Pre-view of OV-105 Endeavour

Again, it's been almost another month since I last posted, lives have been extremely busy for us recently. This morning we found time to attend the members preview of Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center. We got there at 9am and we went through the whole show in about 2 hours, we watched the film of Endeavour's last space mission and the transportation of Endeavour from Florida to the California Science Center, touched the actual wheels, saw the actual toilet and many mechanical components of the Shuttle, the girls were totally amazed by this giant space orbiter! It was an eye opening experience for us too!

Relatives visit from Shanghai!

It's been almost a month now since I last posted something here, it's been a hectic month!
Last Saturday we have relatives visiting from Shanghai. My uncle, auntie & cousin Jiahao's family came to Southern California. They are spending 12 day here visiting Southern & Northern California. The family stayed three nights at our house, done a lot of shopping at the Camarillo outlets on Sunday. We let them use our van and this morning they took off and headed to Northern California. They will be visiting the coastal towns, Monterey Bay, San Francisco, Sacramento, Yosemite, Mono Lake, Orange County and San Diego in a week and half. They will return to our house next Wednesday night and head back to Shanghai on Thursday.

It was so great to see my uncle, auntie and cousin Jiahao's family. Last time when I saw my cousin was 30 years ago during my trip to Ma-an-shan with three of my college classmates!

Erica turns 9 today!

Our dear Erica turns 9 today! Today is Labor Day, Erica's buddy Rachel spent a night at our house last night. We went to Garden Cafe at Arcadia and met up with Bonnie & Danny's family for lunch. After lunch, we went to Santa Anita mall together. The girls did some shopping and we had afternoon snack at the McDonald's. Erica had a very relaxing birthday...

A day at Soak City!

The extended summer camp at YMCA ended last Friday, school will start next Wednesday. We both took today off and took the girls to Soak City water park in Buena Park. As usual, we stopped by Alhambra for breakfast. It's around noon when we entered the water park. Since it's Monday, the park was not too packed, the wait time for each attraction was only about 15 minutes. The girls favorite place was the Tidal Wave Bay! We left the park at around 4pm and went back to Alhambra for dinner and grocery shopping before heading back home.

A fun day at the Pine Mountain Club!

Our friend Beverly and Greg recently purchased a cabin in Pine Mountain Club California, they go up to the mountain and spend every weekend over there. Last week Beverly told us that there was a new property across her house listed for sale, we got the contact number of her realtor Judy Kaiser and made an appointment with her today so that she can show us some properties over there. It took us an hour and half to get there from our house in Newbury Park. We got there at around 10:30am and they just about to start their Fall Festival at the village center, there was a small parade and a lot of street vendors... Judy showed us 7 properties in a little over an hour, we have decided to go to the last one Judy showed us which is a very nice cabin located across Beverly's house, it's a short sale house and we made an offer and signed all paper work, we will get a pre-qualification letter from the bank on Tuesday and will fax to Judy to start the process. We plan to visit the area again in the next two weeks, Beverly will take us to the club house and tour the village center.

After we were done with the realtor, we went to visit Beverly and Greg, then they took us to visit their friend Lori & Mark. Lori & Mark has a large house near the golf course, they invited us to stay for BBQ dinner, we left at around 9:30pm and got home at 11pm.

Late afternoon picnic at the Conejo Community Park

It's been at least 3 years since we last went to the Conejo Community Park. Dudee & Chen's family invited four families to a potluck picnic gathering at the Conejo Community Park this afternoon. It's a great way to wind down after a busy weekend. The girls all brought their bikes and grown ups brought lots of food and drinks. The weather was perfect and everybody stayed till around 7:30pm before leaving the park.

Girls at the ranch in Moorpark

We were invited to go to the ranch where our co-worker Carol worked as a ranch manager! It was such a great experience for the girls to see how a ranch looks like. There are lots of horses and Carol showed the girls how to ride the horse and how to give the horse a bath! Both girls had a fun time riding on the back of a huge horse and walk around the rink!