Hi everone!

Welcome to our new family blog! Its like a cyber family reunion and I will be bringing the virtual potato salad.

Essentially this is a very simple website that we can use to keep in touch. We can write long letters, short comments, invitations, updates and best of all, pictures. Lots and lots of pictures...we just have to figure out how. I like this better than myspace because it is more specific to our family and we don't have to worry about creepy myspacers doing whatever it is that creepy myspacers do. No spam, no strangers, no corporate affiliations (except Google), and, uh, no Tom. Who is he anyway?

So here's how this will work. Everyone will log in under the same username. This will allow all of us to post blogs. This isn't like a chatroom; not all of us can be logged in at the same time. Traditionally blogs are only used by one person and automatically signed. Ours will be signed "family member." Since more than one of us will be using this blog, we will have to remember to sign all of our own blogs. So it looks pretty easy once you sign in. Hit post blog or some such button and write whatever you would like. I would just like to add that I want everyone to feel comfortable writing whatever they would like on here. We are all family anyway. Just a reminder though, this blog can be viewed by anybody. It probably won't be viewed by many, but it can.

So here is the essential information that we all need to know to get on here.

USERNAME: familyetcetera
PASSWORD: "maya's middle name" (we can change this later if need be)
URL: www.familyetc.blogspot.com

So to get things started I am going to try to post and image. I am doing this by clicking on the little blue image button in the upper left-hand corner of the post box. Here goes.



This is what I look like right now. Wow! what a slice of life. I have on my jammies and my little office is messy.

Ok that was fun.

Now another.



Those guys are my roomates--marcus, hank, and robbie. I'm not sure if robbie had actually seen a computer before.

Thes pictures were taken with the little camera that's in my computer screen. One of these days I will get a digital camera and you will be able to see lots of other boring photos.

So, I hope everyone is happy about this. An important aspect of this blog is that it is not mine. I started it for all of us, so we all have creative control of it and can make it what we want. It is a collective and that is what makes it so super cool.
Good luck and if you have any questions, please let me know.

Love,
Maya