The Trip that Almost Wasn't

First off, Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope got to indulge in a little bit of Chocolate today - I had mine early and in Paris, nonetheless.

I went there with my sweet husband to take a peek at the needlework show that was taking place - it was a blast. But this whole trip almost did not happen because my youngest child Olivia was doing her annual ( it always seems to be in Feb/March) medical mystery/emergency thing.  She started having pains that migrated from her lower right back to her mid right abdomen.  After taking her to the doc, with nothing conclusive, he said to come in for a follow-up two days later - at which point in time he saw things in her urine which were of concern to him.  Another trip to the lab the following day, and the doc sent her to the local children's hospital.  They were as stumped as he was since everything they looked at was normal except her urine and her pain, and she got sent home since there was no sign of infection in her blood - her urine was still a concern.  The following day they called us back to the hospital and took a look at her kidney ( she already has 2 sonograms and one CT scan by that time), but still nothing conclusive - however, her values in her urine now made them nervous, and they sent us over to the pediatric surgeon.  He took a look ( and by that I mean poked and prodded her) and  took the usual blood and sent her up to have another sono to see if they could locate the appendix.  It did look suspiciously like appendicitis , except that she was missing the fever and the elevated white blood cells in her blood - but no appendix to be found - they scanned the rest of the abdomen, really studied her CT, made calls to admit her for some laproscopic exploratory surgery pending results of her bloodwork which was ....normal! So, home we went, where my poor child stayed in bed and was miserable.  She did have some good painkillers, but they did not give her much relief.  After a weekend of pain and boredom, she went to school for 3 days - with visits to the lab to check on her urine, which showed improvement.  I had already changed my train reservation to Paris to leave two days ( Friday) later, in hopes that she would be well.  On Thursday she woke up in a great deal of pain, and I hustled her back to the children's hospital where they sonogrammed her abodomen from top to bottom and finally found a rather large ovarian cyst.  Jimmeny Cricket - what a two week freak-out  I had.  The cyst should resolve itself, thank goodness.  My friend Margit kept an eye on Liv, and I decided it would be safe to hop the train to Paris.

Our first order of Business on Friday was to visit the American Embassy - my husband has a connection there, so he got us in - what fun.  No pictures though because its not allowed.  Here we are  standing right on the corner of the Place de la Concorde where the embassy is located.

We checked into our hotel - a French Officer's hotel with nice rooms and reasonable Paris room rates.

Our room was on the top floor - last window on the right in the dome part - our view was fantastic.

The last two were taken Sunday morning around 8:30 a.m. - Paris is super quiet at that time - the only real activity comes from tourists trying to squeeze as many attractions in as possible.  

Back to where I left off - Friday night there was an event at the AVAS store, which I had signed up for - my main goal was to see the store and buy my floss for Jane Atkinson.  I hopped the Metro - which at that time was belly buttons to behinds full.  I emerged onto the street and went off in search of the store.  Being the well-trained American I was looking for a nice bright store sign, but leave it to the French to be understated...

  

Into the entry hall

 up the winding stairs,

and through the door into silk heaven.

Just FYI - I blurred the two ladies in the photograph because I received an e-mail from one of these ladies, stating that I had broken French law by even taking this picture, and since it showed nothing of interest anyway she asked that I remove it from my blog.  I think this is a good compromise - I get to keep my non- interesting photo and she is just a non-recognizable blur.

The next day we ( yes my husband came along) went off to Aiguilles en Fete.  We came out of the Metro, crossed the plaza and voila - the Grande Hall where all sorts of delights awaited the needleworker!

Rob and his new friends....

Yup, it was THAT big!!

One of the first booths I got to was Reflets de Soie... wow, her stuff is fantastically beautiful.

Here are a few more pics at random.

So, if you are still reading, I want to reward you!  Since it is Valentine's Day and I have just returned from Paris, I want to giveaway the current issue of Mains & Merveilles, which features 5 Red Samplers by Isabelle Mazabraud-Kerlan of Reflets de Soie.  I will, of course, add plenty of chocolate goodies to go with this.  Just mention in your comment that you want to be in this giveaway.  I know it sneaky adding this to the end, but I want to reward those who actually take the time to read all that I write.  I will draw a winner on Friday.

I will write more on Paris in my next post - this one is very long as it is, and I will show you guys what I brought home as well.  

Until then,

Sylvia