St. Patricks Day

We enjoy St. Patrick's Day in this house.  It was totally by accident but somehow, it's become a fun little day and we always have T-shirts!

 Nathan

 2012 - It was in the 70's so shorts were a must! Joshua

 2013 - Josh and Nate

 Joshua

 2014 - Nate

 2016 - Josh and Nate

 2017 - Josh and Nate

 2018 - Nate and Josh

2019 - Josh and Nate

So, the Leprechaun visits our house throughout the day and leaves "Gold" (Rolo's) all over the house.  The boys try frantically to catch him (and "he" tries frantically not to get caught HA!)  They always write him a note and he always writes back.  It's getting harder and harder to not get caught!!!! 

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

One of my March goals was to plan some fun things for St. Patrick's Day.  I almost totally failed but in the end I think I pulled out a few fun things and it was just enough for the boys.

 I picked up the shirts for the boys about a month ago.  They say, "I make my own good luck".  I think holiday shirts are the best!! 

Our morning started out with breakfast.  Lucky Charms, of course!  Now, Nate does not like the Marshmallows (say it isn't so!) but he loved picking out all of the cereal shapes.  He gave his marshmallows to Josh who loves them.  Lucky Charms were a huge hit!

For  lunch we had all things orange (since we are Protestant, after all!) so it was Mac and Cheese and Goldfish crackers for lunch.  I also put some "gold coins" (aka as Rolo's) on the table and told them the Leprechaun had visited and left them.  Well, let the stories begin HA  The boys wanted to know if I saw him and where he went and if he would leave more (which he did - they found them all over the house all afternoon). 

For dinner, we had our annual "feast" of Stuffed cabbage, Crash Potatoes, and Rainbow Jello. 

St. Patrick's Day (or as the boys say, Patrick's Day) ended with a bang, though.  Nate decided to toss his cookies at about 9:00 Monday night and keep me on my toys with a bucket near by most of the day Tuesday.  Hopefully that is one gift that does not keep on giving! 

St Patrick's Day

The green holiday is done and gone so I thought I would share what we did to celebrate.  I don't know why but St. Patrick's Day is the first holiday after Christmas that I get excited about.  I try to do something for Valentine's but I always seem to miss it - I guess I'm still recovering from all of the Christmas/New Year Celebrations NOT to mention the Superbowl! HA!

I shared on Monday what we did in Preschool for St. Patrick's Day.  You can check those ideas out HERE.

This year, St Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday so we altered a normal plans slightly.  We really started our festivities after we got home from church but the boys DID wear their St. Patrick's Day shirts to church :-)  We got new shirts this year since they had worn out the shirts I got two years ago !!  Here are my little Leprechauns!!

I'll be honest, originally, I had a few activities planned but, our Sunday's are kinda laid back and relaxed.  The boys (mostly Josh and Darryl HA) get to play video games, Nate actually gets to play the Bible game by himself on the computer and I . .. just relax :-)  The ideas I planned I'm going to tuck away in our holiday binder to use next year.

We did do a few fun things.  One, I found a cute idea over at Once Upon a Dream and made 3 leaf clovers for a special treat.

Yes, I ran out of green M and M's :-)  So, these were fun and are super rich but they are a little tedious to make. Next year, I'll have the boys each make a small tray themselves - they can do the work!! :-)

Unlike people who make Corned Beef and Cabbage, we Cabbage and . . Beef with Crash Potaotes (AKA Stuffed Cabbage and Potatoes) and Layered Jell-0.  For the record, Josh was quick to point that my Rainbow Jell-o was not in the right order!!.  For dessert we had Green Pudding with treasures in the bottom.

 Nate did not like the pudding so he just dug for his treat (A Rolo!)

 Josh ate some of his pudding until he found his treat- then he stopped!!!

After dinner the boys took the annual Green Bath (A drop of food coloring does wonders!). Sorry, no photos, they were in the bath before I could snap any of the water.

Our last activity of the day was a treasure hunt.  I hid Rolo's around the house (we don't like the gold, chocolate coins) and the boys had fun finding them (and eating some!).

(Excuse the Christmas PJ's HA - Note to Self - buy some green PJ's next year!!)

Hope your day was as fun as ours :-)

March Preschool

We had another fun week with Preschool!  Check out these fun activities.

 I had a brainstorm last week.  I was tired of handing out papers every day so I bought each of the boys a 3 ring binder.  Now, I put our daily work in their binders and just add to it each day. This makes it easy for review and the boys are much more involved in their daily work now.  We still need to make covers for their binders sometime in the next few weeks.

 Don't you love this Easel?  I do - it was free!  Someone in the Homeschool group I'm a member off offered this up last week for the first taker.  The boys love it and play with it every single day.  Eventually, when the newness wears off, we'll use it more for school but right now, they just love to draw all day.

 One of our creative Projects for St Patrick's Day.  I found the idea over at Our Small-Town Idaho Life.  As you might notice - we were very "free" with our rainbow concept HA  Josh only wanted on streamer on his but he actually drew a rainbow whereas Nate like streamers but just colored in black.  I plan on sticking this idea in our "Holiday" binder to come back to next year.

 Sometimes the boys like to clean.  They wanted to clean the sink and spent about 30 minutes working together on that project.

 We colored a "In like a Lamb, Out like a Lion" page from Twisty Noodle.

 We also did some pepper painting to make shamrocks with an idea from Train up a Child - Learn as we go.  The boys did really well until they decided they liked finger painting instead :-)

 I have to share this - one of my goals for this "semester" is for the boys to write their names.  Josh wrote his name by himself - once he was done, he came to find me and show me what he did - he was so proud!

 Play time with daddy counts as learning too!  They are expert train builders.

Remember that one of my February Too Cute  was to put up a quote for my kids artwork?  Well, I ordered it and put it on the fridge where we hang our best artwork.  Right now we have our two St Patrick's Day crafts and the butterflies they made in Kid's Korner at church. I purchased the Vinyl from Sassy Sites.  She is great to work with and gets projects in the mail quickly!

 This week we worked on the song "I am a C"  - Josh loved reading the letters so we had to sing it REALLY slow!

A few last photos of our paint project.  :-)

Linking up over at:

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day dawned bright and sunny!  We are having amazing, unseasonably warm weather right now.  We've already days of 80 degrees, yet it is just the middle of March.  The question is, will it stay this warm and only get warmer or will we get one more bought of winter?  We enjoyed a day at home; my husband worked but was home before 4:00 so we had lots of time to hang out before bedtime. 

We've kinda run into a road block this week and I wanted to overcome it because the boys had special shirts to wear!  The road block?  Something called "Shirts with short sleeves".  Geesh, you would have thought I was asking them to run naked - I just wanted them to wear short sleeves but they have both refused telling me things like "That shirt is too small" or "That is just not right mama" HA  Even on a day that was over 80 last week - they were both in long sleeves, jeans, and had socks on!!!  So, I slipped shorts on them both - no big deal.  Then came the shirts . .. well, we compromised.  They wore the shirts but had to have jackets on . . they were insane!  I did tell them that they could not go outside unless the took the jackets off or they would get too hot.  Finally, the draw to play outside won and they took off the coats.  I'm hoping tomorrow we won't have to compromise :-) 

Here are some fun photos from our day!

 Nate and Josh both wanted to color, glue, and cut today so we got down all of the fun stuff.  They are both really good and generally only color on the paper. 

 I got out our St. Patrick's Day stuff and they loved it.  The shirts I picked up last year but bought 1 size bigger so they could wear them two years in a row.  I'm glad I did.  Now, I'll keep them out for the summer for the boys to get all of the use out of them that they can.  The Shamrock blinking necklaces were fantastic and they "Ears" - well, they were hopping like bunnies all over HA!  One freaky moment - the Shamrocks were attached to the necklaces with a metal ring.  Nate managed to get his unwound . . .then I heard a blood curdling scream and found him standing with the metal piece coming out of his mouth.  At first glance, we thought it was in the roof of his mouth but, thankfully, he had managed to get it between his front two teeth right at the gum line so we were able to get it back out easily.  Yikes!  Not fun! He was running around mere seconds after we got it out though so he was fine.

 This year, we did not do Corned Beef (I did make it last year).  As I was thinking about what to make this year, the thought of Corned Beef literally make my stomach turn.  Instead I made Stuffed Cabbage rolls . .. .See, It had beef and cabbage . .. I told my husband I should have put corn in them and then I would have had "corned beef" HA!  The Cabbage Rolls are fantastic!  Then I took the rest of the cabbage and added it to potatoes and carrots in a roasting pan with Nature's Seasoning and chicken broth and cooked them at about 225 degrees for 4 hours - they were soooo good!  I also made the yummy rainbow salad (the only thing the boys ate HA!)  And, for dessert, we had "Shamrock Cups" (Vanilla Pudding with some green food coloring and they have a gold wrapped chocolate coin in the bottom!!)

 As soon as the boys were done eating they were back outside and were digging in the dirt.  I love the photos of the boys playing . . with dirty faces and hands!

So yes, we had a fabulous day!