Yesterday was a big day... my brother Andrei flew in to LAX. That's his first time in America and I really want him to like it here which I'm hoping he would:) He'll be staying with us for now, what happens later, we'll see. It will take him a while to adjust even though he can speak English. But I'll do my best to help him settle and feel welcome.

My husband's family has a wonderful summer tradition. Every summer in mid-July they all get together at San Clemente Beach Park and camp out for a couple days. These summer family reunions are always a great opportunity to spend some time with relatives, catch up on everyone's lives; they are also a great excuse to take some time off work and just relax at the beach.

To many Americans Independence day is a highlight of the month of July. No matter how more or less devoted to their country people might consider themselves on this particular holiday everyone is quite a patriot. Given the privilege of living in this country, Steve and I did not miss our chance to join the nationwide celebration this year. We became a part of an all-American-style barbecue organized and hosted by our friends Katie and Jonathan. It was a wonderful evening that we spent with our friends. Although we had hoped it would also end with some cool fireworks. And I must say, I did not expect it to be so quiet.... we only saw a couple splashes in the sky. Oh well, we got it all made up to us once we came back home - firework shots wouldn't calm down till midnight! I suppose South Pasadena people thought it worthwhile 'blowing up' some extra money:):):)

Knott's Berry Farm... Sounds familiar? Not to everyone. This is an entertainment park, not as huge in size and popularity as Disneyland or Six Flags but it definitely has been around for more than two decades. I have heard people say, 'I haven't been here since I was 5!', and those were about 35-40 year-olds. Anyway, the experience was pretty awesome. Steve and I enjoyed 6 rides 2 or which were totally-crazy-fast-upside-down-kind which gave us both headaches when we were finally back on the ground:) But it was so much fun that it was worth both the wait in the long lines and the headaches afterwards:) However the best part was that we didn't have to pay neither for entrance and parking nor for the dinner - we got it all complimentary from Steve's work - 'yea!' to Samsung!

Looks like summer is really here, and it's not due to the weather... because it is pretty much always hot and sunny in this part of the world - that's the blessing and (to some) a curse of living in southern California. It is the activities and events, things you do and places you go that define summertime. All our weekends thoroughly planned with all kinds of fun events months ago are now finally being experienced one by one bringing us enormous amounts of enjoyment! Last Friday I got to see a baseball game, finally! For the first time in my life a real baseball game! And I was finally able to understand what baseball is about... it never seemed to make sense to me before why it's so popular watch one guy throw the ball and the other try hitting it with a 'stick' and missing it most of the time:) The Game was between Dodgers and Angels, the former won of course - hurray! It was pretty impressive, I have never seen that many people in one place before... all kinds of weird people... but I guess, sports fans are all a bit weird especially when they go to a game:) and the parking lot was probably bigger than the stadium itself, at least it took us longer to walk through it in search of our car than to walk around the stadium in search of our seats:)

I never thought that I would be doing this... never having been a fan of blogs myself. But I have seen other people do it and how great it works out for those who want to enable their friends to be a part of their lives without time consuming update emails and thousands of pictures that everyone wants to see! So, I'm opening our family blog now to share our thoughts, plans, events and photos. Now this is the first time I'm doing this and being a novice in blogging, as I move forward, I hope to learn more about how to improve this page and make it more interesting.