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The Dixon Family in New Mexico
In September, Daniel joined us in New Mexico to visit Brittney and Patrick in their new home and take an excursion for two days to beautiful Carlsbad Caverns. We had a wonderful time together – it had been over a year since we had all been together.
On our way to Carlsbad, we stopped briefly at Roswell, but we didn't see any aliens other than the ones at the UFO museum and the touristy decorative ones used to lure tourists to stop and buy trinkets. Brittney had made reservations for us to stay at a beautifully renovated bed and breakfast in Carlsbad called "The Trinity". It had been a bank and printing shop when originally built over 100 years ago. They had an excellent chef in their restaurant and we all enjoyed the food and our stay there.
Click on any photo on the page to view a larger image version.
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| New Home in NM | Vacation End Day |
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Carlsbad Caverns
The photo to the left is of the main entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. This United States National Park is located in the Guadeloupe Mountains in southeastern New Mexico. We hiked in on our own via this natural entrance, but took the elevator (the exit for everyone now - thank goodness!) directly to the Visitor's Center some 750 feet straight up. Carlsbad Caverns includes a large cave chamber, the Big Room, a natural limestone chamber which is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 350 feet high at the highest point and contains many beautiful formations. It is the third largest chamber in North America and the seventh largest in the world. At dusk, we sat silently here at the cave entrance, with many others, to watch about 250,000 bats leave the cave to go on their nightly forage for food. An awesome place.
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| Carlsbad Formations | Carlsbad Caverns Walkway |
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Peggy's New Job at Ball State University
It has been an eventful year for the Dixons. As I announced in an earlier email, in May, I secured a wonderful new job and started a new career. Can you believe I did this at my age? I am a SEVIS/Student Information Coordinator at the Rinker Center for International Programs at Ball State University. I love my new full time job. The location, the department, the people and the job are simply wonderful. I am a DSO or Designated School Official and part of my job is to help maintain the SEVIS government database, which tracks the non-immigrants who are here to study at Ball State. After a 3 month temporary job at First Merchant's Bank and then a brief, five week job I survived and did actually enjoy at the Daleville IBM Call Center, I really appreciate the more relaxed atmosphere and benefits of working at Ball State. Plus, I still design and maintain websites in my "spare" time.
Jim still runs, plays tennis and operates Saturn Computers. He still works full time building and repairing custom computers and sees clients mostly by appointment.
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| RCIP Entrance | Peggy's Office Area |
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Daniel and Universe Sandbox
Daniel continues to enjoy life in Seattle. He is working on his own project, Universe Sandbox, full time. As I have mentioned before, it is a unique educational, fun, interactive space/gravity simulator program and you can take a look at a short video showing a little of it at the Universe Sandbox web site. After months of diligent work, Dan released a new and improved version of this program and has been approached to work out a museum and planetarium friendly version. Universe Sandbox has received many positive comments, including some from astronomers. Additionally, some of the videos produced with his program were used, many in the opening credits, on the Discovery Channel's program, "Cosmic Collisions". There is an article about Universe Sandbox on Wikipedia and he has been approached about puchasing and using his program by some colleges and museums. We are so proud of his achievements. He just recently was able to add some achievements to the Universe Sandbox and put Universe Sandbox on STEAM, a well known on-line game broker, which should boost his sales and make the program even more successful for him.
In the photo to the left, Dan was explaining some of the new features he had added to the program while we were visiting in New Mexico at Brittney and Patrick's home. Dan didn't make it home last year, but will be joining us for Christmas vacation this year and we can hardly wait.
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| Daniel Dixon | Dan and an IU Sign |
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Patrick and Brittney
Patrick and Brittney moved into their new home in November of 2009. Patrick could not take leave to come home during the holidays last year since he had just started his new job at Cannon Air Force Base. So last Christmas was the first time we had not had the family home for Christmas. That was a "bummer", but thanks to our good friends, Ken and Linda Ramey, we enjoyed celebrating Christmas day with their family. Dianne and Dennis Delph even had us over for a homey Thanksgiving dinner. Brittney has enjoyed arranging and decorating their new home, scrapbooking, taking care of their wonderful yellow lab, Mason, being involved with the other Air Force spouses, helping to plan activities for the air force families and making a wonderful home for Patrick. And Brittney ran a half marathon in Albuquerque this fall. Couldn't have a better daughter-in-law. Patrick and Brittney got to spend a couple months in Las Vegas last summer while Patrick took some special training at Creech Air Force Base in preparatin for deployment. When they have time, they seem to especially enjoy camping and hiking with Mason and they have been able to visit several of our beautiful National parks in the southwest.
In September, soon after our visit, Patrick deployed to Afghanistan where he will be stationed till spring 2011. We think he is fairly safe where he is, but we are all looking forward to his safe return to U.S. soil. While Patrick is away, we and Brittney's family are supplying him with lots of care packages. Patrick would come home fat if he eats all the goodies we are all sending, though we understand that they all share their treats with each other. Brittney will be home to visit her family in Alexandria for part of the time Patrick is deployed and we are looking forward to that visit as well.
The photo on the left was taken at Patrick's graduation from pilot training last year.
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| Patrick, Brittney and Mason | Patrick in Afghanistan |
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Our Pets
Sadly, last December, we lost our oldest cat, Buttons, to kidney failure. Then in June, Brigit's mom, Mandy, had to be uthenized as she coughed all night and an emergency trip to the vet at 4am revealed an enlarged heart and liver. We had taken her to the vet a few months before as we thought something was wrong, but they gave her a clean bill of health and completely missed her problem.
So, in October, in an effort to provide a new companion and playmate for Brigit, we adopted a darling new 6 month old chocolate and tan cocker spaniel puppy from Nancy Taylor in Kokomo. Reesy (she is colored like a Reese Peanut Butter Cup) was abandoned, rescued by a nice lady in Missouri and flown to Indiana. Nancy runs "Indiana Cocker Rescue" and always has wonderful rescued cockers there who need new loving, permanant homes.
Brigit made friends quickly with Reesy and we are gratified to see her have a playmate for the first time since she was a puppy herself. Now, our cats are trying to get used to and make friends with our new energetic puppy who thinks they should want to play with her too.
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| Reesy - 6 mon. | Brigit - 5 yrs. |
| Videos we would like to share: | Just click on each link to view. |
| Note: It may take a few minutes to | load each video. Please be patient. |
| Reesy On Her First Day With Us | Reesy and Brigit |
| Reesy and Brigit Playing | Reesy and Brigit - Tug-O-War |
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| Isis - 10 yrs. | Gaia - 8 yrs. |
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| Kali - 6 yrs. | Athena - 2 yrs., loving on Brigit |
| Base Design and header by Bryant Smith |