Lilly gets married!

On August 31, 2008, my old college friend Lilly Wang (aka volleyballer extraordinaire) wed a really great guy, Johnny Kim. He's been with Lilly through the toughest of times and we were absolutely thrilled to be there at their celeration!

Me (6 months) and Dave waiting for the ceremony to start With our good friend, Gary!
The Newlyweds
Us and the Beautiful Bride

Congratulations, Lilly and Johnny!

Triathlete in training...

Dave decided during the winter that he was going to do the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon in August. Charlene's husband, Chris, had participated a couple years ago and the boys decided that they would compete together. (Unfortunately, several months later, Chris had hurt his knee and was unable to compete)

So, in February, Dave started training by biking, swimming at our local LA Fitness, and jogging. He rapidly built up his pace (and sloughed off some of the excess gained during med school and residency!).... He also found a few "trainers" at work, Mike Devereaux and Becky Gonzales. Becky was once a hard-core triathlete (now she's "retired" but still wins competitions, like the Camp Pendleton Mud Run - in fatigues, in her age division), mountain-biker (she was ranked 4th in California the one year she competed), and all around uber-athlete. Mike is an extremely athletic physician who regularly runs and bikes long distances. Mike and Becky would drag Dave to go mountain biking or biking at Mission Trails. Mike even invited Dave to ride a century one weekend with 2 days notice. Crazy Dave said yes...

They also swam La Jolla Cove (sometimes throwing in a run afterwards)

Becky, Mike, and Dave

On the 4th of July, they ran a 15K (I ran the 5K for 2 - 4 months in utero)
Dave finishing
Mike, Becky, me, Dave, John

They continued these activities throughout the summer, mixing up and combining different activities... It was a great way to make training fun for Dave!

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On the big day, August 9th, Dave was super nervous. We arrived at Camp Pendleton extremely early and was one of the first people there.

Waiting in line to check-in


Getting his swim cap

Check out Dave's awesome position in the transition area! The benefits of showing up early.
Later on, when it got full. Unfortunately, the spectator area was high up on the cliffs. We were not allowed access to the transition area or beach, which was annoying.
Dave's somewhere down there

Our other cheerleaders, Mike and Becky. Too bad I didn't get a good pic of them wearing their bright orange leis and pompoms. Mike was our official photographer of the day. He had an awesome new super-zoom camera that he was playing with. Whenever we get the pics, I'll be sure to post them up!

So overall, I think Dave did great! He was a bit disappointed in his time though (TYPICAL. First triathlon, and he had crazy expectations!). The swim ended up being much harder than anticipated. The waves were huge! Apparently, when Dave's wave went out, they spent a good many minutes waiting for a lull in the waves to get in the water. We noticed some people would try to swim out, and then a huge wave would crash into them and pull them back to shore. In Dave's case, some guy in front of him got knocked by a wave and Dave ended up getting smacked in the face with the guy's foot. So that put a bit of a damper on his swimming time which we had hoped to be very good. For the biking, Dave's little computer died in the middle! He is a very strong biker, and realized at the end of his bike ride that he had a lot of energy left. He was upset since he could've used that energy to easily cut a good amount of minutes from the biking portion. Dave's run was very strong. He even sprinted at the end! Usually, he's too exhausted to do that... but it was a nice impressive finish!

Good job, Dave! I'm so proud of you..

(Crazy boy thinks that the best way for me to lose the pregnancy weight next year is to do the Sprint Tri next year. Eek!)

Baby Liu

Surprise!

Sorry for the delay... we've been keeping this news fairly hush hush over the summer. Part of it was, well, we were shy. And the rest, well, we did our Vow Renewal and wanted it to be a surprise for our close friends and family!

So finally, here are some pics to share with you of the ever growing Baby Liu and the complementary expanding belly o' mine....

13 weeks (6/17/08)

19 weeks (7/29/08)

23 weeks (8/24/08, heading off to kayak in La Jolla)

24 weeks (8/30/08, hiking Black Mountain)

(8/31/08, taking crazy shots at Lilly's wedding!)

How do I blog again?

Hello all... It's been a while, sorry for being MIA. A ton has happened since January and there was no time to update this sucker as posting pictures just takes WAY TOO LONG and I've been too tired....

Some happenings since January...

Dave and I flew to NYC in May. Picked up Coco in from West Hartford, CT, and drove him cross country to his new home in San Diego in a Prius. We made the trip in 4 days. With a fun stop in Moab, Utah, exploring Arches National Park and Slickrock. Oh, and hit a snowstorm in Colorado, and drove through handfuls of big storms with lightning.

Dave decided to do the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon in August. He started training for it in February/March and got rid of most of the padding that was generated during med school and residency. He did great (although he was disappointed. no big surprise.) and looks great! Pics to come...

We decided to *finally* have our Vow Renewal "Wedding" Event. Sometime in March, we decided to look around at venues and thought, hey, maybe we can/will actually do it this year? We thought the Birch Aquarium would be the perfect spot as we're such fish freaks, but then decided we would do it if dates around our anniversary time were open (knowing that lots of people book their venues at least a year in advance). We first thought of August 31st as we considered that our "the day we started dating" anniversary. Unfortunately, the Aquarium was quasi-booked. We then checked September 6th, our "real" anniversary (the day we got married in 2002). Someone had put the date on hold, but turned out, they didn't want it. Hence, the crazy planning for the event began! The past 6 months has been a whirlwind of planning and ... I don't know! It's all a blur now!... But we had our event and it was beautiful, wonderful, and great! So wonderful to have old friends and family in town. Dave and I are still reliving the moments. Pics to come of that as well. Here's the nifty website that we made: melissandave.weddingannouncer.com.

And another big announcement... Shortly after putting down our deposits for the Birch Aquarium (and already purchasing a dress for the event), we discovered... WE'RE PREGNANT! Blog about that will go up shortly.

So it's been an exciting 2008 so far... Good times.