A surprise 'vacation'.....

I moved to Abq on the 22nd of May, had been to our ward only twice, when on a Saturday afternoon, when we were minding our own business, Micah got a voicemail and frantic email that his wife needed to call the bishopric. Well, thinking they probably wanted us to speak tomorrow, but wondering why they didn’t just ask Micah, I called the counselor back. Brother Dickerson said they’d been looking for someone to go to Girls’ Camp, but that they had just possibly found someone. That gave me a great opportunity to look like the good guy and say “if you need anything else, just let me know!” Sure enough, 10 minutes later, I get a call back asking me to go. I guess they had asked the other lady, although it wasn’t very practical for her to go, but they were desperate. As he started explaining, I realized that camp was THAT week...as in 2 days’ notice to leave for a week! Of course I said sure...and as I realized it was that week, I was bummed because Micah’s birthday was Friday, and I wouldn’t get home until Saturday morning. Fortunately, the YW pres was going up for the last night, and the bishopric was coming for dinner that night, so I left the YW pres in charge and was able to plan a ride home with the Bishopric members.
Naturally, cell phones did NOT work up there so we didn’t get to talk at all that week. The week went well: we only had 1st and 2nd years and they were both with the Stake Leaders for certification for 3-4 hours blocks in the morning and afternoon. (I wish someone had told me that-I would have brought some books!) There was a little bit of drama at the end of the week, but you can’t really expect 9 girls all to be best friends. After a week together 24/7 there’s going to be some 3rd wheels, so I wouldn’t really count it as anything but natural. Luckily, Friday I discovered the emergency phone in the nurse’s office and I had a calling card, so I was able to talk to Micah and tell him I’d be home that night...but really late. I made it home for his 26th birthday...the last 19 minutes of it!

These are my girls! Anna, on the left, was our pyro! Thank goodness, or else we would have frozen at nights!

We were way up in a meadow in the middle of these mountains. The meadow was full of mole hills, just like in the cartoons! You can kind of see in this picture. I thought it was WAY cool.

A prank by the 4th years! Someone dragged this deer leg back froma hike...
Most of the girls: Brianne, LeeAnn, Marissa, Chloe, Halei & Anna
One of the hikes that we went on. It was this HUGE beautiful meadow in the middle of the wooded mountains, like in the Sound of Music!
A few interesting things about this 'thing/event/occurance/adventure':

1) I find it interesting that callings within our family tend to overlap. Lisa and Nicole were both YW basketball coaches this year. Lisa and I were both called to Girls' Camp. I believe that both Bryce and Nicole were in nursery at some point this past year. And wasn't Jamie just called to be a clerk....like Cris is? Micah and I were just called to boyscouts, like Mom and Laree! Now we just get to use everyone else's ideas. It's great to all be in it together!

2) I thought getting married would end Micah and I's long distance relationship. However, within the first month of marriage, we spent TWO weeks apart: 1 week with his business trip right after the honeymoon, and another week for girls' camp. Plus, the 2nd month, he had 2 more littler business trips! I guess life carries on, despite a wedding!

As sad as I was to leave him on his birthday, it was a good opportunity to break into the ward. Everyone thinks we're the greatest already just for going to camp, as newlyweds and new ward members. Now that we've been called to scouts, we already know 3 of the 4 families in the program!

Honeymooners

I'll just warn you now that we are not one of those couples that blew thousands to visit tropical islands and all that stuff....maybe someday, but not this time. However, we LOVED where we went and thought it was beautiful and we had fun and found little adventures and great scenery everywhere we did go. We spent the weekend in Auburn, MA to kind of split up the driving a little bit. You can't really tell from this picture, but to the left, the Inn is on a little lake. Micah LOVES skipping rocks and we went hiking on our first date and were skipping rocks into a stream there...and we ventured out through the brush one evening and skipped rocks in the lake for a while. Micah almost threw one to the other side!

We had decided to spend our week in the Adirondacks, which is a few hours west of Boston. Our uncle and his family treated us to a few nights at this resort up in that area on Lake George. He handpicked us a room that was at the end of the resort, looking right over the lake. It was beautiful! It’s called the Sagamore and is on an island on the edge of the lake, and was originally built as an exclusive resort 100 years ago and looks like the mansion in the Great Gatsby or something of that type. It’s been restored a few times and is still quite exclusive. We started playing tennis there and have been playing since then! We raced each other in the pool and loved the spa.

downtown on the pier in Bolton Landing, NY
The Sagamore grounds


A little side trip we went on one day from The Sagamore


After two days there, we went a little further up to Lake Placid, and found some beautiful stops along the drive.

This was the cutest little house that's just on the other side of the stream behind us.

Mom always talks about fiddleheads....says they used to eat them? So this one's for you, mom!

We just drove around a corner and saw this beautiful thing! It's named Chapel Lake.

The Olympics of 1980 and also sometime in the 30’s were held in Lake Placid. We were surprised how small the town was, and the venues were nothing like the impressive ones we’re seeing in Beijing! We didn’t even realize it, but we were driving by the old skating rink and stopped in....I think we were just trying to find a bathroom, and realized that this was the year and place that the Miracle on Ice took place (US amateur hockey players beat the USSR pros 4-3, an unheard of feat). So of course, we had to go rent the movie, Miracle, and the local lady that ran the rental place had some great advice of where to go stay. It was absolutely Micah’s favorite place-this little setup of individual cabins, with a kitchen and dining area even!

Our adorable little cabin

For some reason, I thought that I'd be too tall and block something in the picture, so I was leaning over....Silly Katy

Look at me- I've got 4 hands!!

The next day we went hiking....

And we even made it up to the North Pole!

So on this particular hike, (in the following pictures) which wasn't really all that scenic until this beautiful end, has a story to go with it. So we are pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, and the head of this trail is about a 20 minute drive from our 'cabin', we get no phone service, it's a few hours from sundown when we started the hike, and we don't know anyone or anything in this neck of the woods. With that said.... so halfway through the hike, we switch, and Micah carries the backpack and I carry the jackets. As he hands me his jacket, I notice that his pockets are unzipped...so I check them to make sure nothing has fallen out; guess what's missing!!?? Yup, you guessed it. The car keys...and to make it worse, to a RENTAL CAR!!! Well, I didn't really panic, but I got nervous when I remembered Micah taking off his jacket earlier on the hike and swinging it over his shoulder. I had this image of keys and whatnot flying out of his pocket and getting flung far off the trail into underbrush. Micah's response: 'well, let's finish the hike.' At that point, nothing to lose, except a little daylight, so we might as well enjoy the falls in daylight. We marked the path where we realized the keys were missing and then kept going. We run into some Europeans on the trail and they say if they see our keys, they'll put them on top of our car. Now, who's idea that was, I don't remember, because if they are nice enough to not run off with our car, anyone that sees the keys sitting right on top of a brand new car might think that they've won the door prize for the day. We reached the beautiful falls, then turned around and went back for the last hour or 2 of daylight. Once we reached the point we'd marked, Micah looked to one side and I looked to the other, and were not making any progress. In the last 5 minutes of the hike, we find a pen in the middle of the trail that had been in his pocket, but nothing else around. A few steps later, Micah steps right over a snake in the middle of the path, without even noticing! (that made me realize that maybe his eyesight is not so keen and maybe we'd have to relook at his side of the trail :O) And of course, he had fun poking the snake and trying to get it to hiss, once i pointed it out to him. Boys will be boys, no matter the age!! Well, we're really close to the parking lot, but first there's a lookout over the lake, and the sun is going down, so it's beautiful and Micah, as if there is nothing unusual about this hike, wants to get some photos there. We stop and take a few minutes to figure out the auto setting, and multi burst setting, and spend about 15 minutes trying to get the perfect pictures of us with the lake and sunset-ish in the back ground. (I must admit, those are some of our favorite pictures, so I'm glad we took them!) Well, by this point, I'm not worried either...the worst that could happen is that we're locked out of our car, the ranger station is closed for the night and we have to sleep under our car to stay warm and keep safe from large animals that could eat us!??! As we finally get to the parking lot, no signs of keys on the car, or under the car or anything. Micah's still showing no signs of anxiety, as I walk to the driver's side and open the door right up we were both surprised and relieved to realize that the keys are in the ignition of an unlocked car!!! Micah never forgets that kind of stuff...he always puts keys and wallets in the same pocket every time!! Count our lucky stars! It was a fun little adventure....

This flower picture was taken for Mom and Laree...they like this kind of stuff! (plus, I'd never seen a flower like this!)

One of the sunset-ish pictures...Micah kept trying to tickle me and get me to fall off the fence (hence the funny faces)

A view of ski jumping left over from the Olympics that we caught on the way home. World athletes still train at some of these places, but the town is pretty weeny and kind of run down, surprisingly!

We were in Lake Placid on Wednesday and Thursday nights, then drove back home to Boston Friday night, to say a quick hi and bye to nicole and her family that had come all the way for the wedding. We spent the night at home, then on Saturday, we went up to a Bed and Breakfast in Gloucester. We saw IRON MAN there...but we missed the opening scene of the movie because we passed the theater twice because it was so small! The owner let us come back for the next showing instead because Micah didn't want to ruin the movie and see it without seeing the first few minutes...we even got them to give us fresh popcorn when we went in the next time! (we had already bought some for the first showing) We walked along the beach and found a monument that had the names of all the fisherman and sea men that had died since hundreds of years ago. There were thousands! The most recent names were from the 90's, and there's a movie about them: The Perfect Storm. No worries, we had stopped at Blockbuster and bought it before we got up there so we could watch it while we were there, too. I was hoping a huge thunderstorm would come through, but it never did. We hadn't planned on doing a movie tour, but it just kind of ended up that way! The Last of the Mohicans also is exactly where The Sagamore is, but we couldn't watch that one.

Rockport...SO New England! I'm glad we got a day by the beach

Sunday, we made it to Sacrament Meeting in Lynnfield....Brother Potvin spotted us and said "Hey, aren't you guys supposed to be on a honeymoon?" which is exactly what I had tried to avoid, but it was the closest ward and best time for us to go! We went back to home after that, but they have late church, so we went to Horn Pond (down in the center of town) and made some friends.

Micah LOVED the rhubarb pie and lemon ice cream mom made for dad's birthday when he came to town last year, and he always tells me I need to learn to make it. So for dinner that night, I asked mom if she'd have time to teach HIM to make one...not like we'll ever find rhubarb in our desert here, but for future reference.... Thanks mom!!

That pretty much was our honeymoon. Micah had to leave the next day for a business trip that orginally was going to be in PA and Boston, but they cut the Boston part out, so at the end of the week, we flew back to Abq separately and Micah was dressed up with a surprise for me at the airport!!

May 10: The BIG day!!!

There's not much to say, other than it was amazing!!!! What a lucky girl I am (and if Micah were ever writing on this thing, he'd say he's the luckiest man on the face of the earth...but since he's not here writing, I'll say it for him :O) I know everyone just wants to see pics, so I'll just post and post and post til the cows come home.... but before that, we want to say a big THANKS to everyone that traveled and rearranged their schedules to be there for our sealing or to help out in other ways. We realize how expensive or busy it can be, but it made our day extra special.

Walking out.... Jax was SO excited!!! (they're not camera shy!)

Our sealer, Bishop Chandler. The first bishop of our ward and also a primary teacher to nicole and I back in the day....

We put Aunt Beejay in charge of all the flowers and she did a GREAT job!!

(my roses are green, pretty cool, huh?)

Sammy and Daddy Lillrose

We had to practice this one ;o)

in-laws and out-laws and everything in between

ellen's signature shot

The shoes were a hit....photographers kept making me put my feet in the air and show them

Micah's favorite....I look a little chilled because it was, especially up on a hill in short sleeves with the wind blowing. (he says I just look excited)

one of my favorites....at least the birch trees look really cool!

the lillrose siblings, minus Cassandra, who's serving a mission in Toronto!

look at that cutie-pants!
I love this one of the sisters taking pictures!

Mom and Dad Lapi celebrating their half way point: 5 down, 5 to go!



We attempted GQ poses...but it didn't work.
AllyeB was a good friend and YW pres/basketball coach to most of us in the pic!

We each had a companion that surprised us and showed up!

Kenzie LOOOVES everything about weddings and was SO excited to have a little bouquet of her own, and even try on dresses with me and tell me which ones were 'not the right one' and which ones were. Her pick was this sweet 80's Cinderella style dress...couldn't have paid me to wear it! She was fun at the dress shops!!!

THE RECEPTION

The chapel has a beautiful lawn, with a stone wall and blossoming bushes that looks up to the temple and we were going to do a garden theme with lanterns and potted flowers and cast iron planters and it was going to be amazing....but of course, the weather didn't exactly cooperate, but family decorated inside and it looked great and was just as fun.

This was my absolute favorite! You can't really tell, but the glass is green, so the centerpieces had all of our wedding colors in it! I put Ren in charge of finding fish and this is what she came up with....
Mom made these for EVERYONE at the luncheon, plus ALL the cookies and candies and goodies for the reception. She is amazing!!!
Michelle Romano dipped dozens of strawberries for us...also in the wedding colors...thanks!!!!
Laree did the cake, with help from Sarah Bennett. Micah picked out the rhinestones...and the flowery backdrop was another of my favorites!
last, but NOT BY ANY MEANS LEAST, my sister Carrie made pink dresses and green ties and vests for ALL the nieces and nephews...even her own kids that couldn't be there! (her little boys were good sports and let her measure the girls' dresses on them)