4. Go to a Water Park

I've lived in the desert for around 15 years now, and I lived a mile away from Golfland Sunsplash for around 10. Needless to say, many of my childhood summers were spent running around the water park. Patherica, on the other hand, had never been to a water park--I guess that happens when you live in the suburbs--until today. Tickets happened to be Buy One Get One Free today, so with that, we crossed off #4 on our list.

I like to think Patherica's first water park experience was a success. We went all of the major water slides, even the scary ones. The Sidewinder was probably the most daunting.

So that's not a recent picture of the ride (the picture is from About.com), but the only thing that changed is the inner tube they use. By the way, that's a near-vertical drop from several stories high. When I was younger, you could take up to three people at once (which, in hindsight, was probably really dangerous) and everyone faced the same way in your typical inner tube. At least now, the tubes seemed a little safer as the tubes had back support and placed the riders so that they faced each other. Side note, our friendship reached a whole new level when we had to lay our legs on top of each other.

Patherica was freaking out on the way up--but let's be honest here, I think everyone freaks out before they're about to plummet to their deaths. I was definitely freaking out, too. Still, she faced it like a champ, even volunteering to go backwards because I didn't want to. True friend right there!

Later in the afternoon, we took a break as Tina, who was with us, needed to leave for work. Before that, though, we went to a nearby Waffle House. Tina had never had waffles before, so this was the perfect opportunity to eat some.

Tina left, but Patherica and I still had the rest of our day to hang out at Sunsplash, and Patherica, who is broke at this point, wanted to get her money's worth. So, we head back over to the park. We take it easy this time, going on a couple of rides we knew we liked and hanging out in the lazy river and the wave pool. It ended with me reliving my childhood as we made our way to the kiddie area to the lily pads.

WORK IT, PATHERICA. Funny story, while we were waiting in line for a ride, some boy introduced himself to Patherica. Then we bumped into him in the lazy river, where Patherica conveniently was separated from Tina and I. Then we saw him by the wave pool. He ended up hanging around us for a while, even after we left and came back. Patherica is just such a boy magnet. It's that bikini body. ;)

All in all, today was a great day. I got slightly tanner and a little braver, and I think Patherica had fun. We went to Krispy Kreme afterward but sadly did not get a free donut. Working on it!

11. Learn to Cook

Today we were bummin' it, so we started off by watching movies at my house. Then came dinner time, and we spontaneously chose to make our own dinners. Pasta seemed easiest, and we had plenty on hand. In the end, we chose to make rigatoni with chicken and creamy mushroom sauce.

We both learned new things about each other today.

For one, we both like cheese.

And Linda's pretty good at chopping mushrooms (not really).

We sort of cheated while making this dish. 

It was all home-made.

The bread wasn't frozen, texas toast with cheese and garlic on top.

The chicken wasn't pre-cut, cooked, and seasoned.

Who took this picture? This wasn't in my kitchen, I swear.

After long hours of working...

Just kidding, that was the food-network lady's.

This was actually how ours turned out.

We made a bit too much pasta, so our sauce and mushrooms... were basically non-existent in the sea of starch goodness. 

Linda and I both agreed that it was pretty good... even though we didn't use mascarpone cheese (what is that?) and white wine (extra broth!) and vegetable stock (chicken ftw). 

Thank God cream cheese, whipping cream, and chicken stock were on hand!

Oh yeah, the chicken wasn't part of the recipe either, but we like our meat. 

Successful day of bumming if I do say so myself! 

2. Dye Our Hair

It's a little late (or early), but I thought I'd post this since I think we're posting again tomorrow (later today).

I DYED MY HAIR.

This isn't the first time I've dyed my hair. As Tina would say, I'm no hair virgin. This is, however, the most dramatic hair color I've done, and I didn't even do half my head.

Since maybe fourth grade, I've wanted colored tips. Then, I had aspirations of being a rock star in a band with two of my then best friends, who would have blue and green hair, so I was left with pink hair. In the seventh grade, I decided I didn't like pink that much (I was SOOOO cool) and decided I would look great with aqua blue hair. In high school I changed that to red, and this summer, I set out to get my red hair.

Patherica actually chose not to dye her hair, but she will be coloring her hair in another way very soon. I ended up dying my hair with our friend Tina, which meant there wasn't anyone to take good photos. Cue the selfies!

Here I am, all ready to go with my hair sectioned off. I'm not going to lie, I think I look pretty cute.

The instructions said to leave the bleach in until I reached a pale blonde color. This was the palest blond I was going to get before my hair started falling off in chunks. We don't need a "Hair Tutorial Color Gone Wrong" right now.

After the bleach I went ahead put in the red. The dye looked like blood, so the logical thing to do in this situation is obviously to pretend to be a serial killer. The yellow scrub-like protector I had on didn't help.

The finished product! Voila! It ended up much more pink than I expected (maybe the words "Raspberries" in the color name should have tipped me off), but it looked pretty good. I feel bad for getting pink all over Tina's house and on her stuff. Oops. It took several washed for the color to come completely out of my hair--actually, I think I'm still dripping pink around my own house, hehe. After all of those washes, the color faded a lot, but I'm still happy with it. One more shameless selfie for good measure, though. :)

21. Eat Something New

Number 21 of our summer bucket list was fulfilled today... well kind of.

With the intention to go shopping for swim suits, we didn't think at all about eating something new. However, when life tells you there's buy one get one free milkshakes at icebergs- you buy those milkshakes.  

And lemme tell you, life waved a big sign at us. 

The thing about iceberg milkshakes, they're gigantic... which could be considered a bit unhealthy since you're basically eating a gallon of ice cream.

It doesn't just stop there though.

Their flavor of the month? 

Caramel...

and Bacon.

Yes, bacon.

Bacon in a shake. Iceberg knows how to bring them boys to the yard.

And me being me, I dared Linda to get one. 

And Linda being Linda agreed (only if she could have some of mine if the shake came out... weird).

Just look at me, ready to attack that beast of a milkshake.

The milkshake wasn't bad. The most dominant flavor was the caramel (which will probably make my orthodontist cringe) with a bit of salty crunchy bacon goodness. 

Linda seemed to enjoy it, and I had quite enough with one bite. 

So what do we do with leftover caramel bacon milkshake? 

We phoned a friend, asked her if she wanted a free shake, left out the caramel bacon part to that question, and then received a what-is-this-monstrosity look from her.

It was just too cool not to share.

So to all you adventurous food junkies out there, go try some.

I'm sure it'll be a great icebreaker during an awkward turtle situation.

1. Start A Blog

Summer 2013 will be our first summer without any serious obligations (no summer homework looming over our heads!) in a long time, so we're determined to make it the best! Plus, we have cars this summer so that's cool. :)

We typically have pretty awesome adventures year-round, but these next couple of months will be especially adventurous. To keep ourselves organized and to document this journey, we went ahead and created this blog! With that, here's our summer bucket list:

1. Start a blog
2. Dye our hair
3. Go to a concert
4. Go to a water park
5. DIY some cute clothes
6. Eat from a food truck
7. Have a cliché slumber party
8. Take Zumba classes
9. Ride a rollercoaster
10. See the sun rise
11. Learn to cook
12. Hang out around a fire
13. Run around in a monsoon
14. Watch all the Star Wars movies
15. See a midnight screening of a movie
16. Go on a road trip
17. Hold a 1920s-themed (Gatsby) party
18. Watch the fireworks at Tempe Town Lake
19. Find and eat macaroons
20. Camp out in someone’s backyard
21. Eat something new
22. Go see a drive-in movie
23. (secret)
24. Buy ice-cream from the truck
25. Picnic at the lake
26. Create a masterpiece work of art
27. Lay out in the sun with smoothies and books
28. Cook eggs on the sidewalk
29. Make a music video
30. Go tubing
31. Spend the day at the zoo
32. Get kicked out of Wal-Mart
33. Get Taco Bell at midnight
34. Make a popsicle stick house
35. Bake all day
36. Have a paint fight
37. Host a scavenger hunt
38. Recreate outfits from magazines
39. Fly kites
40. Finish a really hard jigsaw puzzle
41. Write to Disney characters
42. Go kayaking
43. Convince people we’re from another country
44. Play hide and seek in IKEA
45. Eat everything with chopsticks
46. Get free donuts from Krispy Kreme
47. Complete YouTube-inspired challenges
48. Find the best milkshake
49. Hold an end-of-summer/farewell party
50. Make a montage of our summer memories

Guess we can cross #1 off now. :)