Anyway ... Dave and I dumped our children off on my parents last weekend and made tracks for New Orleans. It was our first getaway without kids. And the longest this Mommy's been away from her babies :) The evening before we left for New Orleans, we were sitting in my Mom's computer room when Dave had the genius idea that we should look up our friends, Brant and Liz Pitre. Along with Stacy and Harvey Crenshaw, the Pitres were our best friends in college. We played long games of Sequence, ate many dinners together, drank a ton of grape Kool-Aid (Brant's favorite) and even worked at Wal-Mart together one summer! They knew us before we were DaveandJo. Liz made me an awesome birthday card for my eighteenth birthday that I still have in my Bible. I was the first person Liz told that she was going to marry Brant. Brant was in our wedding eight and a half years ago ... and that was the last time we saw them.
{The following is a very long, detailed story. Short Version: We found him! And surprised him! And then he took us home with him and we surprised Liz! Screaming, jumping, hugging surprised. It was great. Then, just like college, we stayed up talking waaaaaaaaaaaaay too late. I don't think either of us realized how much we miss them. Picture at bottom.}
So we looked him up. And discovered he's teaching at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. We decided to stop by on our way to our hotel and see if we could catch him in his office and surprise him. Turns out the college isn't in that great of a part of town. (Side note: Is there a good part of town in New Orleans anymore? We didn't see any. Post-Katrina NOLA broke my heart just a little.) The door to Brant's building was locked and he wasn't in his office to answer the phone.
So we decided to head into what looked like the main building and see if there was a way to leave him a note. As we walked toward the building, a woman walking out asked if she could help us. We told her about our thwarted plan to surprise our old friend we hadn't seen in years and she said, "I just saw him go into the cafeteria to eat lunch. Down the hall, to the right!"
When we got to the cafeteria, I realized that in a Catholic seminary, I stood out. I don't think many women wander through those halls. We had to wait for a man making announcements to finish before we were willing to stand in front of the glass doors of the cafeteria and scan the room for Brant. I'm sure we were quite a sight. A man walked out and asked if he could help us. We told him who we were looking for and were told to head back to the professor's lunch room "behind the partition, through the kitchen and through the door on the left." We're such troublemakers.
We made our way back to the room and poked our head in the door. And Brant's reaction was fabulous. :) He was flabbergasted. He dragged us outside and asked us a million questions, mostly "What are you guys doing here?" I think he was in shock. He was desperate to try and surprise Liz so we made plans to meet up with him after he got off work and follow him home.
We ended up having to change our plans to the next day. I was sure Brant would never be able to pull it off. He's a horrible surprise keeper. He managed it by not saying a word to Liz until after he left for work. He called her on his cell phone and told her he would be bringing a surprise home after work so she should be napped and dressed :)
When we got to the house, he went inside and made Liz cover her eyes and led her outside. She took her hands down and SCREAMED!! Then hugged me for the longest time. Then she moved on to Dave. It was great. We met their four awesome children and the rest of the evening was spent jabbering away. It was like no time had passed at all. Except that our conversations were more about kids and jobs than homework and tests.
It was the highlight of our trip.
2 comments:
what a sweet story - reunions are the best, aren't they? Especially the ones that take us by surprise. :)
hmmm...sounds perfectly lovely! glad ya'll got a great visit and vacation-ette!
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