This morning I loaded the 2013 photos and then sifted through them.  That was the year Mom and I took a Riverboat Cruise in France to celebrate my end of chemo - but because of floods in Europe the rivers were overwhelmed, locks were closed, and the boat stayed put.  We, however, still had a great time together.

The crew certainly did a fine job for Mom's birthday.

It was Mom's third trip to France, and thus her third trip (though my first) to Giverny to enjoy Monet's gardens.  Here she is on the famous bridge.  

At our guide's insistence we had left Paris (very) early and ended up first in line when the gardens opened. Tourist buses were still pouring in at an incredible rate when we were leaving, disgorging hordes of tourists, so we were glad that she'd arranged a less-crowded experience for us - but still had to wait a bit for our turn at a photo op on the bridge.  The sweet upside of that was that we were able to see a man propose to his girlfriend who were ahead of us.)  And yes, she accepted; assume this woman did also!

With all the rain I'd been more or less expecting that the flowers would be somewhat bedraggled, but happily they were truly stunning!

In the gift shop afterward, Mom bought these earrings for her souvenir.

Notice the tiny "proof" in the background that we were in Paris.

Here we were lunching at Musee d'Orsay.

Funny story from that day.  Everyone else from our group had raced off of the bus in order to get into the very long line for entry to the museum.  Since Mom didn't move very fast we ended up in line way behind the rest of our tour group.  As we were standing around chatting with a couple of delightful young men behind us to pass the time while we waited, some museum employees came by and plucked the four of us out of line (obviously assuming we were 'a group') and scooted us inside ahead of everyone else so Mom didn't have to stand and wait in line.

Can't remember if we actually ate at the Cafe Van Gogh on another day, but obviously we didn't pass up an opportunity to have this photo taken.

2013 was also Jeff & Priscilla's beach wedding in Cabo.  Mom had been uneasy about flying down to Mexico by herself (Andy & Sandy couldn't attend) but I had the simple solution: come out to Arizona for a few days and then fly down with us - which worked!

We did dress up a bit more that evening for the reception.

This is the quilt I made as their wedding gift, in the earth tone colors Priscilla had chosen (though the pattern was my decision.)  I'm pretty sure that have a photo of it somewhere (!) actually finished and quilted.... but it's playing hide-and-seek at the moment.

It's difficult to see in that photo, but the very appropriate <g> background fabric has seashells on it.