Happy Times

The last few weeks have been crazy with so much happening...

Some really sad things happened - most monumental of which was my grandmother dying. It was quick & sudden, which although a huge shock, would have been the way Molly would have wanted it.
In life, she was a huge character - both in a positive way & a negative way. I don't think anyone who met her wasn't affected by her in some way - whether that be in complete & utter shock at some of the things she dared say or do or her random kindess that went beyong the call of duty. But whatever anyone thought of her, somehow she knew she was doing the right thing, whether you agreed with her or not.
Anyway, the world will an empiter (and quieter) place without her.

Also, some really happy things happened.

At the beginning of July we had a family reunion in Italy. There were 14 of us in total. We had a lovely villa in Tuscany & it was really good to see everyone. It was the first time for us all to get together in one place for 20 years (our family is spread across the world; since i moved back to Europe, we're now spread across 2 continents instead of 3)
Tuscany is really gorgeous & I now get why people fall in love with it. It looks so 'Tuscan'! And top it all, we had lovely weather, good food, copious amounts of alcohol & lots of laughs. I think a good time was had by all.

Then I had my one-year anniversary in Germany (which I already wrote about.)

And then to finish my month off, I had a visit from the Davises. They stayed with K & me in Stuttgart for 5 days & we had a blast. We did more sightseeing in the last week, then i have done in the whole year i've been here! We did the zoo, the Black Forest, a medieval festival and a pub crawl of Stuttgart (Ok, so K & I have done that bit of sightseeing before!)
we managed to fit in a poker night, where M surprised us with his skill - he just needs to work on his poker face, as everytime he had an ace he started giggling...
It was really great to see them all again. And the best thing of all was that we just picked up where we left off. No awkwardness, no rough patches, just back like we were in Japan. Except that we weren't in Japan. We were in a whole different continent. Guess we'll have to meet in the U.S. next time.