Palo Alto Tender Tracks Thurs. Feb. 27, 2014 Day 44

Day before Full Moon
Rancho San Antonio

Serena was absent.
This was a very beautiful day. The weather was just delightfully invigorating yet easeful and embracing of playfulness and comfort.    We made our way to Rancho San Antonio and when we got there we had a fine circle which then turned into a contest to see if anyone could find my lost knife from a couple of weeks ago in the nearby leaf mound.  The winner, parents agreeing, would get an ice cream cone from me, or something comparable.  Well, as you can imagine, DASH and away they all ran into the leaf pile.  We all searched and searched moving lot’s of old wet leaves around but alas, no knife to be found so, off we went to carry on with our next adventure, to the bridge to listen and look for water.   Most remembered how to get to the bridge and when we got there: LOT’S of WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE!!!!!!  We listened with delight, saw it’s swirling movements, ran from one side of the bridge to the next noticing and looking and then, moved on along.  The next place to find was Grandma Bay where we went near our very first days together.  Our reminder of this place was, this was the place where Cole walked around and around and around ontop of the small fence protecting Grandma Bay. Cole and Juliette got there first and did, just what I described.  The others finally caught up and then we continued on to the Gnomey house ( a beautiful Old Oak tree with a wonderful hole in it that looks like a door way with a window on the other side.   Cole and Julian did not want to leave there so Jill stayed with them and the rest of us went to our final destination, the creek.    I was told that Cole and Julian just had so much fun playing and chatting. They finally made it on over to the rest of us.  Meanwhile, we were having fun exploring the parts of the creek that had water and noticing that a lot of the creek had none.  There were great boards there. Some they called, the Splinter boards and some just regular.  I regularly show them which boards can give you GRAND splinters and which ones are much more easeful with us.
Zara, I think, discovered Ants with Zac, Eden, Ridham, Finn and Juliet.  She would scream, RED ANTS, RED ANTS and, it appeared that only Zac and Ridham knew how to get rid of the red ants!
When Cole and Julian came back the two of them plus Zac got really into creating a castle up the side of the bank next to the waters edge.  Cole was the King who sometimes let Julian be King but Julian was very happy to be a servant. He said “you work less when you are a servant.”  I just couldn’t bring my self to tell him what servants really do!  🙂
Finn, Ridham and I spent a lot of time making stone houses on the bank of the creek and the girls were sitting and playing with Jill.  During the day all of us went climbing up a steep very muddy hill.  There was much help needed for some but all made it up and over this large MUD bank and then down a very slippey, sliddey place with grand smiles and some AHHHH’s from slipping so much.
But alas, the time did find it’s end.  There was much scraping of mud from shoes, putting shoes back on and changing clothes from their great MUD ADVENTURES, and then, finally, off we went.
And oh yes, how could I forget, today at circle time, they received their JOBS!  Juliette and Serena, who wasn’t here today, were the Guardians of Safety. Juliette did a good amount of taking care of Owies today, mainly for Zara.  Eden and Julian were Earth Keepers. They carried the Earth bag around and found garbage to put in there. They actually both really wanted to have the bag to do this job and had to negotiate when they would each have a turn with it!  They were the best Earth Keepers, truly.
Zac and Zara were Map Makers. Zara really loved making her Map and Zac was not interested at all.
Finn and Cole were the snack helpers. Cole really wanted to spray others hands with the hand cleanser but discovered that it was very challenging so he became content with passing out the water.  And Ridham he was the Weather Watcher and enjoyed this.