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We arrived home earlier this evening after a great week-long vacation down on the Southern California coast. It really was a memorable vacation, the kind we will remember fondly for many reasons. Best of all, our good friends (I will call them 'the Funnies' since you can't spend 5 minutes w/ them w/o laughing!) were able to come with us and we all enjoyed the sights and times together. They also have 3 kids, pretty similar in ages to our own. I wrote about Grace briefly, almost a year ago now.

I'll fill in the details over the next few days, but the vacation was all about relaxing, fun, and family time. We spent quite a bit of time at the beach and the pool, two very full days at Disneyland and California Adventure, and we took in a California Angels game on Friday night. Here are a few pics...

Owen and Grace are best buds; they have a bond like no other. Here they are on the patio enjoying the weather while Owen gets a chuckle out of Grace wearing his hat.

We've got a ton of pics from Disneyland, but I think this one is my early favorite. This is the new submarine ride featuring Finding Nemo. I thought for sure Grant would not go down into the submarine, but he did! He was absolutely mesmerized the whole ride; this was one of only a few rides that he wanted to go back and do again.

It's funny because Grant was easily the least excited one of us to be there, but both of my pictures here are of him. I think I'm trying to convince myself that he actually enjoyed it. :)

This is a really cool "redwood park" in California Adventure - ropes, caves, slides, all kinds of cool stuff. I think this was probably his favorite time during the entire 2 days there - he was literally running up and down these rope bridges. I took a ton of pictures trying to capture the smile on his face, but this one seems to capture it best.

Down at the beach, the Funny boys and Cassidy spent a lot of time boogie boarding. Although it's a bit blurry, this was the best action shot I could come up with.

I spent most of my time on the beach with Owen and Grant. While I was trying to snap some pics of the boogie boarders, Owen went off by himself to dig around in the sand. I had to keep looking for him because he became almost completely camouflaged.

Here we are at the Angels game on Friday night. Grant and Grace didn't come (Julie Funny and Staci took them to Cheesecake Factory and they got a table right by the window to see the sunset during dinner, nice!) since they really would not have enjoyed it, so it was the 5 boys and Cassidy.

This was not only Owen's first baseball game, but it was my first trip to a park outside of our local teams' (Giants and A's) parks. Owen became the life of the party around the 5th inning; Zack and Cassidy are cracking up as he screams "Let's Go Angels!". If you look really close, you can see the cotton candy fuzz all over his mouth.