Spring Break Sunshine

Back from the Phoenix trip and missing Spring Break already, I can't believe my time off went by so fast! It was a great trip though and just what I needed to rest up for the last end-of-semester and finals period of my life (whoo hoo!). It was most definitely sunny and warm in AZ, so nice in fact that I even dared to bare my whiter-than-ever legs in shorts just about every day. I won't show you a picture of how much sun the back of my neck accidentally soaked up on the second day while hiking...forgot to sunscreen just one little part of me for a few hours, but BOY did that turn out to be silly. At least though it gave my dad the joke that he was hanging out with his redneck daughter the rest of the week. And oh well, it could have gone way worse considering I was jumping from northern winter into springtime desert with my complexion!

Most of the trip was spent just relaxing and hanging out with family, a pretty nice combination and change from the usual. I finally got to meet my new baby step-niece, Aubrey, and catch up with her older sisters Paige and Grace when they taught me how to play their favorite Wii dancing game. I gotta say, I was never interested in this Wii business before, but you try jumping around for a few music videos with two active, elementary-school-aged girls and you'll know it's not a bad workout!

Me (in shorts, woa!) with the girls (awwww)


Probably my favorite parts of the trip were just getting out into some perfect spring weather. We did one bigger hike up South Mountain on St. Pat's day, and with all the rain AZ's gotten this El Nino year it was appropriate for the holiday being the greenest I've ever seen the desert!


A beautiful day for a beautiful walk!

The poppies were out just in time


And we of course did some geocaching. Take a look at some of the ridiculous places people manage to hide these things?!

Can you see the hidden container?

Here it was. I know my dad loves this hobby, but I haven't decided for myself yet if I think it's fun, or just plain cruel...

The deadliest one of the week; you had to cross about a 1/8 mile cholla cactus mine-field to get to it. Those little yellowy bumps on the ground are all baby cacti...eek!

And finally, a cool spot one walk took us to. This is a brand new park in Chandler built on top of an old landfill!


The only big surprise of the trip was a day of real-live rain. I guess it wasn't quite the same as northern spring snow/slush, but as you can see from the surface of the pool, still pretty dramatic:


Since then it was back to Pullman, and of course back to school. Only a month now until summer break, so getting excited to be done with my last class ever and take one "job" off my daily list! Still a few class projects to finish up, but also some exciting news just came of one big meeting this week with my Thesis Advisory Committee: I'll be staying in Pullman until December! My work is going really well, so this change isn't at all a bad thing, it's more that they actually find my project worthwhile enough to pay a little bit more for. From my end I can now have a slightly calmer time writing up my thesis and a few good manuscripts, so a little bit of a paradigm shift, but all around a positive decision. I guess I get to enjoy a long happy summer on the Palouse, and keep my little apartment that I love for longer.

And then what, you ask? Time to start finding a job...