Keith & Jenny - Week Twelve

We returned from Emily & Grant's wedding at midnight on Sunday.  Due to the husband's recent job change to design engineer, he was able to work from home the following day and gain two hours of sleep.  Lucky bastard.

In addition to my week being bookended with trips to South Dakota, I also had to drive down to Greenville midweek for a conference.  You can imagine my excitement...

I flew into Rapid City on Friday.  While waiting for my mother to arrive, I hopped the shuttle to downtown and crashed a friend's workplace to drop off my stuff for a five mile run.  It seems Rapid City and Tech are trying to go all cosmopolitan.  Everywhere there were new parks and trendy businesses.  The campus has lots of new buildings.  It's actually trying to turn into a real school college...

That night we attended a pre-wedding barbecue at my uncle & aunt's house.  We arrived early and got to witness the madness of three young children and three yappy dogs rampaging the house.

After awhile guests started arriving.  There were a few distinctive groups.  Their families and local friends...and then there were the liberal coastie friends.  Oh, boy.  Believing in gay marriage and women's reproductive choices makes me no die-hard conservative, but it seems like the people that really love to talk politics under any circumstances are the liberals.  Perhaps they can't imagine how anyone couldn't share their opinions...but that was the case and they annoyed me.

I did a fifteen mile long run the next morning, ending up at my uncle's house across town.  My mother was there scavenging lunch from the leftovers.  On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Spearfish Creek.  I'd run beside it quite awhile and had been practically day-dreaming of soaking my feet in it.  The water was ice-cold and felt awesome on my feet, for the 30 seconds or so that I could stand to have them in there at a time.

Jenny's entrance to the ceremony

The ceremony was at Roughlock Falls in Spearfish Canyon.  It was a very short and nice ceremony.  Right in the middle of it, Kristen's two sons went running off into the woods and she had to go after them.  As this was Keith's second marriage, the phrase when something went wrong was "we've seen him get married before."

Reading from "The Velveteen Rabbit"

Ceremony

Kristin rounding up her boys from the woods.

After the ceremony, the bride & groom and quite a few others rode bikes down the canyon to the reception at the Snapper's Club in Spearfish Campground.  We elected instead to ride with my cousin Kristin as she roared past the bikers (who weren't moving over) with horn blaring.  We were on a mission to retrieve the rhubarb slush and bring it to the reception.

Keith & Jenny bike

The reception was fun.  The food was interesting and for dessert Keith & Jenny cut pie instead of cake and had quite a selection of flavors to try.

Couple's first dance

As is normally the case, the ones having the most fun at the reception were the children.  They were boogeying, hiding under tables, playing with the drink containers, dancing on chairs and basically running amok.  Kristen's youngest was also very determined to drink our alcoholic rhubarb slush.  My mother probably took it away from him at least four times.

Josephine (Keith's daughter) dancing at the reception

Drink coolers providing lots of entertainment...

I flew home bright and early the next morning and hung out in the airport with the husband for an hour or so while waiting for him to board his flight to Alabama for business.