Summa vacation

We limped down to France after my mom's funeral. I had a hard first week but then our friends showed up from Italy and my sad mood mostly lifted. Three weeks in Provence...one should try hard not to suffer through it.

Montagnac at night

Moon over Montagnac

The local Boule dudes

4th of July in France

Bee on lavender

DJ and K8

My Mom

Josephine Besal Fleming

2-13-22 to 6-15-08

Rest in peace mom

We love you

This is a picture from the visit when I last saw my mother. She was sitting in her favorite spot working a crossword puzzle which she loved and was great at. My dad is struggling now with the daily puzzle without her help (but he calls me, a bad substitute but I'm kind of good at the French clues). When I took this picture I thankfully did not know it would be the last time I would see her, or I would have been destroyed. Thank you God for that small favor. If any of you would like to make a contribution in her memory, go here https://www.angelcovers.org/donate_now.html and buy a brick for the Humble Hearts orphanage. The bricks cost $10 and you can specify a name for the brick. She was orphaned herself at a young age and I think she would like to know that her passing is somehow helping other orphans.

In the alternative, if you are all about animals she donations can also be made here:

http://www.mrhumane.org/about_us.html#helping

She loved her little cat Happy as well as the rest of the family....fiercely.

Vacations

I'm a really bad blogger lately but here is a feeble attempt to catch up just a bit. We went to the U.S. in late April for a 3 week vacation. We squeezed in a trip to Tennessee to see my parents, who due to illness were not able to come to Indiana to visit with us at my brother's house as planned.

Here are my cute neices in Indiana with our rental car which we named Butter, or something more like Butta. We had fun driving it but it was a gas guzzler so I can't recommend the PT Cruiser in these days of high gas prices.

In Tennessee we stayed in a FABBY B&B in my hometown of Athens, Tennessee. If you have to go there google Majestic Mansion and make yourself a reservation. But mainly we were there to see my parents who were having some health issues. Thank goodness we made this trip as it turned out to be the last time I would see my mom. sigh.

We proceeded on to Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver, Olympia, coastal Oregon, Bend, Oregon, Sacramento, Yosemite (Bernd only) and Los Angeles to see friends who we have not seen in ages. We had a terrific time and here are a few shots...

Thank you to everyone who we saw and visited and thank you for letting us stay with you. We had a terrific time.

So we flew home after 3 weeks, and I went to France with a friend who stayed with me for 10 days in the rain. Now normally it does not rain much in Provence, but this year it rained every day for 6 weeks according to the locals. We had a nice time but to miss typical Provence weather and blue skies was just a shame for my friend. Here is Nina contemplating the rotten weather.

So Nina went home to Munich from Nice on a Tuesday, and I was in Montagnac alone with the dog until Sunday. I was doing laundry up in the main house when the phone rang, and it was my husband who called to tell me my mom had just died. I spent the day frantically packing and closing up houses and headed back to Munich and from there on to Atlanta and then on to Tennessee for the funeral.