The Steussy Ranch

The guests will start arriving in a couple of days. Click below to see who is coming!

Dan and Hongli have been friends for well over a decade now. They run a highly successful company handling Chinese translations, as well as import-export and manufacturing in China. Dan speaks fluent Mandarin. Hongli was his teacher when they met on his first trip to China. Dan also collects wine and plays a hot game of World of Warcraft (ask about his level 80 character).

Dan and Hongli have two very cute kids, Carina (almost 2 now) and Angelina (4 and a half now).

Andrew and Anikó are a Hungarian couple living in Los Angeles. Andrew has been running a construction business for years in the region and owns property around Long Beach. Anikó is a professional headhunter. Their “Game Over” wedding this summer was a high point of the year, click here to see the pictures of the official wedding shirts and cake.

Alex is our cousin and a junior at Occidental College in Los Angeles. She’s had quite a geographically mixed education, including a gap year in San Antonio, a year studying in Indianapolis and a summer in Wisconsin working on an organic farm. Next year, she will be studying in Argentina.

My brother, Chris will be coming from San Diego. He is a high school teacher, teaching an incredibly advanced course in twentieth century history. He blogs about it here.

Chris’ wife, Norma, is an accomplished artist in San Diego, creating some amazing one-of-kind, shock-your-eyes-out furniture pieces. They’re really terrific, and she has a show in San Diego early next year. With her is the newest member of their family, Solana, who is just over one year old now.

Bella is Chris’ and Norma’s eldest child, just turning ten soon (double digits!). In addition to being a serious soccer player, she’s also a fan of Harry Potter (is it four times now, or five?). When I start a conversation with her, I’m always surprised how insightful and mature she is.

Calvin Steussy is a jock; no doubt about it. I watched him play soccer over the summer and if you were playing on the other team, look out! This is one seriously aggressive soccer player. Also plays Sid Meier’s Civilization, one of my favorite games of all time.

Bonnie, David and Brook are our mystery guests. I don’t know them very well. Bonnie is a distant cousin (we share the same great-grandfather), but is one of the few Steussy’s in the world who share our last name. They are in town visiting their brother, Buzz Steussy, in Palm Springs and will stop by once or twice during our festivities. Bonnie runs a pre-school in the Seattle area, David works for Microsoft and Brook is teaching at a liberal synagogue pre-school in Berkeley. We’re very much looking forward to meeting them for the first time this week!

We, the Steussy family of Temecula—Ed, Gabi, Dan-dan, Camilla, Aaron and Veronica—are looking forward to hosting all of you next week! By the way, if I messed up your name, photo or information, let me know and I’ll correct it immediately.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 am and is filed under Thanksgiving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.