47 ADVENTURE-PACKED YEARS

Well, the little towns of  Marfa and Marathon, Texas would probably not have even crossed my mind were I to be thinking of ways to celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary. I mean, it's not as if either one of us would even consider hiking in Big Bend, right? In fact, I'm fairly certain my brain would not have wandered past going for a nice dinner somewhere close by. Nonetheless, Marathon is where we are going. Why do you think I call my hubby Adventure Boy?

John The Rat Hunter

Wow. Forty three years. Add to that the four years we dated before tying the knot, and that's one heckova adventure! I know I've shared the story of how we met here several times over the last ten years, but it's been quite a while since the last time, so here it is for you newbies. And, if you'd like to read about some of our most epic adventures, in those early days of marriage, just hop on over to Miss Becky Goes Abroad -- the blog where I recorded all the stories I could remember of our first three years of marriage, living in Indonesia on Java, and then in Bahrain, as well as another three years in Indonesia with our young kiddos, this time on the island of Sumatra. Just click on the square brown "Miss Becky Goes Abroad" button over there in the sidebar, to the right of this post.

John, just before he goes airborne and loses his innertube on an engineer's version of slip 'n slide.

You can hear about our adventures in the wilds of west Texas when we get back!

A TINY HOME COMMUNITY COMES TO WIMBERLEY

The Muses and I have long been enamored with the new ideas popping up for nursing home alternatives -- ingenious ideas for aging out. We especially like the ones where friends band together and each build their own small home on one piece of property. We know it's not the place to be when you can no longer do anything at all for yourself, but it could be a great way to maintain your privacy and dignity up until that point, while still having help at hand in those temporary times of need. Needless to say, when Spirit Woman said she had seen a flyer mentioning a place called Hummingbird Lane Tiny Home Community, right here on the edges of our little town, well, of course we had to go check it out. So, we sent a message to owner Rose Burke-Duncan, and she agreed to a meet-up.

We expected to get maybe 10 or 15 minutes of her time. Instead, she spent the entire morning with us!

This 12-acre property has four sites, two of them already occupied. Turns out, however, she owns more property in the same community, and when she finished showing us this one, she was kind enough to show us that as well.

This is where she built her own not-tiny-but-small rock house, every stone gathered by her from this property.

She will soon have this house rented out, as she recently remarried and they have nine kids between them, so they're going to need a bit more space when everyone gets together -- especially when the grandkids start coming! Not only did she offer us a peek into the house...

she also gave us a tour of her bountiful garden and orchard...

and sent us home with pockets full of peaches, as well as some great tales about her amazing, wild, adventurous life!

She's nearing completion on a tiny house for this property as well, which she plans to rent out. Could it be yours? Contact her at zenroze@gmail.com.

P.S. Did I mention that both of these properties are in a community with river access?

BIRTHDAY WEEK ADVENTURES

Did Little Goob Man's birthday celebration end with the early family party at his house? Of course not. It went on all week long! Next up was his first adventure at a splash park.

What IS this place?

So that's how you do it.

Best of all, though? Getting to go to The Austin Zoo -- a non-profit rescue zoo on the edge of Dripping Springs -- with both sets of grandparents. The animals are pretty cool...

but this is what he really came for.

Nate's Parents, Frank and Holly

Not only did we get to see more animals along the way, but there were also gnomes and dinosaurs and aliens and pirates!

Not quite up to Disney standards perhaps, but enough to make one two year old mighty happy.

TINY DINNER CLUB GOES CUBAN

I may have mentioned before that the more fun I am having, the less photos I take? Well, that holds doubly true when the event is at my own house. Which is why I have so little to show for the latest meet-up of our Tiny Dinner Club. Since I chose a restaurant on my last turn, it was my time to cook, so I chose to do a Kinda Cuban But Not Really dinner.

If only I hadn't been so busy cooking, I might have remembered to snap a photo of Hubby's little Cuban cigar/rum station he had set up, complete with the cedar strips they taught us to use for the proper lighting of a cigar. Or I might have remembered to snap one of his mojito prep area, or of us all enjoying them out on the balcony with my brother and sister-in-law's Cuban dip, while listening to Alexa's Cuban Jazz lineup.

The main course consisted of Cuban Rice, which has a couple of cloves of smashed garlic added to the cooking water; Cuban Sleeping Beans, which are black beans with lots of veggies and spices that must be cooked the day before and allowed to sleep in the fridge overnight in order for the flavors to meld, then finished off with a dash of vinegar and a bit of sugar; and my not so Cuban but oh-so-good-at-Thanksgiving Spicy Pork Tenderloins With Orange-Cranberry Sauce. For dessert I pulled out an old recipe for Hubby's favorite birthday cake -- a French Vanilla Cake with sort of a Praline Frosting, which I didn't think to photograph until it was half gone!

My favorite part of the whole dinner? Hubby's spec-TAC-ular mojitos. How spectacular were they? Well, as most of you know, I'm not really a drinker -- especially anything with hard liquor in it -- and I finished off one whole mojito. He had never made them before so he started googling for recipes, and we were lucky enough to find one for the Hotel Nacional Mojito -- the one our tour guide claimed to be the best mojito in all the world. I think he just might be right about that! Here is the recipe -- you can thank me later.

GUESS WHO'S TWO?

Calvin Helps Decorate

Or will be, in just a few days. Remember that decadent dulce de leche/Mexican chocolate/sugar skull cookie creation I told you about a while back, made by Lex's friend at Cake Monster?  Well, we all were jonesin' for another of Stephanie's amazing cakes, but she has a wedding to bake for next weekend. So, of course, we did the only logical thing. We moved Calvin's birthday up a week!

Stars and Moons, Two of His Favorite Things

Uncle Nootie

Where are the prezzies?

A Swimming Pool!

And A Water Table!

Not being familiar with either of those things, he calls them both "bathtubs".

Time To Cut That Cake!

It's On Fire!

Me Help...Eat All Those Cookies.

Nom, Nom, Nom...

And then, he's right back outside -- his favorite place to be -- wondering why no one has his other bathtub set up yet?

 Happy Happy Birthday Little Man! You're the best present your parents ever got!

KNOCK THREE TIMES

A few weeks ago my daughter sent me a text with a list of four different kinds of art, and told me to choose one. Without even thinking, I shot back "Wood block carving!" She then came back with "Great! You and I are now signed up to take a class together May 11th. Consider it an early Mother's Day gift to us both." Why did I choose that one without even thinking? Well, it seems synchronicity has been knocking on my door yet again!

You see, two and a half years ago I took a screen printing class at Lucky Star art camp, and had a blast! So when, shortly after I got home from there, family started pestering me to update my Amazon wish list, I added anything I could find to do with printing. That's how I ended up getting this awesome block printing set and book from my son and daughter-in-love. Unfortunately, it's been sitting untouched all this time, since, right after that, I got swept up in weddings, new grandbaby, travel and travel journals, etc. , etc., etc.

Welcome to Craft Austin!

A Chocolate-Making Class That Shared Their Bounty With Us

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the newest Maisie Dobbs mystery was released, and I was reminded how much I love the style of art that is on each book in that series. It's the same style that you see in the intro to the PBS series, Durrells in Corfu, and I just adore it! I decided to do a little digging and discovered that both Andrew Davidson and Alex Maclean use wood cuts and engravings in their art!

Our Instructor

Lex Decides On A Pattern And Begins To Carve

Classmates

Then I started reading a great new book last week called The Garden of Evening Mists.  Not only does it take place in Malaysia -- a place we visited often when living on Sumatra -- and involve gardening, a former obsession of mine, but there is also a story line revolving around Ukiyo-e, 18th century Japanese woodblock prints!

Inking Our Blocks

Lex Opts For Delicate And Refined

I Go With Rough And Messy

So, of course I had to choose the wood block carving class. 'Cause, if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that when Synchronicity keeps aknockin' on your door, you really oughta answer!