Cooke City Montana

We are currently on our mini honeymoon, starting in Cooke City Montana. Cooke City is near the northeast entrance to Yellowstone Park, and is the city with the highest elevation in Montana at 7200 feet. Given that, it is actually still very cold here and is SNOWING as we speak! This is actually pretty typical for a high mountain town, but for those of you from non-western locations, it is probably hard to imagine! We have a quaint room at a local lodge and will be heading to Yellowstone and Jackson Wyoming tomorrow. Given our remote location we also don't have any cell phone service either, although there is some internet. We saw a grizzly on our way to Cooke City too!
Right now we are off to explore the local stores here in Cooke City.

We Are Married!

The day finally arrived! We had our wedding yesterday and it was a really nice day. We had expected rain and were surprised when we had fairly decent weather. Which meant we were able to get a few photos outside of the mountains. The ceremony was at the Red Lodge Golf Course.
The morning started with the women getting our hair done and the men decorating the reception site. We then all met up at the ceremony site (which we were able to decorate the day before) and ate a bite of lunch before we all got dressed and ready. It was kind of a whirlwind of photos and getting ready from that point on until the ceremony.
The ceremony was a very special, meaningful celebration for us. We feel like it went well and was exactly how we envisioned it. Since we had around 40 people at the wedding, it was small, relaxed, and intimate.
We then took a few more pictures and headed to the reception at Bridge Creek Restaurant. The reception was a fun time with food, cake, drinks, and family/friends. The men did a great job decorating! The food was really good too.
Overall, we are very happy with how everything turned out! Thank you for all of those who attended.

48 hours to go!

Chris and I made it to Red Lodge after spending some time in Cody first. We have been doing a lot of last minute details. Although it is a bit hectic, we are looking forward to the wedding. For those of you attending the wedding, we are staying at the Pollard in downtown Red Lodge.
The ceremony is at 3pm at the Red Lodge Golf Course. The reception will follow at Bridge Creek Wine and Kitchen.
This has been a great year and we are excited the time has finally come!

Making our way West...

After two long days of driving, we arrived in St. Cloud, Minnesota. We have spent the last few days visiting Adrienne and Steve and securing an apartment for our permanent move here at the end of June. We have enjoyed the visit and found a nice apartment. We also stopped in at the college where we will both be teaching next year. This was Chris' first time in Minnesota and "the Cloud" so it was good to see everything. We also are thankful to Adrienne and Steve for their generous hospitality and help in this process. This is a picture of our future apartment. The wedding is very soon, we are excited!

On our way!

We are heading west! The wedding is fast approaching, less than two weeks and we are ready to hit the road! We are driving from Pennsylvania with a stop in Minnesota to find a place to live. We are mostly ready for the wedding, just the last minute details once we get to Montana. I am all done with my job at Juniata College as well, so it is an exciting time!
For those of you coming from out of town for the wedding, we recommend packing layers as it was still snowing in Red Lodge this week. The weather in the mountains can vary quite a bit this time of year, anywhere from snow to sunny and warm. It is unlikely to be overly hot though. We will see you very soon!

"House-Cooling" and Wedding Shindig!

Since a number of people we know in Pennsylvania are unable to make it to our wedding, and we are moving in June, we decided to have a get together at our house this weekend to celebrate. We had a nice turnout and enjoyed visiting with everyone. It was also fun to see people from the various circles of people we know like those at Penn State and Juniata. It was a nice time!

Senator John Kerry!

Funny story... Chris and I met at a John Kerry campaign event during the summer of 2004, when Kerry was running for president. Chris attended the event because his friend was hosting the party, I went because I wanted to meet more people in State College. It obviously worked out!

So when we were working on sending out our wedding invitations, we decided to send John Kerry an invitation to see if he would respond. We enclosed a brief letter describing our story. We weren't sure if we would get a response, but today in the mail we received a card from his office. I was sure that it would only be a simple form letter, but instead we received a personalized note directly from the senator, hand written, signed and everything!

In case you can't read it on the picture, he wrote "I'm delighted my campaign brought you together and I appreciate the invitation enormously. Celebrate well and come say hello one day! All the best."

I was telling Chris we should save it and in 50 years take it to the Antique's Roadshow and see how much it is worth! It was fun to receive it today.