Marin Tender Tracks Thurs. Dec. 4, 2014 Day 24

Waxing Gibbous Moon
Lake Lagunitas

Thea, Nico and Jai out today.
Today we celebrated the first of many birthdays of the year, and of December, Ariels.  She turned four the day before and brought a beautiful snack of purple cupcakes that they all enjoyed greatly!!
Thank you Ariels Mom!!   There is a Tender Tracks Traditional Birthday story that is told along with the individual milestones for the birthday child.  The story ends where we sing the Tender Tracks Birthday song, and another beautiful birthday song.  Ariel then received her Tender Tracks gift. She was to put her hand in a bag and pick out just the right stone. She did not want to do it but said I could pick for her.  It is a sensory experience and since she didn’t want to do it I asked if she wanted smooth or rough. She chose smooth and from that I chose the smooth and polished rose quartz that was in the bag and then she got a little bag to put it in.
The children were delighted to celebrate her and hear the story and then, clean up and off to play and discover what was being shared with us today from Earth and Sky.   The puddles were the greatest of delights. After a time however I thought it best to get them going on the days adventure so, Ariel pointed the direction to go and off we went.
The biggest question was, “Where does all this water come from and how come it doesn’t flow down the small little creeks next to the big waterfall?  Up the stairs we went and there we saw the lake FILLED and brimming over down into the water fall shoot.  There were at least 20 Cormorants sitting on the waters big Bar there yet their wings were not spread out to dry themselves.   We went past our usual spot, which took a bit of doing, and went towards a place that they have been to before yet not in a while.   Julian knew the way well and lead us there.
When we finally made it the boys RANNN into the creek with extreme delight and just loved running back and forth.  The girls came and sat down to eat and the boys were lured in to eat in order to have energy for more play.
After eating all went into the water accept Hana.She was sitting with Linsey and I.  We then heard a sound that kind of sounded like a distress sound but not exactly. I got up and went to look and OH DEAR, it looked like Ariel was choking Velia with her coat and Velia was fully in the creek.
I ran over and pulled Velia up. It turns out that Ariel was VERY proud of herself for trying to save Velia when she fell fully into a deeper part of the water.  So, Ariel was happy with pride and Velia was FILLED with water and not happy about this at all, though quite a trooper I must say.   I looked at my watch and it looked like we should be going anyway so, since the girls were much slower then the boys all day Linsey started them off walking back to the bus and I stayed with the boys as they played, romped, fell into, laughed and immersed themselves into the ecstatic joy of playing with the water.   It was then time to go and, it turns out that, the only one that was really faster then the girls was JULIAN!!!  No matter that he was so wet he was joyfully running up the trail in delight. He became the runner to see if we could find the others and Theron and Everett were quite a bit slower.  At one point Theron was walking so slow, yet not too far behind. I went back to him and there, his rain pants were down to his knees and he was simply plodding along.  I am laughing with delight remembering this moment.  It was precious, fun and beautiful.  I pulled his pants up and off he went with a little more ease.  Everett was just simply in joy over the fun of the day even though he was soaking wet and very very proud of this!.  We all finally made it back to the bus and did double duty changing.  Linsey organized it all with such flow and grace and we got them all changed and ready to go just in time.
As we began to drive off I realized that I mis read my watch. We were actually  an hour early!!!! All that unnecessary rush back…:(  But no worries. When we got back, we stayed in the bus. Read most of a story, created music and song and drew pictures with their own little paper boards and crayons and then drew pictures on the windows from the steam.  They were warm and dry and Velia got back to change her SOAKING, SOAKING, SOAKING, wet self.