St. Patrick's Day ~ 2013

The kids have gotten to where they anticipate the traditions of each holiday.  They were so excited for St. Patrick's Day this year, and it wasn't because of the corned beef!

Nope.  They were looking forward to Leprechaun mischief and chocolate coins.

They woke up to a trail of shamrocks, green toilet water, and some silly scenes around the house.



It was really fun that St. Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday this year.

 

We got dressed & went to church....

 


 

We came home and changed and had a relaxing day around the house.

 

Dan and I made a special snack for lunch and the kids loved it. 



The fruit was nearly all eaten by the end of the day.



At some point Andrew decided he wasn't wearing enough green and added some to his face!
Silly boy.  :)



Dinner was delicious.  Just easy crock pot corned beef and cabbage.  Dan and I always eat this and then say, "Why don't we make this more often?"  And then we don't until the next St. Patrick's day.



I made a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake which was a hit and was asked to be a new St. Patrick's Day tradition.

It was a lovely, relaxing day!

St. Patrick's Day 2012

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I welcome the break from the routine that holidays bring. And quite honestly,  I love any excuse to bake a cupcake! I rummaged through my party supplies and ribbon container last night to put together a little St. Patrick's day fun for the kids. Between that and some free printables & a couple ideas from Pinterest, we had ourselves a holiday.





Matthew set his Leprechaun trap up in the Living room. A friend told him that his big brother caught a Leprechaun by laying out something sticky on the ground. So Matthew added some tape at the foot of the stairs of the trap, and wouldn't you know there were 2 little green footprints on the tape! The trap was triggered and some chocolate coins were left behind along with a note....



There were shamrock trails around the house that led to mischief...Andrew's favorite was definitely the green toilet water and shamrock glitter floating in it. 



The kids were so cute running around to see what had happened in the night.  This is my favorite part of the day.  Their excitement and joy keep me doing things like this.  I love to watch them.



The chocolate coins were a big hit.



The kids were SO excited to eat Lucky Charms and after some initial hesitation, enjoyed the green milk as well. :)  And while Andrew normally loves scrambled eggs...



He wasn't so sure about green ones.



My bed headed boys enjoying their cereal treat.  They had seen this in the pantry and were very anxious to get to eat it.  We are usually a grape nuts, cheerios, fiber one, etc. family so Lucky Charms are a big deal.

Dan went to help some friends move during the morning, so the kids and I just had a quiet day.   I found some little masks at JoAnn's and they were such a hit!  $1, well spent.  The kids colored them, and were happy to pose with them.  I love how each of the kids chose to color theirs.  You can see the motor skill progression from 4 to 6 to 8 in this photo. :)



Then they collected all the shamrocks left behind and one would pretend to be a Leprechaun and left a trail that the other would follow to their hiding place.



A blurry Leprechaun on the hunt.



Getting a good photo of these 3 is just impossible. Matthew is so good about cooperating, but Kaitlin refuses to look at the camera and Andrew is usually moving around so much that he's blurry in most of the shots.  By the time I get the younger 2 to sit still and smile, poor Matthew's cheerful grin has frozen into a painful grimace.  :)  Someday!  In the meantime, this is our life!  And you can see by Kaitlin's dress that we had just finished lunch!

On a side note, Matthew and Andrew woke up before me this morning.  I didn't lay anything out for them to wear the night before (Matthew usually chooses his own clothes anyway, and Andrew can't reach his shirts).  They came into my room, both wearing a green shirt.  I thought it was great that they remembered to wear green!



I think all the mischief in the house rubbed off on this little one.  She told me she was getting the tangles out of Ariel's hair...I thought she was brushing them.  Nope ~ she was cutting them!  She has been a bit of a turkey lately.  I've heard a lot of people say that 4 is worse that 3 for them, and we've definitely been heading in that direction.  She is still by far my easiest 4 year old, but she's finding her will!  The dress that she's wearing in the photo ~ that she had a fit about when I wouldn't let her wear it last week?  Well, this morning, she had a fit because I brought it out for her to wear!  I can't win. 

She's also been finding excuses for things or blaming others to get out of doing things.  It's quite comical.  This morning she had her ballerina costume on and left it on the floor.   Dan told her to put it away and she asked me to do it.  I told her no, that she needed to do it and she said in a very fussy voice,

"But I accidentally weared it."

Yes, I accidentally wear things all the time too.  There's a new one!  She thinks if she says it's an "accident" then she's off the hook!  A lot of her sentences start, "I accidentally...."

Dan arrived home in the afternoon and we ran a fun errand which I'll blog about later and Kaitlin and Andrew got to see the Easter Bunny at the mall.  Andrew said, "I don't think it was the real Easter Bunny because when I shook his hand there was a human inside."



I put dinner in the crock pot and when we got home it was ready & so simple & delicious. (Thank you, crock pot inventor.  It's the best thing ever).   The boys loved the corned beef! And Kaitlin tried everything without a fuss!  (Probably because I told her that if she fussed about it she would have to eat more of it, and we set the timer and if she didn't eat it by the time the timer went off she didn't get her cupcake.  And we put the cupcake right in front of her).  But still.  She tried it.  We're chalking that up as a huge success.



And quite possibly the best part of the day? Green Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting!  Dan and I both enjoyed them more than red velvet ~ I think the red coloring changes the flavor a bit.  They were so good!

I put Kaitlin to bed and ended the day with Harry Potter with the boys.  Not the movie, but the book.  Dan and I are reading the first book to the boys together at night.  We're trading off reading a chapter a night.  We all sit in the family room and listen together.  Dan and I both love this series and while the later books are definitely too dark for the kids, the first one (or two) I think are perfectly fine.  We are both so excited to share this with them.  I know I'm always sappy and sentimental about the kids getting older, but there's a lot of fun to be had with that as well, and things like this are definitely in that category.

It was a great day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Hapy St. Patrick's Day!

This picture just makes me smile.  For a lot of reasons.

We had a fun St. Patrick's Day.  The kids were anticipating the arrival of the leprechauns when they went to bed the night before.  Andrew put his bunny and alligator by the front door to "guard it."

The leprechauns left a little surprise on "Andrew bunny" that got a big laugh.  :)  (I took video of the kids instead of taking photos, so I don't have many pictures of that early morning.  I wanted to capture their expressions instead.  They were so funny.  Running all around and so excited.  After they discovered all the mischief that was caused Andrew said, "I wish we could start the morning over and do it again." :)

The Leprechauns always have fun in the bathroom.  The Bug was devastated when the boys used the toilet that had confetti in it.  The boys however, thought it was hysterical. :)  Boys love potty humor.  At least mine do.

A partly dressed Andrew was collecting the shamrock trail left behind. The shamrocks led to all the mischief in the house (the kids were amazed that the leprechauns could take the train table and turn it over and put the storage drawers on top of it)....and ended at these...

"Mama, can you get it down?"

Kitti looked so cute, I just had to take some photos of her....

She was a happy participant because she was rewarded with this....

She didn't like all the talk of being Irish. (My Maternal Grandmother was full Irish). She would say, "Matthew, you're not Irish, you're Matthew!! I not Irish, I just want to be a 'Big girl!'" 

Kids' literal interpretation of things can be so entertaining at times.

We had a minor hiccup in our day when I couldn't find any keys to the van...Dan brought the kids home from swim lessons the night before and put them in his coat and then wore his coat to work.

Long story short, after me imagining hiking the kids the 1/2 mile to school (which would have been sloooow going), Dan told me where an extra key (that I didn't know about ) was and we made it.  But Matthew was late.

The kids had a fun lunch...

I set a festive table for dinner and when Kaitlin saw it after nap she said, 

"It's so pretty, thank you Mama!

That made my day.

We enjoyed corned beef with cabbage, potatoes, carrots and turnips for dinner. It was delicious!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Michelle, I hope you don't mind me recording Isaiah's cute story here.

My grandmother was full Irish and so this morning my sister in law told my nephew that he was at least 1/8 Irish. He thought about it for a moment and then said that his right leg was the Irish part. :)

Aren't kids the best?

We had an exciting start to our day because the Leprechaun's came for a visit last night!

My goodness, as if I don't have enough to clean up...those pesky little things made a mess of the boys bathroom...

they tipped over the kitchen chairs and put the ottoman on the sofa! Matthew said, "They might be small, but they sure are strong!"

Indeed.

The exciting part was a trail of shamrocks that led to bags of gold chocolate coins for the kids!

Mommy was a tad disappointed that two very excited little boys ran around before mommy got up and saw all of the treats (so I don't have any photos of them to share)....two sorry little boys got a little talk about waiting for Kaitlin so she could share in the fun...so two sweet little boys put the shamrocks back so that Katie could re-discover them.

And oh my, it was SO CUTE. We can't find our video camera right now and I was SO sad not to be able to record it because over and over she kept saying, "WOW!!!!" "WOW!!!" "WOW!!!!!" As she'd pick up shamrocks and tiny shamrock confetti. She was THRILLED. I finally remembered the little camera Dan gave me has the ability to record and so I took a short video. I managed to capture one "wow." :) You can tell how LOUD she is in this video! (Is it just me, or does everyone hate listening to themselves on video?)

The way that Katie is standing in the video with her arms back behind her is her "I'm excited" pose. Isn't that funny? I love that a package of doilies and some confetti can make kids so happy. (That's what is all over the kitchen floor in the video).

Our St. Patrick's Day was actually pretty simple. I'm nursing a sinus infection now and wasn't up to my usual holiday fanfare. Little things were left undone and Dan ended up just ordering pizza for dinner rather than cooking anything. But the best part ended up being just sitting around the dinner table telling stories to the kids. About them as babies...and Dan told them about the first time he talked to me at the mall when I went into the store he was working at to buy a CD during summer vacation, and Matthew said, "It's fun telling stories." He kept asking to hear more.

I remember listening to my parents (especially Dad) tell stories growing up, so it was kind of strange to be sitting at the table telling stories to the kids about what Easter was like when I was little....

After dinner I let the kids decorate cupcakes with green sprinkles for a fun dessert for them.

This is a terrible photo of Kaitlin but she was not wanting to be in the photo with the boys at the top and so I just snapped this quickly as we were about to run and get Matthew off the bus today. I just wanted something to document the occasion.

Just another sweet memory from the day that I wanted to remember. After getting Matthew from the bus I sat on the front step with him and talked about his day. Then he told me he thought it would be fun to put a stand in the front yard with different drinks and food for people who are walking by. He said, "I just want to do something nice for someone. I want to make someone happy."

These are my favorite moments of being a parent. (And just to keep it real, as I'm typing this sweet story the boys are upstairs getting in trouble with Dan for not being kind to each other! :))

I hope everyone had a fun St. Patrick's Day!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

The gingham gang...

The kids are at such a fun age right now for celebrating holidays. I'm trying to make the most of it as I know the magic will end all too soon. It's funny because I keep feeling like we're still hitting Kaitlin's "first" milestones, but we're already on to her SECOND St. Patrick's Day.

We had a great day today. The boys woke up to discover that Leprechauns had visited our house in the middle of the night! Those silly Leprechauns are always doing the craziest things. They're so naughty! This time they made a pyramid out of the boys' drinking cups in their bathroom....even leaving the cupboard open and the empty box on the floor!

We knew it was the leprechauns because they left their shamrocks behind...

And they left green M&Ms on the boys' chairs in the kitchen!!

And then they left a trail of shamrocks that led to the van and the boys found this inside!

At pre-school we brought the special "green" snack for day...Mommy's sugar cookies and green grapes. The leprechauns even visited the boys' classrooms while they were at the gym! When I picked them up they were literally talking over each other with excitement telling me about the "BIG MESS!" the leprechaun made!

After school we had Shannon, Claire and Grace over for lunch and some St. Patrick's Day fun. This was a little treat at lunch which was just made from refrigerated bread stick dough w/green sprinkles and cinnamon on it.

Then the kids decorated some cupcakes with "rainbows" and "pots of gold"...(I love Andrew's chubby little hands. They still look so babyish to me. Precious).

I got the idea for the cupcakes and the little clover bread sticks here. (The thing I like about this website is that they have many ideas for different age groups and also just some really simple, easy things to do to make a day fun. Things that are manageable for the children without an overwhelming list of supplies. Simple.)
Our little gang, minus Hannah, whom (who? I never know--grammar advice, anyone?) to Matthew's dismay was at school "all day!! AGAIN!!!" He missed his friend.

Two friends...This morning at Pre-School the teacher was remarking at how cute Kaitlin and Grace are when they see one another. It really is so sweet--they smile, kick their feet, hold out their hands--they really identify one another as a friend. It's so sweet to watch.

Anyway, as I was looking through my photos I just had to laugh to myself at this little grouping...

Here's Matthew carefully sorting the confetti and M&Ms into 2 piles before eating his treats.

Here's Matthew showing off his cupcakes. He's holding the rainbow up that wasn't standing perfectly straight.

Here he is noting that his shirt matches the place mat "but one is just a little lighter"...

And a few for fun...

(I didn't get many good photos of Andrew today that I could post...He was so animated when he saw the cups in the bathroom and I had fun taking some great photos of him, but little matthew was standing in the background in his undershirt/underwear and I think he'd old enough I need to be respectful of his privacy...he would have been embarassed if I posted the photos, so they'll stay in the family collection. :)But I have a cute post about Andrew that I'm hoping to put together this week. It's hard to fit in my blogging while I'm on my restricted computer time! How many days left in Lent? :) )

We ended the day with the traditional corned beef and cabbage and potatoes for dinner, which I knew the kids would not eat but felt obligated to make anyway. Matthew choked down his corned beef on top of a chicken nugget. Does that still count?

It was a really fun day.

Hope you had a fun St. Patrick's Day too!