Verdant Ventura (and the shining sea!)

I am with my family. Musing upon why it seems different being with people who share one's genes, and concluding that it just depends which genes they share ... I am particularly lucky in having a really lovely bunch of relatives. Feel so welcomed and loved here.
So the picture shows some of them: auntie Elsie, the only remaining sibling of my father, with her son Jerry (my cousin) and his family, wife Linda, son Mark, his wife Krista holding the tiny great-granddaughter of Elsie, Dannika, and extreme right my cousin Joanne's step-daughter, Jessica (and me too, clever camera technique there!). We are in Mark & Krista's house. Their son Garrick, just three years old, was having his nap...
We miss the two other chidren of Jerry & Linda, Jeff and Mandy ... they were sampling beer in San Diego.

A lovely shot of my wonderful aunt, aged 93, her son Jerry (four years younger than me) and his wife Linda, who runs a flourishing buisness in Ventura.
They moved several years ago into a newish apartment in the old part of Ventura, near the city hall and some of the old missions (one dating back to 1782 (?maybe 92?). It commands a magnificent view down across the red-tiled rooftops (shades of Italy and Spain) to the sandy beach where the foamy rollers break upon the shore. Today it is a little hazy in the distance but most impressive. The white sails of a handful of dinghies speed over the distant sea.
Here a shot taken from the Amtrak on the way down the coast from San Luis Obispo to Ventura.

And here a slightly fuzzy one of me, with cousin Nomi and her friend Kurt, taken in Santa Cruz on our last evening there.