A wonderful surprise.....

I was so excited about Thursday night. But, I need to explain a little history before I tell you what we did.

In 1990, Scottie was almost 9 and I was 12 years old. For one month, we had a foreign exchange student come live with us over the summer. She was French and her name was Elodie. We had such an amazing time during her visit. We showed her all of St. Louis and introduced her to our American culture. It was a blast and we were very sad when the month was up and we had to say good-bye.

Fast forward 10 years later, and on Scott's first trip to Paris he met up with Elodie and spent some time with her. They enjoyed catching up on many years and exploring Paris together. She ended up going to medical school, got married, and had a little girl in 2006. Scott and mom had both seen them during separate visits to Paris but I had yet to see her. Until Thursday night.

Her and her husband, Joel, picked us up and it was so incredible to see her in person! It had been 18 years! Joel and Elodie spoiled us...they took us on a riverboat dinner cruise on the river Seine. We saw all of the sights of Paris on the 2 hour journey. I am still in awe of all of the gorgeous buildings and architecture in this city, and the history behind it all, it is astonishing. We saw the Statue of Liberty, Napoleans great steal, and many, many ornate buildings and bridges. The dinner was a typical French meal, 4 courses including appetizer, main entree, cheese plate, and my favorite, dessert. The company was wonderful, the wine was excellent, and the view was overwhelming. Every hour on the hour the Eiffel Tower sparkles and I had hoped to see it at some point on our trip. The cruise ended as we passed the Tower in its sparkling glory. It glittered for 5 minutes and I was star-struck.

It was an amazing night and we were all thrilled that we were able to spend some time with Elodie and Joel. They invited us over for dinner on Friday night so we could see their baby girl, Leonie. We were all giddy and on a high when we got into the hotel very late. We all crunched up into the tiny elevator to go up to our room but we got an unexpected surprise when the elevator stopped on us! We were stuck in this very small compartment and all I could do was laugh! Scott was trying to call for help, mom was trying to calm us down, and I could not help but take our picture in this humorous situation. I could not resist sharing the Kodak moment.

As the Jersey Boys (Four Seasons) would sing, "Oh what a night"!