We visited Kelly's dad Bart and step mother Maggie in Auburn and while there we also saw Uncle Jimmy.

Bart and Maggie live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada's where gold was discovered in 1848. It's a beautiful area - with many of the country charms you would find in Vermont.

On Thursday night Grandpa Bart, Glenn, Ian and Jonan went to the movies and Maggie and Kelly had a women's night out with Darby and Hannah in Grass Valley.

Grass Valley has many Vermontesque shops - lots of local artisans, delicious local food, farmer's market and incredible live local musicians playing in the blocked off streets. We even ate ice cream at a local shop that rivaled Ben and Jerry's - the ice cream bars were out of this world.

The best part though was spending time with family - grandpa took the boys golfing, we went to the local beach with Maggie one day, Maggie and Bart took us and the boys crawdad fishing one night, and we ate the most delicious vegetarian meals all week!

It helped to have deliciously comfy beds and our very own suite with a back porch. We will definitely be returning again soon!

On Friday we went up to Coloma to Sutters mill where John Marshall first found gold in California and tried a little gold panning.

We were interested to learn that the Gold Rush is very much the reason for California's blossoming and is an interesting aspect of California's history. After Gold was discovered people came from all over the world to seek their fortune in California. Before that, there was a small population of people (mostly men) who came as pioneers, and of course California was still part of Mexico just before the Gold Rush as well.

Another thing we learned was that in 1848 the population in California was still dominated by Native Americans - 300,000 lived in California, and that in the rugged Sierra Nevada foothills where gold was discovered land was still occupied primarily by Native Americans who had lived on the land for thousands of years.

As happened in most places in the United States, the Native population was decimated, but not destroyed by disease, war, and the United States taking land through broken treaties and creating laws which ignored the natives and their history here.

Native Americans did survive this sad chapter in their history though and the Native population in California is back up to 300,000 in California. However, as we explained to our boys, we as U.S. citizens still have a long way to go to make amends for our behavior during the age of our ancestors exploration, discovery, conquest, and establishment of the United States.

During this trip, Glenn and I have been pointing out to the boys where Native populations still exist throughout this country and help them understand that we share the land with Native Americans both as citizens of the United States and as our neighbors on Independent Native American reservations/nations throughout this grand country we are so blessed to live in.