On to Iowa

For the mid-part of the week, we planned on heading down to Mason City, Iowa where Kelly's folks live. On the way, we first had lunch in Shakopee with a good high school friend Rhea and her son Evan (who is a carbon copy of his dad BJ)! We also ran some errands with Aunt Melinda before we left the cities for Iowa. I realize I don't have much for pictures for the couple of days we relaxed in Mason City. But I know we tackled some of Kelly's fave things to do back home including; chicken salad on greek bagel at the Bagel Depot, shopping at Younkers for the deals, chippermint shake at Birdsalls ice cream, and walk/run around Eastbrooke, the subdivision where I grew up. I think we also did some laundry and Brian cleaned up John Boy's computer. It was pretty wild! :)

Actually by Thursday, Brian left to head up to Canada with dad Tom and Karen to their new cabin for some fishing. I stayed back to head up to the cities again for the weekend to see more family and friends.

Back to Minnesota

The next day, Sunday we said goodbye to Rick and Kate and headed back to Minnesota with Al and Jackie. We drove straight there and stopped for dinner at Olive Garden. Brian and I still had a busy week coming up, so they next day we planned on getting going to start visiting some friends and other family members while we were back in the U.S.

Our first stop on Monday was to see my college roommate Laura, her husband Jacob and their kids. Evy is two and Wilson was just born a few months ago. We hadn't met Wilson yet, so were excited to see him. And he has a cute Oxford onesie as well! We were also super glad to see Laura's sister (and also a past college roomie of mine) Sarah at their place too. She was helping watch the kids and really getting in practice since she was 9 months pregnant! (As of this blogging, Sarah's had her little boy Roman Scott Kreykes and mom and baby are doing great.) As usual, it felt like a short visit, but was great to see them all.


Next stop was Bloomington at the Batz hotel. The Batz hotel is the home of my aunt Melinda and uncle Paul and three cousins, Ben, Katie and Anna. Many of you might remember I would live with them during the summers in college while I had summer internships in Minneapolis. The Batz hotel is now where Brian and I love to crash when we're in town to hang with the fam. We were really on the way to the high school musical practice, Joseph and the Techicolor Dreamcoat. Ben had the lead part of Joseph for his final year in high school, and Katie, a junior was the lead dancer. Brian and I were going to miss the actual performance dates of the show, but luckily could sneak in and watch a good hour and a half of rehearsal. They practiced almost all of the first half and Kelly cried watching cousin Ben sing and perform. Ben was in 5th grade when Kelly moved to Oregon, and so much has changed since then! It was absolutely great, and we're looking forward to watching the full performance on DVD.


The last stop of the night was to visit Brian's good college friend Ben Threinen and his new girlfriend Meghan. We haven't seen Ben in quite some time (well actually we saw him briefly in January, but it had been years before that). We were looking forward to just having a nice dinner and visit with him and see what all is new. We went to his loft in Minneapolis and grilled out steaks, chicken and shrimp (all was so yummy!) and had a great time. We got to know Meghan a bit and the guys ended the night as they used to, playing guitar together. They are so good playing together and have a great time. Brian has missed his guitar these last 6 months, so we brought it to the UK on our trip back. Anyway, it was so great catch up with Ben and see that he's doing well.

Day After Part 2

After we loaded up on two breakfasts, we caught the shuttle bus taking a number of the wedding party and friends and family to The Ohio State University football game tailgating party. We didn't actually go to the the game, since tickets are extremely hard to come by and expensive. Especially since they are the #1 collegiate team in the nation. The day was extremely hot and there were lots of people wandering the area where you could get food, beer and watch the game on large TVs. It was a lot of fun, but honestly I wasn't used to the heat and thought I might not make it through the whole day. So a lot of water was consumed!

Rick and Kate had their red and white on and we learned all of the appropriate cheers and chants to show support.

The Smith clan having fun during the tailgating party.

More fun partying pics!

Day After Part 1

We celebrated Brian's upcoming 30th birthday in the morning during the hotel breakfast. Some of the family members had to get driving home to northern Minnesota, so 9 a.m. breakfast was the best time. (Whew, and it wasn't too easy getting up and going the next morning!)


Rick, Kate, Dottie and Uncle Tom enjoying the birthday breakfast . . .

Brian with his aunt and uncle, Amy and Jeff and cousins Nathan and Dustin and Grandma Dorothy.

Our second breakfast with the Smith fam.

Charissa and baby Morena. She has a cute Oxford University baby onesie on!

The Smith clan before parting for the day.

Good thing we had two breakfasts to stock up on nutrients before we headed to the Ohio State football game tailgate. Ohio State is #1 in the nation, so it was going to be a big one!

Rick & Kate Wedding Day

All the groomsmen and groom before hopping onto the party bus to pick up the ladies, and take them all to the ceremony.

The gorgeous couple right before the ceremony!


Brian, Rick and sis Dottie before the ceremony - what a good looking fam!

And now with their significant others . . . even better looking! :)


It was a wonderful outdoor ceremony, followed by walking up the hill to the reception location with dinner and dancing. There was an enormous back deck from the main room, and it was a beautiful spot to overlook the small lake and have cocktails and snacks before dinner. It was also a nice escape from the loud music if you needed a break from cutting a rug! Kelly danced with cousin Dustin, and Brian visited with some long distance relatives on the Smith side of the family (grandpa Smith's brother Ken and his wife Donna.)

Brian giving the Best Man speech to his bro Rick and Rick's new wife Kate.

The dancing went to midnight and got pretty wild with Rick's crew (no big surprise there!) But everyone made it home to their hotel rooms afterwards and continued the partying!

Photo credit: Pictures 1, 4 & 5 are from Rick & Kate's photographer John Hanson (wish I could say they were mine!)

Day Before Wedding

The girls (here are Kate, Dottie, and mother of the groom Jackie) had a fun morning getting mani/pedis (manicures and pedicures) together, along with a massage. Great way to start the day! The guys went mountain biking . . . you'll have to ask about when they hit a wild turkey!


Kelly and Kate getting beautiful toes!


This is the rehearsal for the outdoor wedding ceremony. Rick and Kate had her hometown pastor from Minnesota fly in for the wedding. Brian was Best Man and Dottie was Maid of Honor.


The photogenic Bride and Groom at the rehearsal dinner in their fave Mexican restaurant.



Cousin Carl and his wife Charissa and their new baby girl Morena just flew in from Seattle in time for the dinner. They are so excited to have Rick and Kate moving to Seattle!


Here's a great pic of Brian and Rick with their dad Tom and his partner-in-crime Karen!


Cute pic of Kelly and Dottie all dressed up.


Parting shot of the evening, Bri with his shades before heading out downtown with the guys. Kelly stayed back and enjoyed some Leinenkuegel's Honeyweiss back in the Smith party room.

Trip Back to U.S.A.

I realize I won't have time to write in so many details from our trip back home, so I'm going to let the photos do the talking and I'll add captions.



We had a lovely 12 hour layover in the Toronto airport on our flight over. So Kelly is trying to get some ZZZZs on the floor, while Brian is chilling out to some tunes.


The main reason for our trip home was for Brian's brother's wedding in Columbus, Ohio. We caught a ride with Brian's folks Al and Jackie to Ohio from Minnesota. Here we are the first night (Wednesday) in Ohio and having dinner at Champs with some of the early arriving wedding guests. Brian's bro Rick is on the far right and the other guys, Lyle and Nynas are really good buddies of Rick and Brian's from high school in Two Harbors, MN. Molly is Nynas's girlfriend.


Here's a cute pic at Champs with Brian's sister Dottie and her new fiance Andrew. They live in Denver and just got engaged a few months ago. This was the first time Brian and I, and Rick and Kate got to meet Dot's man!


Can you tell they're brothers?!! After dinner was a bonfire at Rick and Kate's house. The weather was hot and muggy for mid-September and Brian and I loved it! I had to go buy some capris as I'm used to bundling up for the English weather. We were celebrating one of the last nights hanging out in Rick and Kate's backyard, as they are currently in the process of moving to Seattle for a new job for Rick. Can you believe it's just after we left Eugene, Oregon?? We're so bummed! But super happy for R&K since we know they'll love the Northwest.

Bettina's Birthday

My good friend Bettina (in the pink shirt) just turned 30 this past weekend. She invited friends over for snacks and drinks from 5-7 on Sunday. Bettina just got engaged this summer in Paris (so romantic!) to her fiance Stefan and they are getting married in May in his hometown in Germany. So obviously Stefan was at the party along with another Newcomer friend we knew (Frewayni, on my left), along with a couple other Oxford lawerly types they are both friends with. Bettina just passed her exams to become an English solicitor (lawyer) as she was trained in Germany. Stefan lectures and researches in International Law at St. Anne's College at the University.

Here is a pic of some of the ladies at Bettina's party on her back garden patio.

Oxford Beer Festival

Okay, so I have a legit excuse why I'm still slow in updating. We were having some difficulties downloading photos to our iPhoto program since we had video clips on our camera as well. And some bug was preventing all the photos to download since there was a prob with the video part working with Quicktime Player. Anywho, I finally found a patch to fix it all up, so in the near future, I'll be able to include video clips on the blog as well!

In the meantime, here is what we were up to this past weekend in Oxford. Friday night was the 10th annual Oxford Beer Festival. It was held down in the city centre at the Town Hall. It was pretty much the same situation as the Eugene Beer Fest and I'm sure countless others. We paid 2 pounds to get in, 2 pounds for a 1/2 pint tasting glass (we could keep) and then another 5 pounds in tickets to purchase the different kinds of beer to try out. It was all still good 'ol warm flat English beer. But I do have to say that the smaller brewers in the area still brew very tasty warm flat beer with a strong flavor. So we did enjoy the tastings and it didn't take much to get a mean buzz going on!

We had met up with a number of Brian's colleagues from his office. There are a set of them who are the beer guzzlers of the group and of course they were mostly all there. Brian's advisor Ian was also along for a bit. I was the only WAG for most of the time, until Gemma arrived later on.

And as I usually close my posts by saying we ended up at the pub for a pint, I think we had enough pints at the Festival so we passed on the pub and stumbled home after getting some cheap chips (fries) to snack on the way!

Ghetto BBQ

The Sunday before we left for the States, we hosted what we termed a Ghetto BBQ in the gravel parking lot of our building. Since we don't have any nice patch of grass/garden/lawn to call our own, we just decided to plunk down our kitchen table and chairs in the middle of the parking lot, not far from the rubbish bin (garbage dumpster) and bike rack. Therefor it was pretty ghetto! But it was nice evening, and we had our American friends/neighbors, Matt and Donna, Matt's mom, and their two girls down for the BBQ. The girls Eva (5) and Ruby (3) along with their grandma made this cute homemade pinata which we strung up from our window and they took turns giving it a good whack. We grilled chicken (of course) and had nice potato salad and green salad to share. Much wine was going around and it was just nice to chill on a late Sunday afternoon with decent weather for once. Especially knowing it was going to turn fall and colder really quickly!

Kelly's Work and UK Friends

I don't think I've mentioned, but I'm keeping busy a few hours a week at a little home shop down the street. It's called Cargo, and it's a cross between a Crate & Barrel and Pier 1 store. The girls working there are all really great, and are the first true British gals I've met and socialized with. As I've mentioned before, most of my other girlfriends here are from everywhere else but the UK (Sweden, Germany, Canada, U.S., Czech Republic, etc.).

It's a good place to keep me busy in-between traveling and having visitors. I'm also volunteering for a dyslexia charity connected to the University. I'm helping plan a fundraising dinner and auction and working on the marketing and communications aspect of it.

We had a Cargo girls night out the same weekend Forest visited. Was funny how the girls picked the "American' themed restaurant/bar place to go to for the night. Have to admit, the food wasn't too bad. It had steaks, burgers, ribs, etc. After dinner, a couple of the girls wanted to go out for a bit longer, and honestly I haven't really been out on the town in Oxford. Was funny to realize that the three girls, Lucy, Anna and Amy, were all 10 years younger than me! They are 19, and it's legal to drink at 19 here in the U.K. Wow, for the first time I felt a bit old!!! But they were cute and fun and squirrely, and I was sort of mother hen and made sure they all caught their buses on time and such. The other two gals who were with us for dinner, but didn't go out were Andrea (in blue), who is the shop manager and roughly my age, and Leonore (in purple), who's a bit older and from Columbia, South America.

It was fun and a great experience!

Forest visited

I'm been trying to figure out where I want to start with all the posts I need to catch up on. I was behind even before we left to the U.S.! So I think I'll post a couple to catch up before I start on our U.S. trip. I need to tell you about our Wales trip too- but that might come later.

Anyway, let's start with our buddy Forest who visited us in September. The weekend before we left for the States, Forest was able to make a quick stopover in the UK and visit us in Oxford. Forest and his wife Nikki were good friends of ours in Eugene. Forest was also a Physics grad student at Oregon. He finished about one year before Brian, and they moved south to San Diego where he works for Hewlett-Packard. At HP, he does a lot of work with a branch in Israel, interesting enough. So about 3-4 times a year they send him over there to work for a few weeks. This trip, he was able to get a day and-a-half stopover and could pop over to Oxford.


Luckily, Brian was already in London for a conference on the Thursday Forest arrived. So Brian met him at the airport and they took the coach together into town. Friday the boys explored all day and I met up with them for some punting late afternoon/early evening. Then we embarked on a typical Oxford pub tour and met some interesting characters for the evening. Was fun to talk with some locals and do the typical pub thing.

Unfortunately that's all the time we had, as Forest had to catch the coach early in the a.m. the airport to fly back to the States. But it was awesome to see him even for a short trip. After all that time you spend together in grad school, it's fun to reconnect in your "new" lives too.