Spent Tuesday - Saturday visiting and playing with Kelly's brother John and sister-in-law Candace and cousins - Ezra, Aiden, and Calen.

John and Candace live in Mission Viejo, CA which is thirty minutes from everything awesome in the universe. The beaches near Mission Viejo are incredibly beautiful - edged by cliffs with views of the Santa Ana mountains in the distance. Ian and Jonan were in absolute cousin heaven with Ezra, Aiden, and Calen playing in the waves, body surfing, digging in the sand and checking out tide pools in the rocks. Ian even found a baby star fish the size of a dime in one tide pool.

On Tuesday night John and Candace sat up late into the night helping us make a Disney land plan of attack and on Wednesday we took Ian and Jonan for their first ever Disney Land adventure.

We did experience the Disney magic, especially at the end for the Fantasmic show that was out of this world with special effects - even Glenn couldn't figure out how the witch turned into a 40 foot dragon that breathed fire that we could actually feel. Ian also officially completed his Jedi training at Disney, we all went on countless roller coasters and Disney theme rides, and left the park at 1am to ensure we would achieve the 'Disney Hangover' (as John and Candace call it) the next day.

On Friday John and Ezra accompanied us to Lego Land. For Lego lovers seeing the incredible Lego structures of New York City, Star Wars, San Fransisco, and beyond was jaw dropping. Ian was lucky to attend a Lego robotics workshop where he learned to program a robot that simulated taking 'bad cells' out of a human body. All the children also got to build lego race cars and test them on the tracks. The rides were fun as well, and the boys got to relax in X-box heaven when needed, and see 4-D lego shows as well. A very satisfying lego crazy boy experience.

We have now completed our obligatory amusement park experience and Ian and Jonan can never feel deprived and accuse us of raising them in a vegetarian, Zen, organic, crunchy, always trying to teach them something, BORING world when they grow up. The Story family is officially members of our societies popular culture now.

All that aside, as always, the biggest highlight of our trip was spending time with our California family, staying up late catching up with siblings, seeing ones siblings children blossoming and growing in wonderful ways, and watching the ease and comfort of cousin connections. We feel truly blessed and grateful to our family for hosting us and spending time with us on our epic California adventure. We only wish it wasn't such a loooooooong drive to visit.

We almost forgot that when leaving the OC we visited the famous La Brea tar pits in the middle of LA. The tar bubbles from methane gas and seeps out of the ground, capturing and preserving the bones of prehistoric creatures like Mammoths, giant sloths, and saber tooth tigers, which we learned are more accurately referred to as saber tooth cats. A large mammal would become stuck in a few inches of tar and attract predators that would then also become trapped in the tar.