22!!!!

I turned 22 yesterday! It was awesome, this whole week has been awesome. I celebrate the whole week of my birthday, not just my day. I got two gorgeous bouquets. One from Dad one from Jeff. =) It's just been an awesome week, tonight I get to have brother/roommate/roommate brother hang out time.

I will try to post more since I have been super busy, basically not counting homework I am in class and work around 40 hours a week....wowza.

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.

jewelry

Ever since taking jewelry class I have been noticing and appreciating jewelry more. I even asked Ben to look at his ring, which looked exactly like what we made, except with a longhorn on it. I was reading an article about my brother running in high school and an add for organic bands came up. This guy makes some really neat jewelry, but also very expensive jewelry. http://www.handmadeweddings.net/ That's his website, its about weddings, but his fine jewelry is gorgeous. Especially the tennis necklace. I wish there was a jewelry 2 class I could take next summer. =)

friends

I started thinking the other day that there have been a very few constant friends in my life. Geneva and Shalan are really my longest running friends. All sorts of things happened between my other friends and me keeping us from staying in touch or staying friends. A lot of my friends I stopped being friends with because they and their definition of fun changed. I am the complete opposite of a party girl. I am a home body that likes going to bed early. I like watching movies, cooking my own meals, and doing out doors types of things. For most people this is not considered that much fun. In a few years I think I will be the stereotypical hippie that they make fun of in movies.
My college friends have pretty much been consistent since freshman year. Last year things took a toll on some of my relationships, and some of it was my fault I never wanted to go out, or more likely I had work or class at night...which really takes a toll on your social life. I have night classes and night work 4 days this semester, I hope I still can find at least one night to hang out with my less active friends. My active friends I have never had trouble staying connected since early mornings is when I am free and ready for walks or run, or whatever.
But I still want to make a more conscious effort to hang out with people besides Jeff, Erica, and my brother. I do not think I will have that much time seeing that I am in class and work around 36 hours a week.

pooptarts

I went down to see boyfriend last night and came back just now. It was great. We had missed each other a lot, and needed some boyfriend girlfriend time. We spent all day in our pj's cuddling and watching tv. It was fantastic.
When we had breakfast, I was making fun of Jeff for having poptarts (which I called poop tarts and almost died laughing) and not having the healthy cereal. He said he did not like healthy cereal, he liked the fun cereal. I thought this was silly and he should have the healthy grown up cereal. He said "excuse me, this is coming from the girl who has at least one banana split a day and sometimes a second frozen custard on vacation?!"

Touche Jeff.

trips

I took two quick trips. One back home to Cali, and one to Ocean City. lots of flying. I hate traveling, so all the flying and driving was pretty awful. But I will wait until I can upload pics next week, or maybe once I have time I will just type up what we did. =)

just one day at the beach

Yesterday was one of the most fun days I have had at the beach in a while, except for when Jeff was here. We have fun together.

But anyways the day started nice and early. Rob and I got up to go for a run while I rode my bike next to him. We did 8.5 miles. We got back ate some breakfast, Maria and I then went for a 2 mile walk to the end of the island where we found a sand bar and walked out to it. Then I went down to the beach with Robbie, and the little girls. Julia went boggie boarding and she would ride in and try to make it in between my legs. Then I showed Rob, Chris, Julia, and Dana the sand bar, another 2 mile walk. We swam around next to it. Rob and I then decided it was lunch and rode our bikes down to the boardwalk, another 10 miles. Pizza did not take credit cards so we got ice cream instead. When we got back Maria wanted to go for another 2 mile walk down to the end of the island. And finally we played ultimate frisbee for an hour or so. Aparrently I was very good, even Robbie said I was the best. I have never played before, but it was like soccer and diving in the sand was fun. Our team lost, but right when the game finished everyone ran over to the ocean and jumped right in. It was much colder than before but it felt so incredible, after being so sweaty. Then we had dinner, I had a little too much wine made me very sleepy, but I still insisted we go out for ice cream again.

great day.

waiting by the window

I was so excited for Erica to get home today. Every time I would get up I would go look out our kitchen window, hoping I would see her car.
This reminded me of when I was a kid and we would go to Ocean City in the summers. Our family would usually get there the night before the rest of our family got there. Saturday mornings is when everyone else would come, I would usually sit at the kitchen table with a view of Central Ave and color in the old coloring books we had there. I would get so excited to see everyone, I didn't want to go down to the beach and miss a second with them.