St.Patrilicious Day

I am usually quite a failure as a mom when it comes to theme-ing up my house/my kids lives for holidays. Maybe it's because thus far my kids haven't really understood about holidays or cared. But for some reason they have been super excited about St.Patrick's day all week. It's got to be the lamest holiday of them all. I mean, I don't even know who St.Patrick is or why we celebrate it, other than that it gives people a chance to wear great and pinch each other. But my kids could not WAIT for St.Patty's day this year. So I had to do something.

First, breakfast. Green pancakes with green milk. Daphne swore the green made the milk sweeter. Beck wouldn't even try his. But they both ate their shamrock pancakes.





Second, lunch. I thought they'd had enough of the green thing, but when I tried to serve them plain macaroni and cheese, they both freaked out and demanded green. So I died it green. Then Daphne said it looked liked slugs and refused to eat it.
Her bear seemed like it just fine, though.



Finally, a leprechaun hunt. When the kids got home from school, they spied a note left by the cat door and a sparkly green footprint. That tricky leprechaun must have been in our house when we were gone! The note said:
"I'm a leprechaun, and I visited your house! See if you can find me and steal away my treasure. I'm very shy, but you can follow my sparkles to see where I went, and if you find a gold coin, that's a clue! Keep on going. If you can find the favorite place for a leprechaun to sleep, you might find my pot of gold. Good luck!"


So we followed his advice and headed outside, because, of course, leprechauns only like to sleep outdoors where it's nice and green. There on the back steps, we found another footprint.


A few feet later, a gold coin with green sparkles on it. He must have dropped that coin!


We followed the trail down the sidewalk, and off into the grass.

A few gold coins left here and there led the way to the cherry tree in our back yard. There at the bottom the kids found a green pot and another note!






I guess we missed him. Shucks! Well, at least he left a bunch of treasure behind!




Maybe we'll be faster next year. Or maybe we can be more stneaky. Daphne's advice, after realizing we'd scared him away, was, "And next year, Mom, NO TALKING!" I guess next year I have to direct this whole endeavor silently. Well, a small price to pay for the joy of making your kids believe in little red-headed green men. Even the green stain all over my fingers was worth it.