In my opinion, nothing makes a day seem more special than having visitors. And we had so many today! Fisher and Squirrel popped in for a visit today, and Squirrel will be sticking around Vermont, so we will get to have her company more often. Patrick also stopped by for a little while to see our program. He will be volunteering next year and we will see him more often. Today as we arrived it was so warm that we could play in the mud kitchen! The ground wasn't frozen or anything, which seems strange for us up here in Vermont, but any day that we can play in the mud we will take! Some of us also took some time to color. Then Chickadee and Squirrel brought out the baby pool for some sensory fun. This time, we had containers FULL of sunflower seeds to play with. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"8981","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-503","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"4608","height":"3456","alt":"IMG_2481"}}]] But it wasn't all play. We also filled up the bird feeders, and hung a few more. Our active winter birds (and squirrels) are SO HAPPY! [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"8976","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-502","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"4608","height":"3456","alt":"IMG_2483"}}]] [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"8996","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-506","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"4608","height":"3456","alt":"IMG_2485"}}]] After we cleaned up, we got our bags and headed to forest camp singing "A hiking we will go" as we went. One of our friends, O., was so excited to get to the arch of Forest Camp that he screamed and ran all the way to our sitting logs! We got our snacks and had a seat as we read Night Tree by Eve Bunting again. Well, we attempted to read it but we were all overcome with silliness and stopped to talk after every page. Chickadee didn't mind though, she liked that we were making connections to the story (no matter how goofy they were). [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"8986","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-504","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"4608","height":"3456","alt":"IMG_2488"}}]] [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"8991","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-505","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"4608","height":"3456","alt":"IMG_2487"}}]] After snack and story we checked out our very own Solstice Tree where a test snack was hung last week. And guess what? It was gone! Only the string remained, so this MUST be a great tree to offer some winter snacks to our forest friends. We hung up the remainder of the snacks we made last week and then Fisher showed us something cool. She helped us set up a wildlife camera, pointing right at our Solstice tree! Now we will know exactly who has been eating our snacks (hopefully). Then we got really excited about climbing our solstice tree and trying to break down a standing dead stump. Our solstice tree has a rainbow of fairy bottles hanging from it that are fun to swing. The stump was full of holes and what looked like chew marks. We took to digging the holes out with sticks. But, after not too long, we had to head back to the barn for the last half hour to make another treat for our tree. We made 2 more foodaments (food + ornaments) for the tree: peanut-butter cones and seed cakes. Our cones were pretty messy, but check out our seed cakes. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"8821","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-large wp-image-287","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"1024","height":"572","alt":"20151215_115442"}}]] Hopefully they come out of those molds okay! After we cleaned up our sticky mess, we ended with a gratitude circle, sharing what we were excited about or thankful that we got to do today. We are getting really good about reflecting on our whole day and picking something we really liked. It was another great day and I can't wait to check that camera! Happy Trails!