg, Patty and Willie

Wave Watching

Grandpa tries to do hair

Crab feed

The old folks at home

Austin Dropping by for a minute

Emerson and Lula flew home for spring break

Home airport

in the redwoods

Walker Road

Ford and Em on the LoveSac

Making Music

The Lady Washington

Ford

Art with an Angel

Leaving Santa Cruz

UCSC Koi pond

You've been framed

visiting the NEIGHbors

Greg and Caesar

Greg and his sister Laura

South Beach Sunshine

Lance working at his new home

Mom at Virginia Home

walking KoKo Jo

My New Sister in Law and Lance and Mom

Lance learned to drive

Lance and his Niece, Lacy

Me and Mom

Emily and Brett

Vince and Marcy before they moved away

playing in the Smith River

Summertime

The Smith

Checking out the tuna haul

Austin showing Dad where he lives

Ford

Christmas at Charleston, Oregon

Shore Acres

Austin on a Crab run

Austin and Trisha

Rocky being adored as is his due

A long time ago in a country far far away