It has recently come to my attention that my blogging skillz have seriously taken a downward turn over the last six months or so. Posts have been sporadic and major milestones missed.

This sad state of affairs must not continue! Especially considering the fact that a major area of neglect has been the very excellent rock band that Sev and Tya are part of: The Boxmen!

So, for your viewing and listening pleasure, here's the only existing video of their first-ever concert back in December of 2009! They'd only been playing together a few months, but were already pretty darn good!



Since then , they've only gotten better. Sadly, I don't have any other video footage to share. But I do have a few photos from their concert in December 2010.




Their next concert is in June and I PROMISE to get a decent video of it!

Friday afternoon, we celebrated JP's 60th birthday with several firemen and a few gendarmes....

Very festive, as you can see...

It turns out that when you set the woods behind your house on fire, the fire department and cops show up.
JP knows that now.
Just to be clear, he didn't start a forest fire on purpose, he was just trying to burn off some dry grass.
Which, it turns out, is illegal and dangerous.
Live and learn, as they say...

After the excitement died down, I took the twins and one of their little friends on a road trip to Lyon to see:

which was SO completely amazing and fun and cool!!

We had great seats and the girls loved the show- especially Alexa.

At the end, we went down in front of the stage to dance and sing along with the encore.
We finally got home at about 2am.
Good times!!

Generally speaking, France on a Sunday is SO boring!
Few shops or businesses of any kind are authorised to be open and things slow down to a deadly pace. So, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the German exchange student who we are hosting this week.
Valentine had told me that the girl doesn't like history, so that ruled out museum visits. And museums are kind of my go-to solution in times of trouble...

But I wanted to do something nice, as Sunday would be our only full day with Teresia. Afterwards, she'd be at school all day and then leave on Friday night. So, I proposed that we go up to Chamonix/Mont Blanc. I figured we could go up the cute little railway to the glacier and then go back down and visit the village.

My plan work out...for the most part.
I drove us to Chamonix (it took 45 minutes flat- my personal best!) and got us on the train. We were at Montenvers station within 20 minutes.

We got out and looked around.

took a few photos...

I tried to chat with our guest a bit about the Mer de Glace glacier, Mont Blanc, the Montenvers rack railway line, etc.
In fact, what I did was commit the error of forgetting that she doesn't like history.
And she doesn't much like geology either, apparently, because after approximately 8.5 minutes on the mountainside, she said "So, are we leaving now?"
Yes, we're leaving now.
Sigh.

What she likes is...shopping.
Luckily, Chamonix is one of the most touristy spots in all of France. And this means many shops are open on Sunday.
As I predicted, Teresia perked right up the moment we got her into a Benetton shop...
And we fed her pizza.
She mostly just likes pizza.

As for me?
At that point, I could have used a stiff gin and tonic....