The week before the wedding

In case you missed it, my littlest sister Tori got married last week. SO MUCH FUN. 

The week before, there was a lot of busyness. Things were painted, tidied, replaced and spruced up until the farm hardly looked like the same place. 

Cody and Amanda, Anthony, Lindsey, and Geri were all here pitching in. On Wednesday, Livie, Cara, Monte, and Eileen rolled in to help out too. 

On Tuesday night, it was not raining and slightly warm. Yay! Anthony broke out his cauldron that he had just bought and made a pot of venison stew. You may have had venison stew, but this was so much better than you might be imagining. 

Yum!

We ate al fresco since most people were taking advantage of the lack of rain to get some work done outside. 

Lindsey was mowing the lawn and got stuck, so a lot of neices and nephews ran over to help push her out. Mostly they were just excited to be running the grass and sunshine. But they did help get her out. 

We have had such a late spring. SUCH a late spring. We were actually worried that the leaves might not even be on trees yet by the time the wedding came around. But last week, they finally started emerging. 

Things were green!!

Leaving late one evening while other people were busy in the barn. There was a lot of cleaning out of manure, old hay, accumulated junk, and pigeon poop.

Geri was a painting dynamo, giving a large portion of the house a freshening up! Here they were painting the wall a bright white. You can see the difference in the dingy white it used to be. 

Moving mommas and calves

They were much harder to move than normally. Owen brought a bale of hay like he always does, but they were rather bored with the old hay and much more interested in the new grass. They stopped for a quick bite.

Geri even painted light fixtures!

The leaves slowly, slowly coming along.

Wednesday night was the girl's band and chorus concert. They had a large cheering section, so they were quite proud.

Aunt Livie and Cara (Tori's roommate in Cheyenne) got here during the concert, so much rejoicing afterward

Uncle Cody made sure they would not forget the experience and yelled each of their names as they walked off the stage. Blushing and acting embarrassed, they were really pleased as punch that everyone was there. 

Friends walking back to the car together.

After we left mom and dad's that night, there may have been monopoly games until 2 AM. I have zero regrets of leaving before that transpired. (I hate monopoly with a passion. Particularly with certain of my family members. *Cody*-cough!)

Hanging up the lights in the barn

Pigeons hanging out in the rafters

Thursday afternoon, we went on a foraging trip. Tori had requested that all flowers used in her wedding would be from the farm. She had hopes of apple blossoms and/or lilacs. She even delayed her wedding by a week to be sure of something. 

But the late spring meant there was nothing blooming. Or at least not apple blossoms and lilacs. So we started getting creative.

Ashley is terribly creative and thought of using weeping willow branches in some arrangements.

So we happily agreed to carry things.

Cara and I decided to get some marsh marigolds. Tori loves them and we wanted to use them, but we weren't sure how long they would last in water. So we picked some to see!

Aren't they a ridiculously cheery flower?

Cara grew up in New Mexico, so she said her days of going out to pick wildflowers were rather non-existent. So she made up for it by picking a terrific bunch of flowers. 

Heading home over the hills

Friday was a wet, wet day. Miserable wet. There was definitely some concern over this picture. But fortunately, it was not leaking from the roof, but just blowing in the door. Still it did not look particularly pleasant for a wedding. 

So people mostly stayed inside to work. Eileen (Tori's mother-in-law) had baked the cake on Thursday and Friday, they assembled it. Monty (Tori's father-in-law) cut dowels and Justin stacked it. The dowels were pushed through the cake to rest on the cake board under each layer to help support the next layer. Then Justin crumb coated the entire thing to keep it from drying out. 

Thursday night, after gospel meeting, They had bought a new trashcan and they used this as a cake saver so no one would knock into it, get dust on it, or eat it. 

Friday afternoon, we took another foraging trip into the woods this time. We walked past gamboling calves. (I love the world gamboling, but there isn't a lot of places you can use it in regular conversation. Without getting weird looks anyway.)

Owen is on the tail end of calving season, but there is still a lot of checking and rechecking and making sure the calves are doing well. 

Wet baby maple leaves

We got a huge branch of pin cherry, which was the only blooming tree we could see. 

The girls and JoAnna were making the maple syrup wedding favors.

The guys were out supervising the new gravel. Owen was driving back and forth over it after Cody leveled it with the skidsteer. 

Finally it was determined to be sufficiently packed in.

This was something I had really wanted to make for Tori. A little woodland scene kind of thing with several of the tiny woodland flowers that Tori wouldn't have the time to go visit but loves. 

Spring beauties, dutchmen's breeches, wild violets, moss, ferns (even a fiddlehead fern which Ashley had been looking for all spring. And I just dug it up willy-nilly.)

Some more marsh marigolds

I ran home to take the dogs out for a quick ramble, and stopped to admire all the marsh marigolds by our creek.

I also scored this branch, but I am still not entirely sure what it is. 

That afternoon, Justin started to decorate the cake.

Back to back they faced each other

Scott put up some pallets to make things safer. And surprisingly, the kids really, really liked the large quantity of soda cans and minimal supervision about how many they took. 

Sigh.

Setting things up

Watching proceedings

Lily and Abilene enjoyed the kids singing Karaoke on the PA system Evan set up. 

Gilbert coerced Cara to play a few games of ping-pong with him. 

See the fresh wood in the floor? Those were all the places the floor was very sketchy. Anthony patched it all up, good as new. 

Livie arranged the flowers over the altar or arch. There was impassioned discussion about what this area should be called. No definitive conclusion was reached.

Whatever you call it, Livie decorated it up. 

Starting to look wedding-y!

See the cool cow skull Amanda decorated over the entrance? 

All that rain had the benefit of giving the kids a lot of mud puddles to play in. I think we averaged four outfit changes per day. 

Isn't it pretty?

Friday night, Anthony busted out the cauldron (or kettle) and made some pop corn and kettle corn.

We went upstairs for some after dinner ping pong

It was a fun time.

New York and Wyoming going head to head.