WEDDING DAY Part 1 - Prep!

After a whole 2 months of official planning, Ricky and I got married!
The day was PERFECT!
We couldn't have asked for better!

my veil with hairspray at our appointment at Rick's cousin's salon

Mom test fits my veil

Mom, me, Sarah, Janice and Renee

Our approach to Rick's families Century Farm where we grabbed a quick bite of party sub and finished getting ready

Our rings with our wedding invitation

our rings and wedding invitation with our parents' wedding pictures

our rings on our date

My maid of honor zips me in!

Mom and Sarah help me get dressed

Mom, Sarah and I

Mom and Sarah tying my bow

Mom adds some finishing touches

and puts me into her pearls

A wedding shoot wouldn't be complete with our Rollo!

Another shot of the farm!

Building our Bags Set!

Rick and I wanted a bags set for our wedding reception.  

Dad built me regulation frames and I've been working on painting them. We don't really have "colors" for our wedding, but Rick's shirt and Sarah and Mom's dresses are sort of teal-ish, so I went with that, and I thought yellow would be a nice contrasting color. Amazon didn't have regulation teal beanbags, or yellow that didn't look like yellow mustard, but Renee and Janice have more royal blue dresses and the gray was a close match so I went with those.  

I also painted hedgehogs on the beanbags - they needed some jazzing up. I also put T's on the back and am considering putting 5-15-15 on them too, but haven't made up my mind about that yet.

Birdwatching!

Ricky and I spent an entire day birdwatching! It's been forever since we've been able to do that!

Turtles are back!
This log was apparently the place to be 

Osprey!

I was really excited to see wood flowers blooming. They make everything more cheery.

We sent our flowers field guide home, so I don't have names for most of the flowers. I'll update next time I'm home to look them up.

Black-capped Chickadee

This is probably the prettiest bluebird picture I've ever taken. It was SO EXCITING to get both the male and female in the same shot!

The rare and elusive White-tailed Deer.

This cardinal was SO BRIGHT!

We heard his tell-tale "who-cooks-for-you" long before we flushed him from his hollow tree. But then we HAD to find him!

He watched us Very Carefully!

We never get tired of seeing these Barred Owls!

Pink Dutchman's Britches!

A whole line of Tree Swallows - and a Barn Swallow on the far right

Ring-billed Ducks!

Ring-billed Ducks - we saw a LOT of these today!

I thought I was taking a picture of Ring-billed Ducks,
but then I spotted the raccoon behind them!

The Raccoon swims to shore

A whole tree full of blackbirds

Wedding Plans Underway!

According to every wedding website I've read, it takes 6+ months to plan a wedding.
Rick's decided the rest of the world is just inefficient as it's taken "us" (used loosely) just under a week to book everything except a florist and rings.
Which I'm working on, hopefully today I'll have the florist taken care of, and rings involves dragging Rick to a jewelers, which he's afraid of. Which is ridiculous.

But in any case, I'm excited to say Invitations Are In The Mail and our wedding website www.weddingwire.com/rickerintelsrow is up and running!

I wanted an "engagement photo" to put on our invitation, but because we planned everything so quickly we didn't have time to book a professional, so we went out to the Iowa Arboretum to take our own!

I looked like a nutter running back and forth to the tripod, but they turned out really well!

Hawk Spotting around the Iowa Arboretum

Rick likes to stalk Larry Dau's smugmug page, partly becuase he takes INCREDIBLE pictures, and mostly because he takes incredible pictures in OUR AREA.
So this morning Rick discovered Larry had found Rough Legged Hawks near the Iowa Arboretum (and a little screech owl), so off we went.

We never found the owl. But we got some great hawk pictures!

A red-tailed hawk with- something unidentifiable - and a murder of crows waiting for him to finish so they can eat the leftovers.

This guy, according to our Sibley Field Guide, is a Harlan's hawk - a subspecies of the red-tailed hawk! We were SO EXCITED to see this, though we're still out on wether or not it counts towards our life list. Still, 1st sighting!

The Harlan's Hawk taking off!

Rough Legged Hawk - 1st sighting! Thanks Larry Dau :)
Our life-list is now officially at 177 birds positively identified!

Rough Legged Hawk taking off

A Black-capped Chickadee at the Iowa Arboretum

Female Downy at the Iowa Arboretum

Rough Legged Hawk

Rough Legged Hawk

A 3rd-4th year juvenile Bald Eagle, identified by the eye stripe.  Bald eagles don't reach maturity or gain their white heads and tails until they're about 5 years old.