Yikes! $8000! That would pay for a few trips to St. Tropez! What horse did you bet on, Dianne, when you scored that payout? Longshot Giacomo won last night with 50 to 1 odds. I don't really understand the betting, and Adam wasn't around last night to explain it to me (again). The kid's a whiz when it comes to poker and anything else involving stakes and betting. We took the kids to Saratoga (Saratoga Springs, New York) for a day at the races last summer. I focused on the women all gussied up like dolls, Dana took pictures of the horses and jockeys in the paddock, and Mike placed bets for Adam, who somehow managed to win $35.

The south of France is a stunning part of the planet, and I know what you mean about the food being part of the experience. It's so fresh and sparkling, it just seems to come alive when it hits your tongue. Sipping a crisp white wine and eating dazzling seafood while gazing at the Mediterranean, sun on your shoulders ... ahhh. We explored the stretch of the Cote d'Azur from Nice to the Italian border (and then spent a week on the Italian Riviera -- equally amazing). We based ourselves in Menton, a city of ochre and olive-colored houses that march up a mountainside overlooking the sea. We took day trips up into the villages perches (sorry, I can't put the accent aigue over the "e"), the white, "perched" villages in the hills above the sea. (Go World Travel Magazine will be running a story I wrote about the hill towns. It's coming out in either the June or July issue, and I'll share the link on my travel blog, http://RibbonsofHighway.blogspot.com when it comes out.)

I visited Linda's blog, Dianne. What an exciting life she must be leading. I plan to go back and spend more time reading her entries (and her son's -- he's got a site, too.). And she is a marvelous photographer. I often link to good travel blogs from my blog, so I may add Linda's site to a post or to my sidebar.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who fit that description. After church, I'll share a little bit of Mother's Day humor I found in my emailbox this morning.