Wonderful Kids!

Well, it’s been too long since I’ve posted to this blog.  The best photos I found to share featured our grandkids and Holly.  Here are some of the best poses:

Olivia is really trying to crawl.  She rolls all over the place and captivates us with her big eyes.

Iris has taken her first steps and celebrated her first birthday recently.  She has a beautiful smile.

Chloe loves preschool and is always singing us the fun songs she learns.  Of course, she had to take her teacher (Granny Goose) an apple on the first day of school!

Eve keeps us all entertained with her big hugs and infectious smile.  She knows how to really touch Grandpa’s heart.

Devlin is a big six years old now, and firmly entrenched in first grade.  He loves space and science and amazes us with his reading skill and ability to remember scripture stories.

Then, we have beautiful Holly!  She is a sophomore in Mesa High School.  She keeps busy with cross country, choir, piano and good friends.  She was on the Mesa High sophomore homecoming float this week and helped serve at the dance.  She is really growing up!

So, that’s what keeps us busy and happy!  We are blessed beyond measure.

Holly on Stage at Taylor

Thursday, we gathered at Taylor Jr. High to hear Holly perform with the Treble Cleffs chorus. We continue to be amazed at her musical talents.

Holly's friend Kylie isn't always this glum - but we did like the expression on Holly's face!

Multi-talented Holly

Holly stole the show Friday night at the Taylor Junior High Talent Show with her piano and vocal performance of "We're So Far Away."  We're prejudiced, of course, but we honestly think it was the very best of the 24 individual numbers. The talent show was held to raise money for the Taylor Junior High choir trip to Disneyland, where they will perform later this spring.

Additionally, Holly joined a group of her friends singing "Only One," an original composition by one of the girls.

Claudia and Angie spent a lot of time creating decorations for the event, including the long string of hearts across the front of the stage.

All in all, it was a delightful, memorable evening for both performers and audience alike.  Way to go, Holly!

Free at Last

If you can look past Eric's momentary lapse into unconsciousness, do you notice something different about Holly? Yep, she received an early Christmas present. On Tuesday, her braces came off after a long two years. What a wonderful smile on a beautiful girl!

Holly celebrated this event on her blog with the lyrics of Brooke White singing " ... free, free, free!"

Christmas Eve Music

Following a long tradition, we gathered to share musical talents last night after Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe the big hit of the night was Devlin belting out "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" with a bit of coaching from his mother and helpful smiles from Eve.

We couldn't help notice how the earnestness of his delivery so matched the boyhood mannerisms of his father!

Claudia and Holly tickled the ivories with a great four-hand rendition of "Jingle Bells."

Thanks to everyone who sang and performed so well, even though your photo is not included here. We are were uplifted and inspired by the wonderful message of Christmas.

More family holiday photos are on Mark's Flicker page.

The Nativity

Every year on Christmas Eve, we read the story of the birth of Christ from the books of Luke and Matthew in the New Testament as we celebrate the miraculous birth of the Savior of the World.  Each year, the actors are a little bit different, depending on the age and availability of our children and grandchildren.

This year, Dave and Rachel were Joseph and Mary, with baby Iris blissfully acting as Baby Jesus.

Holly was the lone shepherd who came to the stable as instructed by angels.

Three wise men, Eve, Devlin and David, soon joined the Baby Jesus to offer their precious gifts.

I can still remember my Dad reading this wonderful story each Christmas Eve when I was a little boy.  We can only hope that our grandchildren will continue the wonderful tradition.

More family holiday photos are on Mark's Flicker page.

Beneath the Mistletoe

Last week, Holly sang the solo part in "All Alone Beneath the Mistletoe" at the the Taylor Junior High Christmas Concert. In the words of our next door neighbor, a wonderful tenor soloist himself, "She nailed it!"

We are thrilled with Holly's love of music and budding performance abilities.  What a beautiful young woman!

Dance Festival!

Yesterday, the Mesa Arizona Kimball Stake held a dance festival themed "Moving in the Right Direction," which featured youth from all the wards in our stake.  Holly was one of the many young people who danced.  As Young Women's President in our ward, Claudia has been involved in practice which started in July.

Mark, Eric and Angie joined Claudia and Holly at the Mesa Tri-Stake Center for the final performance last night.  It was great to see all the youth participating together and having a good time.  Here are a few photos of Holly as she danced:

Happy Birthday, Eric!

Last Sunday evening, we celebrated Eric's 22nd birthday. Twenty-two candles on home-made chocolate pie makes quite a conflagration!

Eric was thrilled with gifts of tools. It's a guy thing!

Holly's hair has nothing to do with Eric's birthday, but you gotta love this photo!

You can always find more family photos on Mark's Flickr photo stream.

Run, Holly, Run!

Holly ran her first cross-country race Wednesday for the Taylor Jr. High School team. On the two-mile course, she placed second on her team and fourth overall in the meet, helping Taylor win the meet! It is great to see her exercise the Dixon running genes!

Based on her performance at the Junior High meet, the Mesa High coach invited her to participate in the Chandler Cross Country invitational meeting on Saturday. Despite being sick the night before, Holly did a great job on the longer, 2.9 mile course, running further than she had ever run before and finishing 48th out of 120 9th-grade girls from all over the state of Arizona. We are really proud of what she is accomplishing.

You can see more photos of Holly's emerging cross country life in this Flickr photo set.

Go Holly!

Huntington Beach!

Friday night, we drove to California spend Labor Day weekend with the Redds. Saturday afternoon, we luxuriated in the warm sunshine and cool surf at Huntington Beach. Holly brought her friend Kylie Shumway from Mesa. Brian Redd brought his friend Andrew Een to the beach with us. Both kids and adults had a marvelous time.

Claudia enjoyed basking in the sun. Actually, she and Mark took a four mile walk north along the beach and to the end of the Huntington Beach pier. We had both relaxation and exercise!

Mark kept connected to the Internet periodically via his mobile phone. In order to keep the sun out of his eyes, he wore sunglasses. To enable him to see the phone screen he needed reading glasses. So, he sometimes wore both!

Big Buff Bryan! Thanks for sharing your beach with us.

A set of more photos from our delightful time at the beach can be viewed on Flickr.

Thanks for sharing our little vacation with us!

Mentos and Diet Coke

When we begin gathering as a family at Grandma and Grandpa Dixon's home in Jerome last July for our family reunion, the teenagers wandered down to the corner grocery store and came back with the makings of a real science experiment - a couple of six packs of Diet Coke and a generous supply of Mentos. The combination of Diet Coke and Mentos causes a wonderful chemical reaction, which is explained on Wikipedia as the "nucleation-site theory - the surface of the mint Mentos is littered with many small holes, allowing CO₂ bubbles to form very rapidly and in great quantity, in turn causing the jet of foam."

At the request of another Flickr photographer, the following photo is now part of the Planet Mentos group pool of photos.

The initial trials led to all sorts of interesting experiments.

Ryan proved that he couldn't keep Diet Coke and Mentos in his mouth at the same time!

The moral? Eat, drink and be merry - but not Diet Coke and Mentos at the same time!

Dixon Road Trip!

On Saturday morning, July 12th, we (Claudia, Mark, Ryan and Holly) embarked on a 10-day, 2,500-mile road trip that will take us eventually from Mesa, AZ, to Colorado Springs, CO, Salt Lake City, UT, and Jerome, ID, in our trusty Toyota Sequoia that had over 117,000 miles of on the road experience (when we started). Eric had to stay home to meet the needs of his Real Estate clients, but keeps in touch daily by cell phone.

We left Mesa just after 5:00 am Mountain Standard Time (only Arizona is on that time this time of year) and arrived in Colorado Springs at Heidi's home just after 9:00 pm Mountain Daylight Time. We drove north from Mesa to Payson and Heber before turning east on I-40 just outside Holbrook, AZ. From there we drove to Albuquerque (just over half way) before catching I-25 to drive through Santa Fe and on north to Colorado Springs.

It was Mark's first visit to New Mexico. He had been in 45 of the United States, but never in the state next door. Now, only Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska and Hawaii are on Mark's bucket list.

We ate breakfast at the Knotty Pine Cafe in Payson (great down-home cooking), lunch in at Subway in Santa Fe (the normal franchise stuff) and an A&W truck stop in Walsenburg, CO (quick and easy).

We took the following photo of Ryan and Holly in Continental Divide, NM.

While we stopped for gas at Continental Divide, we saw this amazing vehicle. The fellow who owned this big tricycle said it was powered by a Chevy 350 cubic inch engine that generated 380 horsepower. Wow! He had flown to Kansas City to pick it up from the manufacturer and was riding it back to Southern California. Maybe we should get one for Claudia for our next road trip!

If you want to follow our vacation in real-time, you may want to sign in to Twitter.com and follow Mark's updates @mgd. You can send us messages there as well.

We will post road trip photos on Mark's Flickr photo set.

More later!

Holly Virtuoso

Tonight, we watched Holly perform in two Taylor Junior High choirs, Concert Choir and Treble Clefs. She was superb as the featured soloist in "Someone Like You" from Jekyll & Hyde. Her beautiful, deep alto voice was both tender and powerful.

The Treble Clef choir also had a lot of fun with "A Bushel and a Peck" from Guys & Dolls.

Holly literally sparkled on stage as the Concert Choir sang "Yes Sir, that's My Baby."

We owe a great deal of gratitude to Mrs. Kathryn Tellef, who has taught each of our children in Taylor Junior High choirs over the years. Both she and Holly have one more year at Taylor.

You can see more family photos in Mark's Flickr photo stream.

Good night and God bless.

Congratulations, Mark and Holly!

Mark caught up with Claudia in age today as he celebrated his 55th birthday. You might say that he entered the world of senior citizenship today! We celebrated by having a family dinner on the back patio, complete with a low-carb "cake."

In the evening, we attended a special meeting at the stake center just prior to the General Young Women broadcast, to honor the young women in the stake who had completed requirements for the Young Womanhood Recognition award. Holly was the youngest girl in the stake this year to achieve that award.

We thought you would enjoy another couple of photos of our wonderful grandkids.

There are many more family photos on Mark's Flickr photo page.

The Music Man

The culmination of many weeks of practice and preparation arrived this week with the public production of The Music Man by Taylor Junior High School. We were greatly entertained by the wonderful group of talented young people. We are grateful for them and all the adults who gave of themselves to make this a hugely successful affair.

Holly played one of the "Pick a Little" ladies and townspeople. Isn't she beautiful?

Claudia made Holly's costume and decorated her gorgeous hat.

Claudia also made the suit coat worn by our next door neighbor Derrick Espinoza, standing second from the right. Of the forty cast members, eight lived on our little street. We live right in the midst of a veritable plethora of talent and commitment.

Several more Music Man photos can be seen on Mark's Music Man Flickr set.

Good night and God bless.