This is the extra stuff we brought home from our road trip that got jam packed into our already full car. That chair has actually been sitting at my MIL’s house for a year and a half now. I saw it for sale on a blog based near San Antonio, so I emailed to find out if they could drop it off in San Antonio (or meet my MIL somewhere to make the exchange), the seller happily obliged. It was $25 and a happy color, so I thought that was a pretty good deal.
We’ve done some tiny house fixing up since we’ve been home. Knobs are up in the kitchen now and we’ve got some new curtains hung, but once everything is settled, there will be a house tour. Promise. Until then, I still have a couple lights fixtures to buy and add.
This post is sponsored by Dreyer’s/Edy’s® Slow Churned Light Ice Cream: all the taste of regular ice cream, but with half the fat and 1/3 fewer calories. Now that’s a reason to smile. Give a smile here.
Road trips definitely make me smile.
Whew! After 10 days of being gone, we are finally home safe and sound. Road trips are fun, but definitely intense. Though based on the number of smiles I got from my girls while trekking along, it was definitely all worth it. There were 3 major stops on the agenda (Abernathy, San Antonio, and South Texas) and over 4,000 miles now added to our car.
We really love road trips. The thought of planning another brings a smile to my face and gets me excited! Flying with all the kids can rack up some bucks quick, so getting in the car and going is pretty much our MO. This was the first time with all 4 and it wasn’t bad at all. I think the girls do really well on road trips. There were just 2 fights between the big girls, though there were several tantrums from #3. I think it’s just that when it comes to nap time, Soul doesn’t know what to do with herself, so she kind of combusts. And the baby, well, she did fantastic! Ben and I take turns driving, we had our special road trip playlist, so we did a whole lot of singing and I did a whole lot of dancing. Not to mention, I just love seeing all the different terrains we pass and simply admiring how beautiful nature is. All of these things combined make for lots of good memories and lots of smiles.
So tell me, what has been making you smile lately?
Not only did we get to see the town and farms of Abernathy, but we also got to spend time on a ranch in South Texas. I guess we were pretty much were all over Texas. The annual Castilleja Family Reunion, his mom’s side of the family, was at Ben’s cousin’s ranch and it was a pretty amazing place. During our drive in North Texas and in South Texas, we would talk about how nice it would be to have a house on some land where your neighbor can’t peer straight into your house to see all your business. This is kind of a funny thing because when Ben’s dad passed, he left us some land (Ben shared it with his sister and his aunt) in North Texas that we sold and was pretty much the only reason we were able to ever buy anything in Southern California, so the fact that we talk about wanting land in Texas is kind of ironic. For now, we will just keep the wide open space dreaming conversations happening every time we drive through Texas. I think Ben and I are such homebodies and pretty much do all our shopping online that we could pretty much move to the middle of nowhere.
The reunion was so much fun and it was especially wonderful to see the girls running around everywhere and playing with their cousins. They don’t have any cousins here, so it is so great that they were able to spend time to with some over there. In addition to little cousins, there were horses, chickens, roosters, cats (and kittens), dogs (and puppies), oh and lots of mosquitos (I look like a spotted leopard now). There were family meals, games, hay rides, horse rides, auctions, picture taking, swimming, eating again, and basically just a whole lot of family bonding. The fun this past weekend was pretty endless.
Ben’s cousin and her husband, the owners of the ranch, would tell us all about ranch life and particularly the horses and we really loved hearing all the stories. We really just love hearing stories. You could tell they were so proud of this place they have built and the beautiful family along with it. We were in such awe at all of it. It is also evident that a lot, I mean a whole lot, of hard work goes into maintaining it, but it’s what they love, so it makes it all worth it.
I am so happy that we were able to go to the reunion this year, especially since the last time we went was 10 years ago when we barely started dating. I would look at my girls throughout the day and smile because they were having so much fun being free and spending time with animals. Well, True and Brave were, but Soul doesn’t care about animals so much, at least not yet. When we first got the email that the reunion was on the ranch, Ben and I knew we had to go because the girls would be all about it… and boy were we right!
Abernathy is a small town in North Texas and there is a family there that makes this particular town quite special… the King family. Ben’s dad passed away a year before we got married, therefore he never ever met his grandchildren. We tell the girls stories about their grandfather and show them pictures from time to time, but it just isn’t the same. Besides Ben, his mom, and sister, his father is survived by his sister and her family.
The last time we had visited Abernathy was the summer that his father passed away. Since the girls never got a chance to get to know their grandfather, we wanted to make sure they would get to know his family and so when we were planning our summer road trip, we made sure Abernathy was on our road map. It had been 8 years since we had seen any of them, so it was definitely about time!
We met everyone at the town pharmacy, which is run by Ben’s cousins Mark and Laurie. Laurie knew exactly what the girls liked and had the perfect gifts waiting for them. Anyone who gives them My Little Pony is pretty unforgettable in their book. We chatted a bit, then had lunch at a little restaurant down the street, then went back to the pharmacy to spend more time together.
It was really cute to see the girls with them. There is part of them in my girls and I think that bond is really special. Family is just really special. Besides seeing the girls with their Grandma Mayna, Grandpa JD, Aunt Laurie, and Uncle Mark, Ben and I really enjoyed spending time with them and hearing old stories. I love hearing old stories.
One of my favorite things of the visit was seeing how cute Aunt Mayna and Uncle JD were with each other. It was a playful sarcasm and teasing, but you can definitely see how they have grown to love and appreciate each other through the years. And Aunt Mayna kept raving about how good Uncle JD is with this or that and that reminded me of how I am a bit biased with Ben and that I think he is best at everything too.
They live on a farm so we also loved hearing the farm stories. At 78, Uncle JD still tends the cattle and there is pretty much no such thing as retiring. Ben and I have dreams of a farm, but we can only imagine the real intense work that goes into having one and we don’t think we are ready for that. It sounds ideal, but really to have one there is a lot of labor and love that is involved. Having a farm isn’t for the faint of heart or fickle minded for sure. Maybe we’ll stick to dreams of a blueberry farm or maybe a tomato farm, we get better at tomatoes every year after all.
We were only a few short hours in Abernathy, but there are for sure plans to go back. We are so glad to reconnect with them and can’t wait for all of us to spend more time together. Life is busy and family who live faraway can easily get forgotten, but it is important to always stay connected. Ben and I will both be working on that. We both tend to be bad at that.
Dear King family, Thank you for sharing your afternoon with us and we love you guys and hope to see you again soon! Love, the CA Bratchers.
– Ordered this bathing suit for our trip to Palm Springs, but it didn’t come in time. Nevertheless, I still love it, it fits great, hides that bit of mom belly I have, and can’t wait to wear it to the beach.
– Excited because floor tearing up and putting in gets started the end of this week. Who wants to have a party and trash our carpet?!!
Got lots to do at home this weekend. Ben goes back to work on Monday. I have giveaways coming too, so check back!
Yeah. I know. There’s a million pictures here (and a video), okay, not a million, but you know what I mean. It was just too fun and too pretty of a race to not share a grip load of pictures, so here you go and tons more here. The video was made by my friend Lance who was our team leader. He’s an athletic dude who runs at least one race a month.
If there’s a Color Run coming to a city near you, do it. Seriously. It’s a pretty happy place to be. I think it pretty well beat out Disneyland for the happiest place in Orange County last Sunday. I felt cheated because it didn’t feel like much of a 5k at all. We ran the whole time and when we were done, it went by so fast and we were having a blast that we didn’t want it to end. Really though, half of the people we passed by as we were running, weren’t running, so I don’t think you need to run to be part of this.
Next year, Ben is going to fast walk this (he’s got bad knees from playing sports when he was younger) and True and Brave are going to join in for sure. Brave had fun dancing with the crowds at the end. I think this kind of thing is right up her alley. It was really like a big, giant party and everyone was so excited. There was dancing and a whole lot of color and I think those things make a great combination.
I must say that in the car, on the way to the race, I was pee in my pants nervous. I was really afraid I might. This was my first race and I didn’t know what to expect. My sister and I ran this with a team and Ben’s cousin was on the team too. Most of the others on the team, we just met for the first time on Sunday and they were a pretty rad team to be with. Our team name was Color Me Radd.
I think The Color Run makes me expect all 5k’s to be this fun and I have a feeling they aren’t. I do want to do the Foam Fest coming up in May, if our family calendar is clear that day. Anyone in SoCal want to join that with me? We might be running this as a team again. And now I want to do a 10k and work my way to a half marathon. There’s a half marathon in October and I’m contemplating joining. Not sure though, 13 miles is a lot of miles. Would love to do a marathon, but that’s like running from my house to my mom’s house and not sure if I could do it. We’ll see. I’ll take it slow, but I think The Color Run was a good place to start. Heck, I’m even thinking of joining the Zombie Run in October, but that makes me really scared. Zombies chasing me?!! Oh my! Lance already started a team for that. I tell you, he’s hardcore when it comes to this race stuff.
Anyone else do the color run or have plans to do one near you? It really is bomb dot com.
p.s. to rinse the color off, take an ice cold shower. like as cold as you can take it and you will have no problems. and yes, i am wearing my tumbleweeds handcrafted sunglasses.
p.p.s. foam fest is may 26th in temecula. if you are thinking of joining, let me know! it’s on sale here.
I have a large growing pile of fabric scraps. I refuse to throw them away because I am sure they can be used for something. I have been seeing different types of interesting necklaces made of buttons, beads, and fabric. Then, I figured why not make one out of my scraps...
I think it made my white shirt a little less boring. This was so quick and easy to make.
How to make a recycled scraps necklace (which is very similar to the straps on my braided tablecloth bag):
1. Take your scrap fabric, I cut a .5''-1'' snip and tear the rest of the fabric down for a nice frayed edge. Used 3 different fabrics for each strand.
2. Take 3 of the torn pieces and tie the ends together with a rubber band.
3. Braid the 3 pieces together and tie ends together with rubber band when done.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 for more strands. Remember you can make the strands any length you want, if run out of fabric, just weave more into the braid.
5. Once all the strands you want are braided, gather one end of each strand together and straight stitch together with sewing machine. Repeat for the other ends of the strands. Snip off any excess.
6. Gather ends of the necklace and sew together (snip excess) or a ribbon can be sewn at the ends to be able to tie the necklace closed, but I just sewed both ends together.
7. Voila! A nice way to make use of all your lovely scraps.
Sorry if the directions get you a little lost, but it really is easy. I promise. Maybe I should put some in the shop. Please share any other good ideas you may have of things that can be made with scraps. I would love to hear (read) them!
