4 v 4 Volleyball Tournament

Yesterday we spent another glorious day out in the sunshine playing in our second outdoor volleyball tournament. This time we teamed up with Fraser, a girl we met at the last tournament, and Daniel, a great undergrad who lives in our building for as 4 v 4 grass tournament. This tournament was significantly smaller than the first tournament with only 6 teams. In the morning we played games against all the other teams and came out in first place! We were feeling pretty confident about an easy trip to the finals after this strong showing, but I think we had worn ourselves out and lost early in the afternoon double-elimination tournament ... oh well, we'll have to wait for next time.

Berry Pies

The last couple of weekends Dan and I have been stumbling upon lots of ripe berries so I figured it was time I try making some berry pies. Last weekend I made a delicious peach-huckleberry pie which even had a lattice top and this past weekend I made a blackberry pie with a crumble top. Delicious ... I feel so domesticated :)

The Stanford Theater

Tonight we went with a group of graduate students to the old Stanford Theater in downtown Palo Alto to see My Fair Lady. This is an amazing old theater complete with an organ that rises out of the stage before the show and during intermission for entertainment. I had forgotten how much I loved the movie My Fair Lady and also enjoyed the experience of watching it in a full theater. Dan even found the movie funnier and less of a "chick-flick" than he remembered it.

Kat's first par!

Dan finally convinced me to take golf classes this summer so I've been hitting the driving range two days a week at 8am to hit 100+ balls. It has actually been a ton of fun and our teacher has been great - giving me lots of tips and drills since I'm not as advanced as the rest of the class. The Stanford golf course is beautiful and offers great rates for students ($13 vs $117 for non-students) so Dan and I have been going once a week for the last three weeks along with some other friends. Needless to say, my scores have been pretty horrible (112!!) but I figure I can only get better. Last night on the 17th hole ( a par-3) I finally got my first par ... yay! Let's see if next time I can get two pars ... and not so many double, triple, or quadruple bogeys.

TWO YEARS!

I can't believe it has already been two years since Dan and I got married. The time has definitely flown by. Unlike our first anniversary, I didn't have to go to a conference this year so we took some time to celebrate. On Thursday (the actual day of our anniversary) we went to the Melting Pot for an amazing (and huge) fondue dinner. We were there for over three hours as we enjoyed our cheese fondue, salad, wine, cooking a huge array of meats and veggies, and finally demolishing the chocolate fondue (complete with cheese cake, brownies, marshmallows, and fruit). This dinner for two is definitely big enough for three people but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Over the weekend we took a trip down to Monterey and Carmel to continue our celebration. On Saturday we started off the day with a trip to one of the frisbee golf courses at the University of California - Monterey. This frisbee golf course was awesome - set in a strange landscape of abandoned military buildings and athletic facilities with lots of challenging holes. After a quick picnic lunch we headed to the Monterey Acquarium. Although I have been here a couple of times since I was a kid this was Dan's first time. Despite the huge number of people (go on a weekday if you can...) we loved all the exhibits, especially the sea otters and the sea horses exhibit.
Sunday we continued our exploration of the Monterey peninsula with a loop around 17-mile drive through Carmel. This is a toll road that takes you by a ridiculous number of golf courses (including Pebble Beach), huge houses, and along the rocky coast. Although the coast was beautiful my favorite part was Huckleberry Hill where we found the bushes covered with tons of huckleberries. We stopped for about an hour and filled the tupperware container we had with us. We finished off the weekend with another round of frisbee golf at another course at UC-Monterey that was much smaller than the first but once again set amid a bunch of abandoned buildings (kind of strange as these buildings looked just fine and some still had remnants of furniture inside). On our way home we made a special trip through Gilroy so Dan could finish off the weekend with his favorite treat ... a Sonic slush drink ... a good end to a great weekend.