Happy St. Patrick's Day

When you live in a place with four seasons, March is the ugliest month of the year. Winter is kinda sorta over, but everything is dead and brown, and there just isn't a whole lot to look forward to unless you are rich, retired and can take a trip to Cabo San Lucas. 

We're not there yet, so we use St. Patrick's Day as a nice diversion from our boredom, "dun colored heath" fatigue, and seasonal affective disorder. (However, other than wreaking havoc on our sleep schedules, Daylight Savings Time is helping with the lack of light.) 

What do you do for St. Patrick's Day?  

If I weren't still dragging myself out of bed at the last minute in the mornings, I would have made green pancakes or something cute like that, but I have a feeling the kids liked their Lucky Charms better anyway.  

Everyone made sure they had some green on so they wouldn't get pinched.

I made Shepherds Pie for dinner, an English dish, since England is close to Ireland. (We made corned beef and cabbage the first year we lived on Shamrock Drive in Iowa City, but it didn't go over too well. I've also tried making Irish soda bread--not worth the effort! Maybe next year I'll try some lamb stew. . .) 

Then there's our Leprechaun trap. Will made it in 1st grade and it's been coming out every year since. Unfortunately, we've never caught a Leprechaun, in spite of the enticing rainbow steps and dangling gold coin (hanging over the trap door).

When we lived in California, several families at church signed up to do "Secret Leprechaun," a fun tradition involving secret ding dong ditch missions dropping stuff off on the doorsteps of the other families. Stuff like green bagels, shamrock cookies, potatoes, Lucky Charms. That's the least of things really--people got REALLY creative. We finally got into the spirit of it the last year we were there and made an elaborate treasure hunt for our family the last night.

So that's what my kids expect now when St. Patrick's Day rolls around, so I bought 6 boxes of Lucky Charms on sale a week or so ago anticipating the kids would want to do some sort of "Secret Leprechaun" mission. While a box of Lucky Charms wouldn't cut the mustard back in California, I thought we'd start small here in Utah. We didn't even go under the cover of darkness. Elizabeth, Rachael, and her little friend dressed up in the stuff we collected over those years in California and just walked right up to people's doors with their sugary offerings. (Elizabeth was in a funny mood, wearing Will's shirt and calling herself a hippie.) 

 Then those two boys in the backdrop decided they wanted to get in on the action:

They delivered their goods to their friend's house a few blocks over, and on the way back apparently got a lot of attention and came home with candy and gold coins that people handed out to them. You can imagine how this went over with Elizabeth. (She has a MAJOR sweet tooth!) I'm pretty sure she started thinking she could work this holiday to be something like Halloween, and begged to go back out again, even though we were plum out of Lucky Charms.

And that's how the party ended, the way they often end with children of young ages, full of tears and sorrow despite the wild fun.

The End.

P.S.  I got a nice email from my mom today thanking me for making her look like an idiot, since I alluded in my previous post to her former life as a soap opera addict when she clearly should have been doing flashcards with me.

I am hereby declaring to any and all people that will ever read my blog that my mother was the most industrious person you've ever met in your life. I have other very vivid memories of her weeding the garden before the sun was up, making hot and wholesome breakfasts in her curlers and house dress, canning food, sewing us girls matching dresses--she even made homemade Barbie clothes for crying out loud! Who would begrudge her a few minutes of soap opera viewing while folding laundry, especially since there was no Food Network or 24 hour news back then?

It's okay, Mom, I'm sure I was watching The Electric Company.