The night before St. Paddy's day...

Ok, so these pictures aren't in the right order, but I thought you might enjoy a picture of what the hat that we found in the leprechaun trap looked like.

Now this is the trap that we made. I found some ideas online and this is what we came up with. First you have to know some things about leprechauns. For example, they have huge egos, so they can't resist stopping to admire something that looks like what they wear or do, so we made a large hat. Next they love to break the rules and get away with it so, we made signs saying "do not climb" to get them to go up the ladder. Next, they love nature stuff, so we made the ladder out of twigs we found. And Finally, we put some "gold" on top of the false hat top to entice them to go get it, thus causing the false top to fall with the leprechaun, trapping him. Savannah and I made the hat and false top and Leila and I made the ladder and signs. Leila didn't want to take any chances of missing any leprechaun, so the other sign says "no leprechaun bees [i.e., are] allowed," thus further enticing one to go into the hat.

This is a picture of the girls setting up the trap before bed time. I had so much fun with this. The girls loved learning about the leprechauns and were so excited to see what a real one looked like. They were convinced that the pictures we saw did not accurately depict what a real one looked like. They were not interested in the gold or candy aspect of it, but just to see one. I read online that one mom left leprechaun kiss marks on the kids' cheeks. Another one painted black a pair of Barbie doll shoes for the leprechaun shoes that got left in the trap. I think we could have fun with this each year. The girls have been wondering what they need to do to catch a girl leprechaun. I guess we will have to work on that.

St. Paddy's Day...Better late than never

Dale asked me to write about St. Patrick's Day, so here we go. It started off with a green bath in candlelight while painting pictures with shaving cream. The girls loved the glow of the candlelight and every time Colette got some shaving cream she tried to rub it on her leg only to watch it disolve in the water. She was pretty fascinated by it and kept begging for more. Next was our green breakfast, which consisted of green eggs with spinach mixed in to make it green, green grape juice, green grapes, and green waffles. We read Green Eggs and Ham while we ate. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, even Dale.

Next we went outside to check out our Leprechaun hat trap. The girls were anxious to see their caught leprechaun. But to our disappointment, we only found chocolate gold coins, a leprechaun hat, and a note telling us that our trap was not clever enough to catch him. We did manage to get his hat. I guess that is a start.

Finally, we went on a treasure hunt. I found a poem online about how if you leave a treasure box in the moon light the night before St. Paddy's day, when the leprechauns come out they have to fill the treasure box, but since they like to be tricky they also hide it. If you can't find it before the day is done, then they get all their gold and goodies back. So I hid small scraps of paper rolled up around the house and the girls followed the clues till they found their treasure box. In the photo to the left, Colette is admiring what the leprechaun left us. She loves chocolate anything and has a knack for knowing if its the real deal or not. We didn't have to tell her what to do with this treasure. And that was our day. It was fun.