Updates from Lennie

The big news this week was the birth of Dale Jr.'s second child, Shayla Nicole Robertson. Her mother has chosen for her last name to be her father's last name. This decision is based on her father's regrets that he never had a son to pass on his family name. (Also, Shelby's last name is Robertson.)

Michelle has put photos of the baby on her regular Facebook page but not on the family Facebook page. I don't know how to transfer the photos on to here from Facebook. I am sure that Dale will send a photo of little Shayla to the pixstar device site soon, if he hasn't already.

Shayla is very thin, at around 18 inches and 6 pounds something. But she looks healthy and she has a very alert little expression. I have not been able to visit her because my cold symptoms are still hanging on.

The Jerome Grand Hotel

This past weekend we drove up to Jerome, Arizona. It is very difficult to get a room in any of the hotels or B&Bs in Jerome on Halloween weekend. Our friend Marilyn, who has been going there every year for Halloween since 1995 (except for last year when she was going through chemotherapy) wangled us a room in the Jerome Grand Hotel.

We drove up on Friday, it was a beautiful drive up to Jerome because it had recently rained and the skies were so fresh. Rather than drive through Phoenix, Dale Sr. chose to go up through Usury Pass and Payson.

We had breakfast at the Pinion Pine in Payson. All the people sitting around us were country-type people, and country and western music was playing on the sound system.

This is the face Dale Sr. always makes for photos, unless I trick him into smiling.

The tall pines around Payson show that it is located north of the "Mogollon Rim", which is a geographical line through Arizona which divides the desert from the forest.

An intersection in Payson, Arizona

I enjoyed seeing the yellow broad-leafed trees among the tall pines as we climbed higher.

We got to Jerome in the early afternoon, too early for our 4:00 PM check-in. There was a great musical group playing in the Spirit Room.

I asked a man behind us to take our photo.

In the evening, we joined our friend Marilyn and her friends for dinner. We had a reservation, but had to wait an hour and a half because the people at the other large table sat there for two and a half hours. We thought maybe they were European, because in Europe the table is yours for the evening.

It turned out that they were not European, they were just inconsiderate. Our party was standing there in full sight of them.

(Dale Sr. did not show it, but he told me later he has a hard time with that kind of thing.)

Here's our friend Marilyn, and a photo of the restaurant. She was wearing a wig and skeleton earrings, for the night before Halloween. Actually, her hair is growing back in after the chemotherapy, but she likes to dress up.

The hotel lobby as we left in the morning. We walked down the hill and had breakfast at the Mile High Grill.


The Mile High Grill is decorated with metal signs.

We bought a ceramic container from this potter, just the right size to keep my dish-washing brushes in.

We weren't hungry because we'd had a late breakfast, but we wanted to go back up to the hotel for a nap, so we got sandwiches "to go" from this sandwich shop. It worked out well to eat half of the sandwich mid-afternoon (as we had to eat dinner relatively early in order to get in line for the dance) and have half of it leftover to eat when we returned, late at night, from the dance.

Some of Marilyn's friends were having "happy hour" in their hotel room around 5PM, where everyone was putting the finishing touches on their costumes.