Wise Old St. Nicholas

We celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas as is our custom.  I am always so thankful for the opportunity to share the wisdom of this saint with our children.  I have a fuller explanation of his life in my other blog dedicated to the saints and my hobby of painting peg dolls.

The children woke up to find the annual St. Nicholas Boot Exchange was really going to happen again this year.  I stuffed their boots with new socks and other necessary clothing, along with fruit and a small amount of chocolate.  They read their St. Nicholas notes (read more on this custom from last year) and enjoyed the morning.

We are not big on presents during this time of year.  I know this is different then what most do but I think it works for us.  We try to center on giving to others instead.  This morning I woke up thinking about what we would do this year to spread God's message of love and self-sacrifice.  I think we will help the homeless in the area.  This area has embraced the homeless as a part of the culture and nothing is thought of them living throughout town.  It was quite surprising for us but with the mild weather throughout the year it just seems to be normal.  We have had conversations with several who live around the library and our priest speaks of them often.  However normal this life might be, I still think we should try to help them when we can.  On the way to Mass, we discussed how we could make that happen.  I think we have a good plan...more on that later!

Father Hall spoke about Hanukkah at Mass today.  He told us that we should think of this holy season as part of our heritage and celebrate how the Israelites were not forsaken by God.  In doing this, we remember that we can also trust in God.

I love how this tied into the feast of St. Nicholas.  It is the 'genius of Catholicism' that makes me smile and move my faith.  Only through God's graces can it all come together to better our lives and understanding of our relationship with God.

Unfortunately, our plans to have a family outing were thrown off course today...another child out with this illness...although Little Miss is feeling much better!  So...we came home and I sent Michael with the older boys to the aquarium ...quite fitting since they missed out on this adventure back in October.  They had a great time and the little ones slept.  It gave me time to think about the days to come...my mom is coming for a visit in TEN DAYS!!!!  So very excited to see her!

From Salt Marshes to Tidal Pools

The boys studies of marine biology motivated me to find new opportunities to view some of the places we had learned about in the course.  So...today we woke up and were out the door quickly.

However, we did not immediately go to the water.  We love geocaching and although I do not talk about our geocaching adventures very often on this blog (I have a Fb page to share our caching finds...https://www.facebook.com/reynbowcaches/) but today was a fun day of caches that led us to puzzles and got the boys excited about the hunt again.  They even got to shoot off a pneumatic rocket and play with kinetic art (although we had to mark that last one as a DNF...look where it took us!)

These particular caches were created by one amazing group of cachers.  And the best part...they have MORE...we just ran out of time but it gives us a good reason to return to this area.  Another good reason is the Don Edward National Wildlife Refuge.  One of our main goals of the day was to walk around the salt marshes.  Once owned by the Cargill family, the salt was harvested from the bay; however, the land was donated to the United States to create this habitat for birds and other wildlife in 1974.  The land continues to be redeveloped into the refuge that we have today.  

We had found out that there was a junior refuge program and the younger children were eager to earn a new badge.  The older boys were there to view some of the things we had learned.  We knew we were going to walk a trail through the salt marshes to look for birds and wildlife in this type of estuary.  As we walked the path, these are some of the things we discovered:

Buckeye tree full of nuts

Great Blue Heron looking for its next meal

Pickle weed

Racing snails (look closely at the picture...one was even doing a donut in the slick mud!)

Snowy Egrets

Great Egret

American Avocet in its winter plumage

Ridgeway Rail ("new" species distinguished from another rail...considered endangered)

Once again, we can thank our geocaching for taking us above and beyond what we imagined we would find.  I found three Earth caches (no physical cache just the discovery of a geological area of interest with some questions to answer to claim a find) that looked like were on a second trail up a hill.  Michael took the younger two with him (Have I mentioned that Zaira was not feeling well?  She is well now.) and the older three boys were willing to follow me up the hill to find the caches.  We thought these caches were marking some rock formations a few feet from road.  It turned out to be a winding trail that took us up the mountain.  Our short walk of 5-10 minutes became a hike of about 45 minutes....but the views of the bay estuary were amazing!  I am so glad we made the hike...just wished I had gone to the bathroom first (LOL...maybe TMI!).  We also decided that the refuge would need a second look in the spring...we will be back to see the other half of the estuary.  With over 30,000 acres, I do not think it would be a good idea to try to fit it all into one visit.  We had hoped to see more of our predator type bids, such as the American Kestrel and red-tailed hawks; however, we did not see any today in the refuge.  Then on our way out we discovered them all along the road on the power lines.  

We could have stayed but we had other plans for the afternoon.  However, we had a date with a tidal pool and only a small window of time.  We cut across the estuary by van to make it to the ocean in time for low tide.  Along the way we saw an interesting sight...vehicle after vehicle with Christmas trees tied to their tops!  We had found the Christmas tree farms!  Unfortunately, we gave up on live trees many yeas ago...we decided Michael's health was more important than the beautiful tree in the living room...a fake tree for us!  And at the very last spot to buy a tree we saw some amazing creatures!  My first thought...I think there is a geocache there!  Yeah...I am addicted to this hobby and I was right...but no time to stop if we wanted to make low tide.

I am so glad we made the dash to the ocean...the tidal pools were all we thought they would be and more!  We saw and touched (gently) some of the most amazing creatures! Have I said amazing enough today?!?  We did notice that one creature of interest was missing...seas stars.  It seems that a virus went through the starfish colonies along the Pacific Coast this year and wiped them all out!  So sad!  Here are some pictures of what we did find:

Can you see the fish?

Or maybe this one?

Or this hermit crab?

Watch your step...creatures live here!

I thought this was an ugly  but interesting rock!

This is a anemone...never would have guessed!

...slowly opening back up now that it is covered with water again!

Fully emerged...and beautiful!

A lone seal hoping to enjoy a little wave

Zaira not feeling well but wanting to see into the tidal pools

 Not all the beauty was found with the creatures...I took so many pictures of the rocks on the beach.  Look at the beautiful colors!  I wanted to take them all home with me.  I resisted the urge and just took pictures.

We had so much fun and would have stayed longer but the tide was taking over the area...we found out that there was a storm surge that shortened the low tide.  So...with a little time left before we needed to head home...we made our way back to that geocache we saw on our way to the bay!