10 Years! A rendezvous at the place of our first meeting

To celebrate 10 years of incredible marriage together, we decided to return to the place where we first met (Paris, France). We are very thankful that Grandma and Grandpa Holt were able to take the kids for 10 days so that we could spend the entire time enjoying each other! (We're especially thankful that they were able to handle the fact that the kids all got really sick the day we left them off and they stayed that way until we got home!)

We've thrown together a bunch of pictures of the trip in an attempt to share parts of this special experience with you. However, the experience was so special and so important to us, there's no way that we'll be able to share everything, but we'll give it a try.

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We started our trip with a couple of days in London, then we took the "chunnel" train under the English Channel into Paris, where we stayed for 7 days before returning to London for the flight back to Salt Lake to attend Ryan Holt's wedding prior to returning home with the kids.
This is us at Buckingham Place - they wouldn't let us in even though we looked super nice and trustworthy! It was fun to see the guards really not moving a muscle (except to shift their guns or rotate position) and wonder what kind of job that would be!


This is us in front of Big Ben (actually, just the tower that holds Big Ben, which is really one of the bells in the tower). You may note the little baby belly of the lucky one who accompanied us on this trip.

Finally, we arrived in Paris. This is a picture of us straight off the Eurostar "chunnel" train. It was pretty cool to travel at speeds greater than 200mph on this train. Our ears popped every time when passed under a bridge or overpass. (This was especially painful for Amy, who was fighting a tough cold for the first 4-5 days of our vacation! What a trooper --> she never let it slow us down!)

Paris --> La Ville d'Amour! Even after 10 years, we're still in love. However, after three kids (and one on the way), this vacation was exactly what we needed to re-charge the "love" batteries!

Our first day in Paris happened to be "free museum Sunday". What a perfect day to see the Louvre!! We actually had some pretty cool spiritual experiences in the Louvre, which was fitting for a Sunday!

A nice man from Atlanta took this picture of us on top of Notre-Dame. There's a great view of Paris from the top of the cathedral, even if it is obstructed by the wires. The gargoyles seemed to enjoy being a part of the photo.

Near Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur, this classic metro station entrance brought back many memories for us.

Our brief visit to Versailles was one of the highlights of the trip. We felt like newly-weds as we skipped around the gardens, flirting and laughing (even if it was a bit chilly). The gardens are just so beautiful!

Did I mention that we did a little "flirting" in the gardens of Versailles? :)

As we drove through the country side of France, we were stunned at the beautiful fields of yellow flowers everywhere! Here's a great shot of Amy in front of an endless field of flowers.

Our favorite stretch of the French country side was through the "Champagne" villages. Here, Jason is standing in front of a very large bottle of Champagne! We were amazed by the endless fields of grapes along with all of the workers making sure that they were properly pruned.

Here, we're posing in front of the famous cathedral in Reims. This is the view from the back of the cathedral where most of the French kings were crowned.

We had to throw in one of the many restaurant pictures that we took. Here, we're enjoying "raclette" at "Le Chamois" in Reims. What an awesome meal!!

We had a tough time fitting our car down this little road in Rouen!

It took us a little while, but we finally found the church building in Rouen. We enjoyed the hunt though, as Rouen is one of the prettiest little towns in all of Northern France.

Another one of the highlights of our trip was our visit to the American cemetery in Normandy (right off of Omaha Beach). We originally expected to visit for only about 30 minutes, but we we ended up staying for nearly three hours. There was a very reverent feeling throughout the entire place and we were pleased to learn that we visited on May 8th, which marked the end of WWII in Europe (May 8th, 1945).

There were many, many Americans that fought and died for our freedom on D-Day so many years ago! We are eternally grateful!

On the way down to the beach --> it was a little chilly!

Amy standing on Omaha beach, trying to stay warm!

This was a very cool and very fresh fish-market in Courseulles-sur-Mer, where we stayed the last night of our trip in France. It was a very quiet and peaceful fishing town right on the English Channel. We were really looking forward to "swimming" at this beach, but it turned out to be VERY cold! We did find some nice seashells in the morning and we enjoyed strolling down the beach, hand-in-hand!

Here's a shot of the fishing boats in Courseulles-sur-mer.

Amy poses in front of a random English telephone booth on the beachfront in France.

Dinnertime, right on the beach in Courseulles-sur-mer. Even though we both speak French, we couldn't understand more than half of the items on this menu because they were mostly fish dishes with funky names for the fish.

Finally, the best part of the visit --> the French pastries and bakeries! We hit these daily (multiple time per day in fact) and we REALLY enjoyed ourselves!!