Say what you will about 15-year-old Piper’s attitude (and I do), but this amazing person is an artist.

She created this tessellation* of pandas, which I am in awe of.

*It only took a few minutes to find the word for this mathmatical patterning of shaped tiles, an art form popularized by M. C. Eschler. I have never knowingly used this word before.

I did such an amazing job not murdering my family as I did all the work to prepare us for a 4-day Spring Break trip that I… well, did all the planning, prepping, and packing so I could go play for a bit.

We headed to Sol Duc Hot Springs on the Olympic Peninsula–and there is no “ugly time” to visit this area! There is an RV campground–really, just a potholed dirt parking lot with hook ups–just across the river from the hot springs and resort (“resort”). We did the hot springs a few times– Mama LOVES hot water! There are three spring pools, at 103, 101, and 99 (wimpy!) degrees. And then one giant swimming pool, also fed by natural, but less preferred, springs, and my understanding is that pool is 55 degrees year round. I got pretty good at warming up, jumping in the cold pool, swimming accross the long way until I had a brain freeze, and then defrosting in the hottest pool. Kyla, as predicted, was my buddy in all such nonsense…and the others weren’t.

Our campsite also connected to the Sol Duc waterfall trails and Dwayne, Kyla, and I bundled up to explore. We had umbrellas, snow clothes, and tough boots–and needed them all on this April mountain trail.

There was a small restaurant at the hot springs where we played our favorite games while waiting for our food: cribbage and Does Mama Like Beer Yet?

That’s a no.

After a few nights, we headed back inland and again passing Crescent Lake, stopped by Marymere Falls for a Mama-mandated 1 mile hike to the falls. Let’s just say I’m writing this 7 months later, and I still remember the bad attitude from Thing 3 and the abosolute detonation of Thing 2, who is not shown in any pictures. Definitely a classic “I like this enough for all of us” hike.

We did one night at Dosewallips State Park, on the west side of Hood Canal, and I finally, finally got my herd of tall, skinny cows! Dwayne calls them elk.

I really liked this park–lots of exploring to do, as the park is connected to a river and tide flats, as well as several nature trails hugging the campground from the other side of the water. And I love it when engineers have a sense of humor in their christening of bridges.

Even wrestling with some not so great attitudes, I really enjoyed getting Yeti RV out for a spring break spin. I love our state!

I had just finished my third assignment in 28 hours, cramming work in so we can go on a Spring Break camping trip tomorrow.

I am simultaneously on the phone with the orthodontist while writing my shopping list when Wes asks me when we are leaving tomorrow.

When I got off the phone, I told him my goal was to be ready to go by noon. Here is the rest of the exchange:

Wes: Do you mean noon-noon, or like, 1 o’clock?

Me: Well, if I don’t have any help uncovering the RV, dewinterizing it, fixing anything that’s broken on it, planning, shopping, and packing the RV, we may not be ready to leave by noon tomorrow.

Wes: I get your hint. So probably 1 o’clock? Can I have a friend over?

Wes is not a fan of church, or of Mama wanting to be there a few extra minutes so we could get a family portrait, which I think you already figured out. Come to think of it, Wes was a pain in the ass in April. (See next post.)

At least Cricket and Ernie were full into Easter!

We got to host our usual fare, including Bread Bunny and Evil Egg hunt.

T’was the night before Easter, and the four of us went to Seattle to see an amazing show at McCaw Hall. We left the uncultured, whiney one at home, though even Wes would have found most of jaw-droppingly Shen Yun fascinating. It let out the same time as the Kraken game, and so we went out for sushi at 10pm to wait out traffic.

It turns out, this is all I ever wanted out of parenting–teenagers. Either old enough to enjoy grown-up adventures or to be left at home.

Piper absolutely hated the dance — too peoply– but it was really fun to witness my daughters get ready for Tolo that night.