Life on the Farm

Just a brief note to say that life is good in Minnesota. Here's a few highlights, more will be coming.
Hope you are all happy and healthy where you are!
Peace, Mandy

A few things we've been doing to stay busy:
Beer making, an antique car show, and a recent wedding of a dear friend





Some pics of our family, we are so glad to be reunited with them:






Life on the farm. We get great sunrises, sunsets and harvest moons out here where the sky is big. We are living with Andy's parents and they have lent us their camper to stay in until the weather gets cold.

Top Ten

Top Ten from our recent travels...
(In no particular order)

10.Notre Dame
We had a great time when our friend, Phil, went up the 350+ steps to the top towers of Notre Dame. It is one of the most spectacular structures I have ever been in.





9. Hanging out on the river in Paris with Abby and Brian. We loved how relaxed the city was on these warm, quiet nights. The best part was when someone showed up with an upright piano and a small drum kit and a crowd over over 100 gathered to sing along with this impromptu outdoor piano bar.


8. Playing with fire in Prague. There's only one place in the world where you can have a proper flaming glass of absinth, so we went for it!


7. Parks!


This is in the Kew Gardens in London. These lilypads are literally 2 feet wide!


We had a little too much fun on the merry-go-round at this park in Glasgow.


6. Ashley.
She's our good friend from MN who showed us around Liverpool and Manchester. It was the first stop on the journey, what a great way to start!


5. Climbing down a mountain in the Swiss Alps







4. Time with friends
Manu and the little daughter of our hosts in Swizterland

Soren and Andy with the hats they traded


3. The monuments in Berlin

This one goes deeper into the ground as you walk into it, so the blocks get taller and taller.

This includes the Jewish Museum in Berlin. We thought this museum was great because they had a couple of rooms that were like installments. This one was amazing. You got to walk all around this room that had these iron faces on them. The room wasn' very big, but the ceiling went up at least 3 stories, so the sound of these clanking iron pieces was so loud and melodic.



2. The East Side Gallery in Berlin. The Berlin Wall was an amazing thing to see, espicially this portion of it where artists have made it into their canvas.





1. Home Sweet Home, our lovely Thames River in London on our last night. There are no words and no pictures to express how much I miss that life, those people, and that place. What a gift the past two years have been. I have faith that what comes next can only be better!

More to Come

Hello everyone!

Just a very quick update. I will post more stories and pictures soon. In a nutshell, we had a wonderful time traveling in August. My twin sister, Abby, and her boyfriend Brian joined us for part of the trip when we went to Paris, Prague and Berlin. Then Andy and I met up with Soren and Manuella in their hometown in Switzerland. We are so grateful for that time of travel, it was inspiring and renewing in so many ways.
Now we're back in Minnesota and slowly adjusting to life here on the farm. We live with Andy's parents and Andy has been spending the past few weeks doing carpentry with his dad. I have a new job doing massage therapy with in a chiropractic clinic and I'm loving it. It feels strange to be back and I often feel like any moment now we'll pack up our bags and go back to our little flat in London and I'll go back to my job in Knightsbridge. It's bittersweet. I think once we're in a good daily routine, it will feel more like home. In the meantime, I'm just enjoying each day. Each day I observe something in nature that I never noticed before (like for instance, the sky seems so big out here with the fields and rolling hills), each day I reconnect with an old friend that I havent't talked with, and each day Andy and I talk about how to make our dreams a reality. We just celebrated our 4th anniversary yesterday. It was so nice to celebrate the past 4 years and just be content knowing that right now in this very moment, we are in a very good place.
I hope that all of you are in a good place, wherever you are.
Peace, Mandy

One chapter closes...

Just a short blog to let you all know that our time in London is coming to a close. It has been a wonderful 2 years and this transition is bittersweet for us as we have made some really great friends here. But, we're ready for the next adventure that is awaiting us in MN. We get home on August 19 and we hope to catch-up with everyone soon.
We'll post some pictures of our recent travels soon, so keep posted.
Peace, Mandy

Oh the places you'll go...

Adam and Shawna on their last night here


Hello Everyone!
This has been a great spring so far. We've had numerous visitors stay with us, Andy finished his 3rd term, we've seen some great sights, and we've recently gone to some great concerts. We are planning to come home in mid-August, so we're taking in as much as we can before it's too late. It might be a while until we post another blog since the next month will be busy with Andy's final project and graduation, followed by some European travel before we head home. We don't have very solid plans once we do finally get home, but we are excited for all the possibilities that lie ahead of us.
I hope that each of you are well.
See you soon!
Mandy


I love my new tripod for my camera. I've been having a great time playing with light and shutter speed.

We've been playing 'tourist' a lot with our recent guests, but it's been great because there's so much to enjoy about London, especially all the views on the River Thames.

Classic tourist shot :)

Andy surprised me with tickets to see the Wailin Jennys. Here's the opening act. The combination of the music and the small venue made me feel like I was back home again.

Me and my friend Manuella took a day to see Greenwich, it was our first taste of summer.

Shawna, Adam, Andy and I discovered this great flower market in eastern London. I had never seen peonies this color before. Everything was gorgeous there.

This is the late night/early morning celebration after some of Andy's performances with his classmates. Only the strong survived, but we had a great time (note the hour on the clock).

Several people have recommended the London walking tours to us, so we took a night with friends and went on the "Jack the Ripper" walk. Educational and entertaining, my favorite combination.

The Swell Season in concert at the Barbican Arts Centre

Beth, Kevin, and Andy at the British Museum

A small taste of the amazing rose garden in Hyde Park that is just a block from where I work

Fun with Photography

Well, we're doing well here in London. Especially lately as the weather has been warming up. Andy's been really busy with school, it's the last term of classes. Next term will just be rehearsals and public performances. Our time here is coming swiftly to an end. It is bittersweet because we have been feeling more and more at home here. But, in the meantime, we're trying to enjoy every moment of it.
I know it's a bit random, but here's just a few photos of things happening in our life. ...





I've been playing around with some of the toys on the photo editing program we have. These are just some of the things we see every day. Although, they don't normally look this cool.



Here's a mask that Andy made using a mold of his face. When our friends from H-town visited, Patti helped to put a plaster cast on his face so that he would have this exact model to build masks off of.




Andy and some of his friends were asked to do one of their pieces from school at a performance night in Hackney. It was great to see what's happening in the theater community outside of school.




Some friends of ours that came over to "jam." We all get together once and a while to play guitar, piano, and sing whatever random pop songs we can think of. Purple Rain is a the top of the list so far.


Andy's parents with their host (Priscilla) for the three months they were here. We had a farewell dinner together before they left.

Hope all of you are well and we'll see you soon!
Peace,
Mandy