Palo Alto Tender Tracks Wed. March 12, 2014 Day 24

Waxing Gibbous Moon
Redwood Grove via Shoup Park

What a glorious, glorious day!!! The weather was beautiful ( and yes we DO need more rain!!!) and the children were filled with radiant Spring energy: alive, vibrant and full of life.
Nareya met us there after having been gone for a week and just getting back the night before and Aurora’s Mommy and sister joined us again this week. And, they came with snacks for the day. It was Aurora’s little sisters birthday this past week and she wanted to celebrate it, so, how could we refuse yummy snacks???!!!!!
We had our circle, songs,snack and I told, instead of read this week, the story about How Colors and Rainbows Came to Be from last week.  This turned out quit syncronistic as Auroras mom brought paints and paper for them to paint with.
After circle time we found our way down to the creek. They remembered the way and off we went.  What fun to walk along the creek bed but, alas, NO WATER!!!  There were logs along the way to try and climb over, Eucalyptus caps to pick up, mint plants to smell, Poison Hemlock to relearn about and then, we made it, set up camp and began our adventures there for the rest of the day.
Auroras mom brought out the paints she brought and I brought them into finding paints from right around us.  We smashed rocks and put water on them to make color. We took Emme’s strawberries and blueberries and made paint. Eric found a rock that looked like it would make gold so we worked at smashing that and we DID make a sort of gold colored paint.  We made green from Jasper’s pea husk and brown red from another type of rock.
Nareya and Dahlia had a GREAT time painting and painting and painting with the paints Auroras Mom brought and later on Nareya painted Bosch’s arm so beautifullY!  She and Dahlia seemed to be making wonderful rock hair for him as well. Meaning, putting ROCKS on his head!
Nareya’s Mommy was able to join us later and that was such a delight but, Nareya did not want to leave when it was time to go 🙁  She really liked it there.
Aurora and I went off down the creek and began making a great rock house. Then Emme,  Natalie, Eric and later Jasper joined us and we carried on.  We also found such great treasures, like a worm, underneath a big rock.
Throughout the day there were games such as: sneaking up on Bosch, using a stick to help balance as they walked across a log, sticking sticks out behind trees and not being able to be seen, running around, becoming deer, crawling on our bellies and, well, so much more.
Natalie and I had a GREAT time sneaking up on Bosch and then most of them wanted to join in.
Bosch, of course, was just SOOO SURPRISED!!!