planes, trains, and automobiles

On October 4th, 2009, my grandfather William Herndon passed away. Dash and I went back to Memphis to be with my family. Delaney and Zap weren't able to attend and it was a very hard situation for me, both for the reason we were in Memphis and because I'd never left Delaney alone overnight.
Dash and I flew home on Tuesday and he did a very good job on the flights. He's not a white knuckled flyer like his mom is. The flight from Phoenix to Memphis was very turbulent coming in and I had to hold the hand of the very generous woman who was sitting next to me.
We had a very nice visit home with family.
Here is Dash with my mom and grandmother.

Dash is chillin' with our family friend, John. He made the drive from Memphis to Vegas with me six or seven years ago. We had a really fun trip. Dash thought he was pretty awesome.
This is Dash with my uncle Tony and aunt Hilda. They are leaving for England for his work very soon and will be gone about three years. Despite the look of this picture, Dash did enjoy being cuddled by Hilda.

My grandfather's service was really nice and I think it was the way that he would have wanted it. Three of my best friends came to the service with us and they all enjoyed loving on Dash. Pictures of that to follow :)
We're all trying to figure out how to help my grandmother through this and hoping that she can make the best of the situation.

I got home late Saturday night after a very long day of travel and I can't tell you how excited I was to see Delaney and Zap at the airport. I'll call this our "automobile" section - we had a very long way home from Sea-Tac airport. Both babies fell asleep and Zap and I finally got to talk about the week. It was nice to be able to share the week with him. I'd only had a little bit of time to talk to him during the week.

Sunday morning, we got up and got ready to go to Chehalis for a ride on a steam train. Delaney loved it! She stood up and giggled as the train started off and her favorite part was when we took her up front to look out the open window. We saw horses, cows, beautiful pastures, and gorgeous fall trees. The colors were amazing: Oranges, pinks, reds, yellows, greens, and browns. It was so neat.

In other news, Delaney has started to get on top of our kitchen table to "steal" fruit. Here she is sneaking an apple.

This picture is older, but so cute! This is her learning to brush the monster's teeth on her first visit to the dentist.