This past month...

Well, not much really exciting has gone on with Mandee and Camshaft the last month or so. We have been very busy with the wedding planning and family and such.

Things are slowly shaping up. Most of the planning is done now. We have a place to live in Clearfield and have the honeymoon pretty much all planned.

We've had a few chances to go do stuff during all of this madness though. The Gateway has been a frequent hangout for us in recent weeks (we even saw Mehmet Okur there (starts for the Utah Jazz)). Last Saturday we also went to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden.

So sorry for the lack of updates. I'm sure we'll have a ton to tell come October.

And the Rest...

The rest of our trip up to Washington was mostly concentrated on us getting ready for the wedding in Ogden in October.

Tuesday, with the help of Mandee's mom and her sister Chelle, we pretty much got the photos for our wedding invitation taken care of. This is one that we aren't planning on using, but gives you a good idea:


We also spent some time going through Mandee's boxes of stuff and did some shopping for some gifts and souveniers.

Thursday, we made a brief trip to Mukilteo Beach. We had originally wanted to go to some forts on the islands, but the ferry was having some troubles that day, so we spent the afternoon at the beach and lighthouse.

But it was a great trip. Both Mandee and Camshaft had a blast and enjoyed spending as much time together as they did.

Road Trip Part 4

Monday was our excursion into Canada, Victoria to be exact. Unknowlingly, we had happened upon the 150th Anniversary Celebration of the province of British Columbia. It was super busy and crowded, with people everywhere.

The ferry ride over was pleasant, and we spotted both seals and porpoises.

In Victoria itself, we mostly walked around and took in the sites. As we arrived, there was a boat show, with tugboats floating together in formation.


We then headed over to Chinatown. What we saw was pretty cool, but it seems like the Chinatown has shrunk over the years, as the Chinese have become more integrated.


After some more wandering and site seeing, we ended up at an English-style pub called the Sticky Wicket and had a late lunch there, heading back over to Washington on a converted passenger ship.

Road Trip Part 3

Sunday consisted mostly of us doing the regular Sunday activities, then getting on the road and staying the night in Port Angeles.



Port Angeles was a quiet little town that is on the north end of the Olympic Penninsula. It seems to get a fair amount of traffic from Victoria and ships coming down from Alaska. The evening ended up being fairly laid back. We wandered around the port area and watched the ships coming in through the mist and the minnows jumping in the shallow water around the docks. There had also been a sand sculpture contest around the town, which was cool to see.



All in all, a pretty laid back day. We went to bed early to get ready for our adventure into Canada the next day.

Road Trip Part 2

Today we visited the lovely city of Seattle where we visited the old World's Fair remnants around the Space Needle and then took the monorail down to Pike's Place Market.





Pike's Place Market is an awesome place for anyone who likes food. There are shops selling food from about any country you can think of. We tried teriyaki chicken, potstickers, Chinese pork buns, mini-donuts, and Reinier cherries. Cameron ate some spicy salmon sushi, but no one else dared try it. There's also all sorts of exotic produce and flower shops among the little restaraunts.

Road Trip Part 1

So right now we are in the midst of another trip up to the Seattle area, this time with Mandee's whole family for a week. Our first day, last Friday, the 1st of August, mainly consisted of us travelling up to Seattle in Chelle's awesome car. We made stops at Shoshone Falls and Snoqualmie Falls. We took a couple of pictures:





Shoshone Falls





Snoqualmie Falls

The trip was very long. We did a lot of chatting, listening to music, snoozing, and playing our Nintendo DSs. Chelle snapped a couple of pictures of us doing the latter:



Day 1. Stay tuned for Day 2

The Proposal

So, several people have asked about the proposal story, so here goes. It is actually quite humorous, we think.

So after shopping and buying a ring, Camshaft was trying to think of a memorable way to propose.

Incidentally, for any of you locals, don't go to Cassar Jewelry in the Newgate Mall. Talk about hard salesman!! Our goal was to go to a bunch of stores, have Mandee pick out her favorite ring at each store, and then decide which one from all the stores she liked best. So Mandee picked out a ring there that was marked at $3700. Well, that's when the show started. We kept telling the guy that we were shopping around and weren't ready to make a decision that night, but he kept trying to talk us into it and kept lowering the price.

When it got down to $3000, he called for the manager, and the manager started on the same thing. He had us go out into the mall to talk about it, ring in hand, and kept telling Camshaft that if he didn't buy it then and there that Mandee would be upset with him. Well, after the talk, we decided that we really didn't like the ring that much and told the manager. But he kept going. Pretty soon it was down to $2500 plus a Bahamas cruise! We still didn't crack, and left the store. We ended up getting a ring that we both really liked at Farr's.

So back to the story. Camshaft debated rather to propose at the fireworks in Logan or the fireworks at Rommer Park in Washington Terrace. He eventually decided on Rommer park, because he figured that since Logan was so busy the 3rd of July and Rommer so peaceful on the 4th, he would wait 'til the 4th. Just the opposite turned out to be true...

We found a lovely spot in Logan, far away from everyone, close to the stadium, and had a large piece of grass left all to ourselves. Camshaft kicked h imself mentally all night. Rommer ended up being a disaster.

So we sit down in a semi-isolated spot in Rommer park. We aren't there for 10 minutes when a family, complete with crying babies and a mountainload of kids, sets their blanket down like 2 feet away from us. So Camshaft decides he has to move. No sooner do we do that, when some yokel parks his truck RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, completely obscuring our view of the fireworks. So we move again, our view of the fireworks unobstructed. But it's like the whole park just turns into a madhouse. Kids biking and rollerblading. Babies crying. Fire and police driving by. And the people... they were driving in and shining lights onto the crowd continually throughout the display and literally 15 minutes after the fireworks had ended. A romantic moment just wasn't to be had.

But eventually, the madness stopped and most of the people left. We had a nice view of Riverdale and the surrounding communities, some of which were still shooting off fireworks into the distance. We finally had some peace and Camshaft popped the question.



TLDR version: Mandee said yes and we're scheduled to get married the 3rd of October.