Good Times at the Wedding

After spending a few days with the family and the animals, we drove to Williams to participate in Autumn and Efrain's wedding. We ended up with the bride, Liz, Brian and I sharing a hotel room the night before (so she'd be away from Efrain for the wedding day), and we had a grand old time drinking port out of 10 oz kiddie tumblers. The next day we went to the ceremony and reception. It was one of the most sincere weddings I've ever seen.

Here we have Autumn, trying to stay calm as the morning of her wedding day crawls by.

Here's the carriage that took the bridal party (yep, that included me!) to the ceremony. The horse's name is Winchester, and he weighs 2300 lbs.


Autumn and Efrain, walking back down the aisle with rings on their fingers.


Liz and Autumn. It was great to spend some time with them again.


Since I had some leftover scraps from the dress, I made a matching tie for Brian. Here we are after the ceremony.

El Rancho Stepheno

There's never a shortage of critters around the family home.

On top of the puppy, my parents have a new kitten. Currently, he goes by Diablo.


Here we have all three horses, standing getting ready to go out on a ride. Mom, Meryl and I all went out together. This had never happened before, and likely will never happen again as Tommy will be off to his new home soon.


Here I am, on my last ride ever on Tommy. I rode him every day while I was home, and as much as I agree he'd not the right horse for my mom, I'll miss the little guy.


This is Jak, my sister's horse, who Brian is growing rather fond of.


Finally, here's the new horse Rojo. He's a Missouri Foxtrotter, which means he has five gaits instead of the usual four. He's 15.1 hands tall, and very friendly. I plan to get to know him better my next trip home.

Home

Well, we're finally back in Iowa City. It was a pretty fun trip, although the end was hectic and exhausting. The wedding was great though. I've rarely seen two people I feel are so perfect for each other.

So, here I sit typing with henna'd hands and a sore back. We battled jet lag to get out of bed in Chicago this morning, drove 3+ hours to Iowa City and then Brian and I were each at work until 8 pm. We are now both very, very tired.

It rained lightly this afternoon. The corn is tall and tasseled in the fields. The large trees in our backyard shade the house with their leaves. The landscape here is so different from the one in Tucson it seems impossible we can travel so quickly between them. Also, it's odd that returning to Iowa is starting to feel like coming home, too. I guess that's something to be grateful for - to have home on both ends of my trip.

I'll post photos of the wedding and the new horse and the new kitten soon.