wyoming wedding

Oh, my.  We have some catching up to do.

First.  Father's Day.  We spent that weekend camping, swimming and partying--all in honor of witnessing two of our good friends become husband and wife.

They did it Wyoming style.

[At the wedding, most folks took hay-wagon tractor rides to the ceremony site, but some of us accompanied the groom and walked the 2 1/2 miles.  For a while, I nursed Juniper while walking down the dirt road.  I felt all Oregon Trail about the whole thing and thought maybe I deserve that Little House on the Prairie dress after all.]    

:: We hadn't seen many of our long-time friends since before Juniper was born and when we first convened for the weekend, my good friend M (whose wristwatch alarm is set at 7 a.m. so she will never, EVER forget to take her birth control pill) looked at me and shook her head and said, "Gretchen, I just can't get over the fact that you have a baby on your hip."  I said I know, it's okay, I'd be weirded out too.

We all camped out on the bride's parent's property and at one point K stopped and said, "I wonder what we would have thought of ourselves if, nine years ago, we could have seen ourselves today."  Probably, we wouldn't have believed it.  A random collection of summer seasonal employees remaining friends all this time.  The computer science major from Texas, now growing his hair long and married to the wilderness.  The swears-like-a-sailor trail crew foreman now raising her two beautiful children.  That fisheries biologist with the handsome smile hooking up with the freckled wilderness ranger, getting married, having a baby.  Who would have guessed?    

:: The days prior to the ceremony, we hung out with cousin Owen and parents...

Juniper vied for O's short attention...

We swam...

Speculated on the trajectory of storms...

Ate our first fistful of dirt (much more preferable to applesauce)...

Spent our first nights in a real backpacking tent (even though we were car camping)...

And in the debris of the morning after, said our goodbyes, noted that we were running out of weddings, speculated on more baby showers, agreed that we would soon have to find other "excuses" to rendezvous.