I love seeing long marriages and happy couples.  I took this picture when I was in Chile earlier this year.  This is Uwe (pronounced oo-vay) and Elisabeth.  They have been married for about 40+ years.  It's a sweet story too.  Uwe (at around 19 years old) came to Elisabeth's father's farm in Germany to study the business and art of dairy farming.  He left Germany with more than dairy farming expertise!  They now live in Chile and run a huge dairy operation there.  I mean HUGE.  I think Uwe has something like 8,000 acres in southern Chile.  It's a beautiful farm too.  They have wonderful children and grandchildren and they are all close.

Recently Uwe had a major heart surgery.  Everyone was very worried and things were touch and go but he is doing well and back at home.  Whew...

I love to think of Steven and I years from now...I hope that we will look like Uwe and Elisabeth.  I hope that we will be arm in arm, smiling, amazed at our journey and so grateful to still be together.  This is my prayer out to the universe on this Love Thursday.

I love you Steven.

Looking through pictures from my trip to Chile and found this one.  So, so pretty...

This evening was our last evening walk in Bezenac.  Most nights some or all of us would take a walk after dinner.  From our hillside hamlet you have a sweeping view of the Dordogne River valley.  It's truly an awesome site.  We walked along the hillside towards the old church.  The wildflowers along the road are so pretty.  This is my favorite of them all.  These grow all along the road here.

these too...very Horton Hears a Who don't you think?

I love the way the walls are like mini ecosystems here- all sorts of moss, lichens, little succulents and wildflowers.

Towards the church there is an old cemetery.

The kids didn't seem afraid.  They asked questions, what's a cemetery? were there really bodies here?  where are the bodies? are they dead? and so on.  I did my best to give answers that were honest but not too scary.  We talked about being respectful.  No sword fighting here, don't touch the statues and so on.  Finn's little voice repeating "but why?"

French cemeteries are a little different than ours.  They put lots of statuettes and plaques on top of the tombs.  It looks like this.  Some of the plaques will have etched pictures of the loved one on them.

What's strange for an English speaker is that the plaques and statues say "souvenir" on them.  That word for us means something really different.  In French it is a verb for remembering.

As we strolled, we came upon this one.  Sayer stood and studied it for a long time.  Then he started asking questions, hard questions.  "Why is that man on that cross?"  and "Is that Jesus?", "What is on his head?" and "Is he dead?"

We talked and I did my best to tell the story of Jesus in a way that a 5 year old can digest.  That's a tall task by the way.  There's no real nice way to talk about someone being crucified.  He had a really tough time understanding why anyone would do that to someone and I have to say I feel the same way.  I tried though and he seemed ok and Steven thought I did a good job with it.  The conversation went off and on all evening as we walked home and then again at bedtime.  The next day we went on adventure (just the 2 of us) and he wanted to go back buy there and show me the one broken statue.  I didn't remember which one but it is the one in the picture above.  He was so confused about why the one piece was broken off.  So we walked around and talked some more about the cemetery and Jesus.  He wanted to know why some people had statues on their graves and some didn't.  So, we went and gathered some wildflowers and put one on each headstone that did not have flowers or a Jesus on it.  We also told them all that we loved them.  He's so sweet.

Back to our walk that night, where were we...after the cemetery we headed back to our house.  It was a little sad for me.  I knew that we were leaving the next day and I was a little heartsick over that.  It was one of those moments too where you look at the people around you with sudden clarity and just feel so completely struck with gratitude.

I mean how did this amazing thing happen?  How did I get so lucky?

I just want it to stop, to freeze right here.

And then we were home.  This is the last photo that I took in France.  Thanks you for traveling with us and keeping up with us as we went along.  Texas, here we come.