Yuliya and Tanya Came to Visit!

Last weekend (April 20-22) was such a blast! My best friend Tanya and sister Yuliya came to visit us!! I am so glad that they were able to come! When you put us three together, we will out-energize the energizer bunny.

Saturday:

We went to Venice Beach, which is about 30 minutes from home. We had sort of planned to go to Huntington or Malibu but those were about an hour to an hour and half away. Time being of the essence we decided to stick around closer. It's a pretty nice beach, not sure if for swimming, but for the sand and things to see it's very cool.

Here are my lovelies: How can you go to the beach and not take any pictures by palm trees?!

 And it has been officially deemed.... that I am horrible at taking action photos... I miss the action. I kid you not about 20+ shots later like these:

 

 

 I got this shot... Tanya didn't think I would be able to do it so she decided not to jump that time- and only that time-... and viola! now think... if they were both in the air....

Yuliya on the other hand is very good at taking action photos (she's good at pictures... period.) She got us in the air E-V-E-R-Y time.

The infamous hat picture when you walk down a boardwalk:

We met a cool family from Australia! Who came to vacation in Los Angeles, CA! hmm... out of all the choices. But they were definitely exploring- Disneyland, Universal Studios, Boardwalks, Museums, Etc. A very friendly bunch with really cool accents. And another cool thing about them was: they took a picture of the three of us in one shot; which is difficult to do- sort of. 

 After a few hours of enjoying the boardwalk and the beach we headed out to Hollywood & Highlands (Yuliya has never been and Tanya couldn't remember is she has or hasn't).

The entire time we were up here, my legs felt like they were going to tie into a knot. I realized that 3rd floor height is okay for me but when we get to the 4th... it starts tickling me! (the girls enjoyed looking over the ledge and I enjoyed the center of that floor)

Then!! After dinner we headed over to.............. where do you take your guests that have never been to your city?! DOWNTOWN.

Sunday:

Before we head out to church; we were waiting around....

Because of this:

Black car+ hard water+ warm weather= permanent spots in the clear coat... and being black... it will show. Very curious how our water sprinkler system works, because it got every side of the car...

After church, Anna and Mark were able to come out to lunch with us. Technically they took us to lunch, so we joined them. We went to a hidden place in Sherman Oaks/Beverly Hills- which serves Israeli food. mmmhmm. Shishkabob+ hummus+ rice+ pita bread.... We enjoyed talking over our meal for about 2.5 hours and we would have probably continued if the girls didn't have to head back up to Sacramento.

This was as close as we could get to get a picture with all 6 of us in it.... Yuliya was mentioning something about overlaying two pictures and making one... but I've yet to master the wonders of photo shop. But see: everyone was there!

 

Purple Ribbons & the Kings

Lately, I miss Sacramento. Maybe it's more like I FINALLY miss Sacramento. Up until last Saturday I never really thought about missing it. I miss knowing where the deals are, what is happening down the street, freeway, a few exits away, knowing what backstreets to take to avoid traffic, knowing who my doctor is, knowing what dentist to see, knowing that I will see my friends this weekend, and knowing that my family is within 10-15 minutes away. Even though we might have not seen each other every week it was still nice to be near, the distance apart makes it feel different, you miss even more. All the comfortable aspects of a home town I am finally realizing I have not really "learned" in this part of CA. BUT: I WILL LEARN :D. And most importantly I am meeting some pretty neat people around here.

Slowly but surely, things will make sense again and I won't have to try too hard to not look so lost. Here's a story of how things can get around here:

This past weekend, I decided to drive down the street to explore a thrift town, of course hoping to come across something interesting and worth buying. Well, that is yet to happen. I am not a very good, or good at all at thrift store shopping.

Anyhow, this isn't a story about thrift store shopping- it's about purple ribbon and the Kings.

source

While I was out and about exploring in this town of mine, I noticed many purple ribbons tied to trees, poles, door handles, trash bins, bike racks, and pretty much anything else that is stationary and can have a ribbon tied on it. It was pretty- I wasn't sure what the occasion was but I noted it. Then when I was standing in a very long check out line (unfortunately, not at the thrift store) I browsed through my Facebook on the phone and saw that some Los Angeles friends were rooting for the Kings! Yeah go Kings! And also, I had some Sacramento friends rooting for the Kings in their status updates... I thought it all to be a bit strange, purple ribbons in Burbank and L.A. people celebrating for the Kings along with the Sacramento people. Wasn't really putting the purple ribbons directly with Sacramento Kings... completely, but it really made the team come to mind. I came home to my most trusted source in these type of dilemmas, Vlad, and I shared with him my strange observations. He chuckled and told me none of those were related. So I went forward to friendly Google.

This is what I  found out:

-Purple Ribbons: Relay for Life Event (American Cancer Society)
-Los Angeles people are rooting for the Los Angeles Hockey team
[LA Kings... Wow that sounds strange to me]
-And Sacramento is talking about their Sacramento Basketball team

There... that's what all that was about. Even though I moved only 400 miles away, I deal with random nuances like these weekly. I can only imagine what people deal with when they move between states and even countries!

Goal for the week: not to get lost on the way to the grocery store (Tom Tom fails me every time I go to Jons on W. Glenoaks Blvd. ) I finally looked at a map and will take this into my own hands/logic- and maybe not get lost this week.