Less than six weeks to go, five for James, and his girlfriend of almost two years decides she needs her independence, wrecking 50% of our plans...I KNEW this was going to happen, gave her benefit of the doubt. This is cruel to James who was so excited but also shows how very immature she is...personally I think a lot of this is her fear of leaving dinky Allentown, Pa. Going after her parents thought for BIG $$ we are now out because of her but glad to say "adieu" to her once and for all...I thought I was a selfish person, but compared to her I'm small potatoes.

We'll have a terrific time anyway!!!

Back on track...

Trip back on track...just now trying to figure out how to get Jeremy from Prague to Istanbul. For people who have spent each vacation the last 12 years at the Jersey Shore that's quite a sentence...

Hitting some snags

Well, hit some snags with this trip...

May be scaling this back, would cancel completely if I could...just not worth it anymore! It's gotten too tension filled, too complicated, so all the fun has gone out of it. Maybe the best part was really in the planning...

James...you make a mother proud (and I'll ignore exactly what your goals are for this trip!). Personally, I'm a lot more interested in shopping -- and sampling some of those great Italian wines.

We're now down to six weeks + and counting...We've made sure Henry, the pug, is going to that overly fancy doggy hotel (hey, he deserves a vacationtoo!), and all the other reservations are made.

Meanwhile, James' graduation draws closer. His announcements came today -- so official looking, and we made all the final plans for graduation weekend...

Don't worry, Jeremy isn't left out -- two nights of a house full of14/15 year old boys is really plenty. He's counting on keeping in touch with everyone while we are away via IM, and he's going to be our official "tech" (sorry James!). Hopefully he'll make a post of his own soon.

Now back to doing work so I can somehow figure out how to pay for all the loot I want to bring back!

OOPS...I read over that first post and realized I was so busy talking about my mother, which I actually rarely do, that I neglected to tell the REASON for this trip...James is GRADUATING, something I still lok at as somewhat of a miracle, but his Dad and I are enormously proud of him. He now admits that he wasn't ready, at all, for college when he began but he's managing to graduate in four years (okay, summer school helped a lot!) and is waiting to hear about acceptance into graduate school at Lehigh University. Meanwhile, his Muhlenberg College graduation takes place on May 21st -- and yes, he is staying out there in the Lehigh Valley at least a while longer...

Admittedly for a while there it didn't seem like we'd really make it -- health scare, financial woes, scheduling snarls, but here we are...

Introducing the Frankie H. Bivins Memorial Tour

My mother was named Frankie, not Frances, or Francine, but plain old Frankie.

She had a tough childhood, to say the least, with her mother taking off when she was 13, leaving her to in turn take care of her younger sister and six year old brother. It is a mark of what kind of woman Frankie was that after her mother turned up again 15 years later she somehow foregave her, but that's another story.

In large part because of her own interrupted childhood, my mother loved two things above all else -- her family, and especially me, her only daughter, and her home. However, she could also truly be the "life of the party", especially after a couple of her signature "Manhattans on the rocks."

She was a southern lady, Virginia born and bred, and of another place and time. Like so many other southern women she was a true "character" with all that implies. She died in 1997 but for the last five years of her life she suffered from dimentia. That means that my older son, James, now age 21, barely remembers her at all while Jeremy, at 14, never knew the "real" her at all.

So...that brings up to the Frankie H. Bivins Memorial Tour. This is a culmination of an idea we've been talking about for years -- to go on one last true "family vacation" that would most certainly outdo the last 12 years of summers down at Long Beach Island, New Jersey. THIS year we are heading off to Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic, and with a true side trips along the way which I'll get to later.

It's truly a fantasy come true -- and one my Dad (who at 93 is going as strong as ever) and I think my mother would have loved. So...this tour is also a time to remember her, and to honor her.

James, and girlfriend Bryna are going to begin their journey on June 4th, first going off to Greece. They meet up with the rest of us -- my husband Barry, son Jeremy, and I, in Rome on the 10th. We aren't the type of family who jets off to exotic locations...but this is also in rememberance of the fact we all only live once so let's have a heck of a good time on the journey...

We hope you will come along with us...

Jackie B