We came home from our anniversary road trip still in the mood to celebrate, so we wanted a sweet wine to sip outside in our yard together. We didn’t have any on hand, so I tried to figure out if we could make a drink using things we already had. Limes, check. Mint, check. I check our stash of liquor (most of it is from when we used to make drinks when we were dating, so it’s real old), and we had rum (and a lot of vodka). Based on what we had, mojitos is what I set out to make.

I used this recipe, then thought I wouldn’t be able to make it because we didn’t have club soda, but surprisingly, we did! I have no experience making mixed drinks, but I think it came out pretty good. It’s basically limeade with rum, so can’t mess that up too much, right?! Ben’s a bartending school drop out (he only went to one week of two and never went back), so he didn’t have much to say if I did it right or not, and he thought it was good too. We ended our celebrating by sitting in our backyard together, exchanging our homemade cards for each other, while munching on chips and pico de gallo, and sipping on mojitos. As fun it is to stay in nice hotels and go on little adventures, there’s still no place like home (and of course being together there too!)

We flew to San Antonio, Texas to drop off the girls, and then we did a mini road back home. Typically, when we go home from SA, we do the whole drive in one shot. We leave at 5am (TX time) and we get home around midnight (CA time). It’s a really long day, but we are just so anxious to get home, we get it done. This time though, since we were traveling without the girls, we thought it would be fun to take our time and make some stops. And since it was just a few weeks before our anniversary, we agreed to make this a mini anniversary trip and then do another mini road trip the weekend of our actual wedding anniversary. You put all the days together and we had a nice week together.

It was so strange to fly in to San Antonio and then leave the very next morning towards home. We basically said “hi” and “bye” to Ben’s mom and sister. From San Antonio, the drive to Marfa was a little over 6 hours. It would have been a little less, but we hit a really bad storm and had to drive super slowly because of the low visibility. Marfa is a small, peaceful town in the middle of nowhere. It’s known for the Marfa Lights, which we weren’t able to see, and some of their art installations like Prada Marfa. When we arrived, the weather was amazing. Several months back when we were considering a move to Texas, Ben looked up the Texas city with the best weather and Alpine, Texas was the winner. Considering Alpine is right next to Marfa, it makes sense why Marfa also had beautiful weather and wasn’t suffering from the sweltering heat like most of Texas. Or maybe we just happened to come at a really good time!

A few weeks prior to our trip, I looked at booking us a place to stay in Marfa, but everything was sold out. If I were going to stay there, El Cosmico looks fun and adventurous, or Hotel Paisano for a cozy ambience. Since we weren’t staying the night, we trekked on to Prada Marfa. It’s an art installation and not an actual store you can shop in. It’s about 30 minutes away from Marfa, and much closer to the city of Valentine.

I love the contrast of the faux storefront with the landscape. It really is in the middle of nowhere. It’s an interesting little stop should you find yourself driving through West Texas. We moved onward to Van Horn, which is where we booked a hotel for the night. I like historic hotels, and was interested in staying at Hotel El Capitan, but it was already sold out, so we ended up booking a random hotel through Hotwire. There’s still so much to share about all our stops, so get ready for a few more posts and loads of pictures!

The big girls have been gone almost 3 weeks now and we are all missing them a heck of a whole lot. It’s totally strange with just two here. The time has been good though… good for them to be able to make memories with their grandma, and wonderful for us to be able to give the youngest two more intentional time. These past few weeks, we’ve seen Soul show exhibit a stronger sense of responsibility and tenderness towards Glow. It’s interesting to see this transformation; it’s definitely an answered prayer. All four of them are always together, except the one day a week True and Brave go to school together, so it’s taken Soul and Glow some time to figure out how to navigate their days without their older sisters. There have been plenty of tea parties, Star Wars pretending, doll playing, and coloring.

As for me, I thought I would get more things done, but I feel like I’m not. I thought I would be blogging more, but that’s definitely not happening either. We do have their rooms cleaned and purged through, and both kid rooms got tiny makeovers. We have been adventuring out more because it’s easier to leave the house with two in tow instead of four. While I am thankful for this quieter season to enjoy my babies, I miss all the chaos of our family of six. We’ve have a few more weeks until we are reunited again, so until then, we will keep busy soaking up the summer fun with our littlest babies. That definitely means more trips to get ice cream, and no one’s going to be complaining about that.

on true: shirt, c/o zoe clothing. skirt, fab kids. sandals, c/o livie and luca. on brave: dress, homesewn (see here). sandals, c/o livie and luca. on soul: shirt, mightee kids. skirt, schoola. sandals c/o livie and luca. on glow: romper, c/o old navy. sandals, c/o livie and luca.

With the big girls out of town, we’ve been trying to be intentional in giving the little ones some of adventures of their own. Thus, we took them to go orange picking at a local farm. They loved wandering through the grove, and they took so much delight in using all their might to pull an orange off the branch. Ben was in la-la-land walking through looking for fruit, and the girls were happily following along to see what they could pull off next. We ended up coming home with a 5 pound bag of oranges, several padrino peppers (they are delicious, so now we want to grow them!), and lots of tomatoes (can’t ever say no to pretty tomatoes!). The four of us agree that an afternoon of fruit picking is definitely a good adventure!

That went by so fast! I guess time flies when you’re having fun, or in our case, popping out and raising four children. It really has been so great though, but also stressful, tiring, exhilarating, maddening, wonderful, surprising, frustrating, glorious, crazy, and the list of adjectives could go on and on. The biggest lesson I learned (and still learning) through these past 10 years of marriage… deny myself, take up the cross, and follow Jesus.

Cheers to 10 Benny! I love living out grace and gospel with you! 

Our tomatoes are booming. Every year over the last 8 years of growing tomatoes, we learn more and more about what does/doesn’t work. The 3 heat tolerant heirloom tomatoes we tried have been doing great! The other 3 are grafted tomato plants (2 varieties on a plant), but 2 out of 3 fizzled, so Ben pulled them (it’s the empty spot in the left bed). All the plants keep growing beyond the boundaries of the trellis, so we are going to have to figure out a way to keep it from flopping over. We’ve never had tomato plants grow this crazy before, but this is a problem we gladly welcome.

One plant is producing some pretty large tomatoes; it’s the biggest tomato we’ve ever had success growing! You can see how large it is next to the quarter, and then again right in front of Glow’s head. It weighed in at 1 pound 11 ounces!

I love tomato season! I always have a plate full of caprese salad ready to go. How are your tomatoes doing this summer?