Happy St. Patrick's Day

Kids make the holidays so much fun. Take for instance St. Patrick's Day, which was never really that exciting for me, but with kids I use any excuse to make crafts, cookies and have a good time. In preparing for St. Patrick's Day we made leprechauns. When I would try and help Bella glue a part in somewhat the right place Samuel would tell me it was their choice where to put things. So, as with all of our crafts they sure did turn out interesting!
The making of these cookies was quite an ordeal. I actually made the original batch the week before St. Patrick's Day because I needed to take a treat for scouts and was going to get two things accomplished at once. I was watching the twins that afternoon, but decided what's an extra couple of hands helping so I had all the kids gathered around the table for this "great" cookie making activity. But then the problems began - the dough kept sticking to the table, one cookie cutter was to small and the stems kept falling off, and one twin kept trying to eat all the dough and ended up in tears. Somehow I managed to get the cookies baked and a couple decorated for scouts. Then I went to scouts, but I had to come home a little early because Chuck and I had a banquet to attend and I forgot to leave the cookies. Chuck had to run the cookies back to the church while I quickly fed Isaac before we left. Several days later I went to retrieve the left over cookies so that I could decorate them with the kids and low and behold they were all gone! Someone had eaten them all - Chuck! Then Chuck felt bad he had eaten all the cookies so he made another batch late the other night.

I always wonder how Bella ends up with so much food on her face. Yum Yum.

When Samuel woke up (as you can see from the picture, the kids get up way before the sun even begins to shine a little bit of light) he told me he wanted toast for breakfast then he spoted the table. It was so funny because he got so excited and said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute - Oh the Leprechaun brought us Lucky Charms!" This is the first time I've bought Lucky Charms for the kids. The reason - they ate the whole box in two settings. But we will be making this our yearly tradition.

When I was buying the Lucky Charms I had a few funny memories come flooding back. I remember when we were younger Trina would eat all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms box and then Brady and I would have to finish the cereal with no marshmallows. And wouldn't you know it Bella was trying to do the same thing. I also remember that Mandi and I would buy Marshmallow Mateys (the big cheap knock off bag of Lucky Charms) all the time while at USU. We would eat them by the handfulls while sitting on our beds studying.
After eating the Lucky Charms we went on a treasure hunt. The Leprechaun had left a trail of shamrock clues that led to pots of chocolate gold.

The "Leprechaun" thought she was being tricky and took the chocolate gold coins from the big pot that was on display in our entrance and put them in the kids little pots outside the front door along with a bouncy ball for Samuel and a few necklaces for Bella.

Samuel being the observant kid he is said, "So the Leprechaun took our gold coins and put them outside. Why did he do that?"