Welcome Home

I was so glad to hear those words on Saturday evening! The kids jumped out of the van and ran to meet me at the door when they saw me finally emerge from the airport terminal; it was really great. I think Sydney believed I had been at the airport the whole time, and the other kids were certain that they had seen my particular plane land. I didn't care, I just loved seeing and hearing them again.

My flight back was not as smooth as when I headed out. We ran into several patches of turbulence, and I had an interesting seat neighbor. When Leah and were in Europe we took an overnight train from Rome to Paris. On that trip, we were bunk mates with an odd fellow who had an indescribable odor and multiple bags of strange sandwiches. We couldn't hardly rest for the smell and constant rummaging for snacks from the other side of the cabin. It was a similar experience on my flight back to DFW.

The odor was not really there, but she did have the bags and bags of sandwiches in every flavor imaginable. She kept offering some to me, but I was not having any part of it. I just put in my headphones and turned on the PSP to watch a movie. Undeterred, she continued to try to converse with me for a short while before realizing that I preferred to be left alone.

We did get to do a pretty close flyby of Mount Hood on the way out of Portland, which was really cool since there was cloud cover. You could just see the top of the mountain above the clouds and off in the distance you could see Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens. My camera couldn't see Rainier or St. Helens, but I got a couple of shots of Mt. Hood for you to enjoy. See below.

Saturday, October 7, 2006