where oh where has Hagatha been ?

I wish I could say we were on a deserted island sipping tropical drinks, but in actuality we have been without phone or internet for most of the month of May. L.O.V.E.L.Y.

Actually, not having the internet connected in our home has made it quite nice. More family time and more time together. Try it sometime, it's amazing, really.

I have been reading books again - James Patterson mostly - I tear right through those. Patricia Cornwell, but I just can't seem to get through "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" after all that. I'll finish it, but it's painful.

The weather has been absolutely wonderful and the kids have been outside in the pool, riding their new bikes they got for their birthdays, playing in their tent on the lawn ... all, of course, after school (which by the way is over on July 4th) I've been spending more time with my friend and her precious baby girl (7 mos), going to the market or just sitting around drinking coffee while spoiling the baby. I've filled all our flower boxes and have them beautifully adorning our many windows of the house. I've even planted cherry tomatoes, zucchini plants and lupines in big clay pots to move to our new house when we find it. Then I've planted cosmos and some pretty little balloon flowers along the patio side of the house. The wonderful man of the house found all the right adjustments so we could use our gas grill from the US here in France. You know that everyplace else is metric, except the US, right? That poses a problem when you move with your US things ... We barbecue and have our meals outside when the weather permits and then the kids go play and hubs and I play dice or something at the table over chilled glasses of beer or a nice glass of wine. Heaven! Pure Heaven!

Nights and weekends are spent looking at houses to buy - We came so close to buying one, but found out it had been sold by another agency over the weekend. I guess that means it wasn't the house for us. Back to the drawing board! It is hard to find a house big enough with a yard big enough (an inground pool now is becoming top priority because the house we loved the most (that sold) had one). I even bought a few floats for the "new pool" for the kids. They are happily using them in their blow-up pool right now though.

So we are back to having the internet and the phone working again. We have a pretty good deal here for our phone and internet at low cost with free calls to other countries (many hours on the phone with the older girls) BUT there is no customer service to speak of and it was painful trying to get some assistance to get back in working order when, we think, lightning may have blown out our modem transformer while we were vacationing in Florida and then Nice back in the end of April into May.

I've got some beautiful pictures of Switzerland that I could share at a later date. We drove straight through Switzerland and then Italy on our drive to Nice last month. Didn't get too many pictures through Italy because it was a death defying drive (C.R.A.Z.Y. drivers in Italy!) and then the camera battery ran out after my happy snapping all through Switzerland.

So Hagatha is back. I'd love to hear from you faithful readers.