We had a great visit to Italy with Craig’s parents and we’re excited to bring them back here to enjoy our new home. We enjoyed some great food and wine. I think they liked it here!

We love traveling, but funnily the more we travel, the more we realize that we love France the best, particularly this region where we live. Of course our favorite place to take visitors is to the beautiful lake.

May was a great month for hiking too. I really love my hiking group. We go once a week for a few hours and I feel like it’s not only exercise, but an education too. I get a French lesson, a history lesson and we have learned about which plants and mushrooms are edible. Mushroom hunting is very popular here. If you’re not sure if the ones you found are safe to eat, you can take them to any pharmacy and the pharmacist will look at them and let you know. They check them for free and you typically give them a portion of your haul as a tip. Pretty cool.

I love when we turn a corner on a hike and discover these breathtaking scenes. Here’s a recent pic.

And another.

We feel so fortunate to get to have this time here in these magical surroundings.

Toward the end of the month we had to take a trip to Paris for our visas so we decided to extend the trip a bit do some touristy stuff. We had a blast.

We took the kids to the science museum and of course thy loved it. We were quite impressed. They have the museum divided for different age groups so all the exhibits are appropriate for each child. The kids favorite part was the water exhibit and Craig and I liked the funhouse mirrors.

We also spent a good bit of time touring Monmartre. Esther and I loved seeing all the artists on the streets. On our last day in Paris, we explored the old hangouts of the “lost generation”. I love reading about that group of creative people so it was cool to see where they lived and ate and engaged in drunken brawls. It’s just so cool to be sitting in a restaurant and to imagine Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound having a meal together and then maybe Picasso or Dali drops by. Beyond cool.

When we returned home from Paris we were greeted by amazing weather and commenced to spending every second outside.

I love that the kids are able to be so active and so connected to nature. Life is good!