St. Patty's Day

I wasn't planning on doing much for St. Patrick's Day this year.  But as things turned out, Quinton was having a good day and he let me get more done than I'd anticipated.

For breakfast, I made the family apple cinnamon overnight oatmeal in little jars (more about that new recipe some other day) and colored them green.  I thought they were super cute and creative.  The kids ate them, but not with the enthusiasm I'd hoped for.  They wanted Lucky Charms.

Everyone got decked out in green for school.  The girls even had green braids in their hair.  My mom came over in the morning and watched the boys while I ran to the store for a few miscellaneous items.

For dinner, our family traditionally eats corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day.  This year, I wasn't up to any fancy cooking.  And I REALLY wasn't up to any loud, complaining kids.  I'd been shut down for nearly every other fun holiday meal I'd prepared this year, and I wasn't ready to fight the corned beef battle.  Besides, I recently read somewhere that corned beef isn't even Irish.   Irish immigrants had never seen it before coming to America.  I missed my delicious corned beef dinner, but I thing I was the only one.  Instead, I went with the easy, child-pleasing,  food-color-everything-bright-green route!  We ate green Macaroni and Cheese, Green applesauce, green punch, and peas.  (Oh, and brown sausage - just because David wanted it).  Healthy?  No - not really - no.  Fun?  Easy?  Yep.

Our home evening lesson wasn't Irish at all.  I decided to spend at least one FHE per month spotlighting someone in our family.  It seems like a good idea right now because the baby gets so much of our attention most of the time - I want everyone else to know that they're still important, special, and loved.  Bronson was our first person to spotlight. I drew names earlier that day as I was preparing the lesson and Bronson won.  He was so excited and proud as we shared the things we love about him, listened to him tell us about his favorite things, and watched a home movie of him when he was a baby.   Now the other kids can't wait for their turn to be spotlighted.

After FHE, we had a special St. Patrick's Day treat.  We even had a treasure hunt, with clues leading all over the house to find it.  It was a cake in the shape of a rainbow (one circle pan, cut in half and set on end) with a pot of gold at the end (a cupcake).  And that was it for St. Patty's Day.  Nothing too fancy, but more than I thought I'd get done.