Chris and Maria's California adventures

I went home the first week of Aug because my favorite little cousin Chris was coming to visit. And Aunt Rosie and Uncle Bob do not like that much activity. As a 12 year old, Chris needs lots of activities and adventures. I got home late sunday night and my little monkey was already asleep, so we started logging our adventures Monday morning at 7. My Aunt wanted play by play accounts of what we did. So here it is.

Monday, August 1, 2011:
Woke up around 7
Aunt Rosie tried passing Multigrain cheerios off as "fun cereal"
Chris and Maria go to the store to pick up real "fun cereal"
Maria complains about paying $6 for a box of lucky charms
Chris gets Reeses Puffs, Maria gets Lucky charms
Ate cereal outside in the backyard. It was pretty cold.
Went to Sycamore Grove to roller blade and scoot. Brought Toby as well. It got warm while we were there. Maria showed Chris all the cool trees.
Came home, Maria took a shower and washed her hair in the soft california water. Chris complained Maria took an hour to shower, and do her hair.
Got Jamba juice: Chris got Strawberry Surf-rider, Maria got Peach perfection
Visited Uncle Bob's work, Edward was not there, but Maria still left him his present
Went to IN-N_Out for lunch with Uncle Bob, Chris got a cheese burger and a shake, Uncle Bob and Maria got grilled cheeses, everyone got fries! We ate outside in the sun.
Chris and Maria went to paint ceramics. Chris painted a mug for mom and dad, Maria painted a mug for boyfriend.
Maria was very tired by that point, so we went back to Jamba Juice to get Mocha Marvels- a type of hot coffee drink
We went home to recover and snack quickly, then off again very quickly
We went to go play laser tag. We got 2 games. The first game we played with two other girls who ganged up against us, but we did not have teams, so a little unfair. Chris beat Maria in the first game. Second game it was just Chris and Maria and it was the funnest part of the whole trip, since we got to run around and yell. Maria beat Chris.
Mini gold there was too expensive so we went next door to the driving range.
We got one bucket of balls and some clubs and went nuts.
Once we ran out, the instructor, who thought Maria was cute, offered them two more full buckets of balls.
Towards the end, our arms and hands were hurting. Chris got a blister and then popped it when he hit his second to last ball.
Chris hit the balls with a hockey swing, Maria had taken golf lessons before and was fairly good, even though we both missed a lot of balls.
We went back home, and were given things to get for dinner.
So we turned around and left to go to Trader Joe's. Maria stocked up big time on flattened bananas.
We got home and started to cook up the veggies for the pizzas while Uncle Bob and Aunt Rose went to Pilates.
Chris made fun of the hummas, and freaked out because of the mushrooms. We fried the pita bread with hummas on it, and then Chris liked it. We played with Toby and joked about how the mushrooms and everything they touched were contaminated.
When the pizzas were cooking we went out to the garden and picked strawberries.
Geneva and Emily came over for some pizza which we ate in the backyard. We chatted, told them about our day, and caught up since we hadn't talked since Christmas.
We had chocolate covered marshmallows for dessert.
We watched Shark week, Chris fell asleep, and the girls chit chatted.
Once the girls left, Maria could not wake up Chris. He is a very sound sleeper.
Finally after lots of shaking Chris woke up, and we went to bed.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011:
Woke up around 7 again.
Maria made Chris scrambled eggs, veggie sausage, and cinnamon buns. Chris helped cut up the cantaloupe, after Maria taught him to right way to cut.
We ate breakfast sitting on the roof. It was kind of cold outside.
We got ready for the day, and packed some snacks and extra clothes. We did not tell Chris where we were going.
We drove to the airport in our town.
We got on a private plane and flew down to the beach.
We had to wait for the rental car guy to come pick us up, so Chris and Maria walked around the airport, and poked the sleeping cat that had a lion head. Chris poked a cricket that jumped at Maria's leg.
We drove to the beach, we saw cows and zebras on our way there.
Chris invented Superwater, which was Maria's spicy water with the label as a cape.
We walked on the beach and picked up rocks.
We had lunch next to the beach, outside yet again, Chris got a BLTA- minus the A, and Maria and Aunt Rose had the Avocado. Maria had minestrone, and some veggie pasta.
We went to another beach, Chris and Maria went exploring, played with the "rat tails" and laid on the rocks, looking at the ocean. We saw some seals far off, but also swimming through the water as we left. Chris got tar on his hands, and a splinter walking back to the car. We saw some friendly squirrels who came right up to Chris.
We drove back to the airport and started writing this list.
Maria cleaned the tar off Chris's fingers while Chris ate M&M's.
Maria told Chris he owes her an ice cream for cleaning his fingers.
There was an ice cream argument.
We stopped to get coffee and water, we played with the trivial pursuit cards.
We flew back, Chris got to fly in the cock pit and fell asleep.
We got back to the house.
Chris got his part of his splinter out. We changed and went to Baja Fresh for some good burritos and drinks, Chris mixed all the soda's together, and Maria got sweet tea.
We had to eat in the car on the way to the movies. Chris did not eat his burrito correctly, and instead balled it up. Chris got super hot salsa, and we snuck our chips and salsa into the movies. Chris said he needed water since we couldn't bring his Baja Fresh drink in.
We met up with Shalan, and watch Cowboys & Aliens and ate our chips and salsa. It was a good movie but very hard to stay awake, since we were so tired from the long day.
We went home after and went right to bed.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011:
Woke up and talked to Aunt Rachel and Julia on the phone.
Chris cut cantelope again, Maria made more cinnamon buns, and some cinnamon rasin toast.
We ate breakfast in the backyard.
We had to get gas, and Chris learned how to clean the windows, he also attempted to clean the car.
We went to Del Valle for a hike with Toby. We climbed a tree, took pictures, threw rocks in the lake which would splash loudly and scare Toby, went in the lake, got chased by some cows, and picked a pretty flower. Toby rolled around in the dirt, went in the lake, barked at a cow that didn't move, got scared by Maria and Chris throwing rocks in the lake. Once we turned around to go back we made it back to the car in 22 min. The flower we picked we tried to put in Toby's collar, and he shook it out, then we tried putting it in the water bottle, but it still died.
We dropped Toby off at home, and went out for more Jamba Juice.
Chris wanted all the boosts in his smoothie, Maria said no.
Chris got Peach pleasure with antioxidant boost, Maria got Banana berry with a protein boost.
Chris turned the car into a sauna while we drove to the ice skating rink. We fought about that.
The skating rink was closed, so we went to lunch at Tomatina's. They took forever with our lunch, so we played the games on the kids menu- word scramble, and word search. We split some delicious pizza, and a hummas piadine.
We went bowling, we played with bumpers. Chris won the first game by one point. And the second game we are pretty sure Maria won, because she got a lot of strikes and spares, but our computer stopped working so we kept our own score.
We ran to the store really quick, to get Chris some body wash and shampoo and to get Maria some medicine.
Maria got a bruise on her arm from Chris playing skittle with her.
We went home, took showers.
Talked ipods.
We ate some ice cream sandwiches, Chris told Maria she had to eat two....one was very filling already.
We got the rest of Chris's splinter out!
Chris pulled off the rest of his blister skin.
Drove Maria to airport, Aunt Rose and Chris dropped Maria off, but she called us after she got her ticket because her flight was later than we thought, so we went to a Denny's and had some english muffins and tea.
Then sadly we saw Maria off for a few days, till she came to Ocean City.