Cameron's Adventures

This weekend, we went camping. Emma is now three months old and we thought it would be a perfect experience for her. The weather should hopefully not be too hot or too cold. Of course as any mother would be, I was worried that I would either not dress her up warm enough during the night, or dress her too warm. In the end, she was perfectly bundled up!

The camping trip was great. We went with two other families that both had infants. Sarah is one month older than Emma and Henry is one day. Here’s a picture of the three of them enjoying some afternoon awake time.

The camping trip started on Friday afternoon. Emma, Teika and I picked up Rory from work and drove for four plus hours to Keller Ferry Marina where we camped. The place was gorgeous as these pictures show. And our camp area was in a perfect location, right at the end with a spectacular view.

As we arrived around 8:00pm, Friday night was mainly spent setting up camp, putting Emma to sleep and chilling around the camp fire. Saturday morning came early as the day became bright by 4:00am and with an infant, that’s around the time for a feeding. Still, we got a few more hours of sleep and finally woke up for good around 8:00am.

The weather for Saturday was spectacular. It was very warm but we had water and plenty of shade to make it a perfect day.

As the day went by, we ate, swam and just had a lot of fun.

Baby Sarah

Baby Henry

Baby Emma

But as any awesome things go, we had to have a story. And ours started around 1:00am on Sunday morning… Both Rory and I woke up at exactly the same time, looking around our tent and seeing it move in all directions. Teika too was awake. The only one still sleeping was Emma. And that’s exactly how we wanted to keep it. Outside, the wind was blowing, blowing like it’s never blown before. Still I felt that it was really kind of romantic. Inside the tent was comfortable and really felt safe. However, we were in a somewhat lower area of the camping ground. Our friends were higher up and had a tougher time with the wind. Within minutes, Jeff came by and said they were packing up and leaving. We followed suite as the tent was not staked to the ground. By 2:30am, we were packed and on our way home.

In less than an hour we had packed our gear. Pretty good considering it was dark. But the drive home wasn’t peachy. The rain started pouring and it felt like buckets and buckets of water falling quickly from the sky. On top of that, we were tired. But Rory was an amazing trooper and drove pretty much all the way home. I got to take a quick nap and was able to drive the last hour home.

All in all, the weekend was great. And Emma did wonderful on the drive home. She just slept and slept. We will definitely go camping again.

Yesterday was Tania’s baby shower. Unlike most of the baby showers this had guys as the the majority of the guests. It was pretty fun to see boys involved in baby stuff. As Tania mentioned, she has more male friends than female friends. I too have had more guy friends than female, though now with baby Emma, I definitely am around girls a lot more. And I love it. Of course, Tania will be having a boy so I wonder if the male to female ratio of friends that she has will remain the same. Either way, the baby shower was great. The food was wonderful and friends had a chance to gather and celebrate a new life soon to join us in this world.

Tania, I took a lot of pictures of the food, the people and the decorations, but for some reason the camera claims not to have those photos… so the only ones that I do have are the ones when you opened the present. I’m bummed but hope you enjoy them nonetheless.

And of course baby Emma was present.

Congratulations Tania and Andrew! We can’t wait to meet the little one.

On Saturday afternoon, we had our friends Andy, Wendy and little Vienna Goodwin visit us. It was the first time that we had a little baby stay with us and the experience was great. Wendy is a great mother and little Vienna was mostly a happy baby. Of course she did not want to go to sleep when it was time to go and instead stayed up with us until 10:30pm. Here are some photos of beautiful Vienna.

Wendy and Andy, congratulations on your beautiful little baby girl!

Last night, Rory partook in a bicycle ride event that involved hooking up your Christmas tree to the bicycle and riding to Golden Gardens for a bon fire event. Quite a few people took part in this yearly tradition and this year Rory was one of them. On Thursday night, he worked on engineering a solution to carry our 8 foot Christmas tree on the back of his bike. The solution involved him drilling a whole into the tree and attaching a third wheel.

He then rode with Alex and Andrew, stopping in some places.

Here’s a video of their crazy but fun ride.

Until finally they reached the bon fire event.

Rory took all of these shots and one of the most surreal and interesting pictures is the one below. The woman being silhouetted is almost looking at the camera while all the other people are oblivious of the shot being taken. At the same time the sky above is glowing and the fire is dancing behind her.

Another great shot is below showing the skeleton of the tree as it is burning. It is almost a painful picture to look at.

On August 1st, 2009, Trevor and Crystal tied the knot. The wedding was beautiful and it took place in Everett at the Yacht Club overlooking the water and boats. Here are a few pictures from the rehearsal.

Two blond girls but not related playing with their dads:

The wedding party rehearsing:

Rory and the mothers:

Rehearsal Dinner:

Happy bride, groom and future father in law to be:

Yesterday was the 4th of July. As usual because we live so close to Gasworks park, we opted to stay home and invited a few friends over for BBQ and a relaxed time outside. The weather was spectacular. On Friday, Rory bought a smoker so that he would smoke ribs for the 4th of July. But before we did the ribs, he tested out the smoker with chicken.

Then on Friday, we put out the chairs on the deck, started the ribs in the Smoker and relaxed in the sun.

Friends arrived around 6ish and food was ready shortly after. We all enjoyed way to much to eat. There was only one child among us. His name is Jack and he’s almost 3 years old. It was amazing how much we were distracted by him and he was definitely the center of attention. At previous get together where there are no kids but there are dogs, they too take the center of attention. I remember clearly times when Jesse, Laurie, Rory and I would hang out and we would literally talk for our dogs. It’s really interesting to see how humans behave around kinds or dogs. But I diverge from the 4th of July event… As I was saying, a few friends came over and we had a fun time with a lot of food. Here are a few of the pictures.

To see all of the pictures from the celebration go to my SmugMug photo site.

Rory believes that a little Prosecco is the best drink to have with BBQ.

But as I mentioned, the star of the evening was Jack.

As the night came upon us, it was time to walk and see the fireworks. The streets were filled with people, sitting in chairs, sitting on the concrete, sitting anywhere they could and having a great time. It is one of my favorite days of the year as our neighborhood really comes to life.

Rory took a few pictures and this one is amazing. Little Jack is curiously looking ahead at the fireworks while his dad holds him proudly in his arms.

And the gang found a spot from which we enjoyed the great fireworks.

As I was sitting looking at the fireworks, in front of me I saw a cute couple that came with their bikes. This felt like a perfect photo opportunity

A few days ago, we decided to get a little fire pit for the patio. Rory assembled it and then we tried it out. It turned out that the wood we used was a bit wet and so we smoked out the neighborhood.

But a few days later, we had friends over for a BBQ and tried the fire pit again. This time with much more success.

Everyone was also having a lot of fun blowing bubbles.

For more photos from the even, check out my SmugMug site.

Today was an unbelievable day. We woke up and started riding on the motorcycle to our friend Todd’s place. We then went riding on the Chuckanut drive. I have not ridden the motorcycle since last summer so I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it. but we started out slow and with the beautiful weather, the ride was amazing.

But soon it got more challenging as we went on the freeway. It was my first time riding so fast and boy was it amazing. The wind was blowing at at 80 miles per hour one little wrong move and you’re done! But nothing like that happened. I did however, manage to break the rear brake and so we had to stop at a hardware store and find a screw.

After getting my break fixed, we continued on to Tayler’s landing but not before we took in the beautiful scenery.

After 200 miles of riding, the five haugs separated and enjoyed the rest of the day relaxing.

Over a month ago, Laurie’s brother wanted to print an Orchid on canvas for her. I decided since I never printed on canvas before that I’d try it out on my printer. It turned out gorgeous. So yesterday, after Laurie and Jesse came home from vacation we met up for dinner and I presented her with the present.

I think this was a successful present!

A few days ago, I went and visited my neighbor to see the four little baby chicks that he got for his two little girls. The girls were very cute showing me the chicks and the elder one was clearly the “mama” of the chicks. She was very knowledgable of the chicks and how to take care of them.

I was informed that in just a short time they will grow up and be fully grown chickens. It is amazing to think of how quickly adulthood happens in creatures all over the world. Live every day to the fullest as if it’s your last day!