Our St. Patrick's Day celebrations began on Wednesday evening with our 2nd Annual Moore Family St. Patty's Day dinner. Carolyn made her yummy lamb stew, seasoned carrots, and baked cabbage. Daniel and I made a beer braised Irish beef stew that we ladled over colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage, bacon, & parsley mixed in), and Daniel made homemade Irish soda bread. Everything was delicious and it was fun to spend time with the family enjoying festive food.
I was happy to be able to use my handmade St. Patty's Day cloth napkins again!
Daniel's bread looked beautiful! He is so talented! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it until it was almost all gone. He made two loaves: one plain and one with raisins and cranberries. Delicious!
Here's the whole crew minus Jonathan, Lizzie and me...
Love these ladies!
Doesn't everybody roast marshmallows on St. Patrick's Day?!
The boys told Grandpa that they wanted a bonfire with marshmallows. I think it's fair to say that one might equate having grandparents with having a genie in a bottle! ;) What a couple of lucky boys!
Uncle Lucas was outside reading his Bible with a flashlight.
His two faithful followers:
Note: I'm pretty sure the flashlight in the mouth was not Lucas' idea.
Lately whenever I ask Aden to smile he gives me this silly "Arr..." pirate smile.
Ha! Check out Dave's marshmallow...charred to perfection!
Then the kids woke up to a bunch of green goodies on the table...so fun!
Stickers, green phonics readers (thanks Grammy and Grandpoo!), a green whiffle ball, a green Mardi Gras necklace, a green matchbox car, a green kaleidescope, a green ruler, a green stencil/ruler, and a St. Patrick's Day card with $ in it (from Grandpoo and Grammy)! I have so much fun picking all of this stuff out for the kids, can you tell?!
Not that it matters for THIS girl (who is my rough and tumble, monster truck drivin', dog-piling, ball kickin', bat swingin', tree (and rusted metal fence) climbin') girl but I was excited to find a decidedly girly looking green matchbox car! =)
And like the car, ANY stickers will do. These ones happened to be St. Patrick's Day stickers but they could have been Christmas stickers for all she cared. She had the entire sheet peeled off and stuck to her arm and hand within 5 minutes. Before I had kids this type of "waste" would have driven me crazy! My thinking has definitely shifted. Nowadays it goes a little more like this: She's happy. check. She's safely occupied. check. We're good to go!
And an added bonus: She was looking more festive by the minute. =)
Jon Jon giving his kaleidescope a whirl...literally.
Grammy and Grandpoo sent the boys four phonics readers with green covers (among other fun things), and the boys LOVED them. The spent a long time reading them to us and to each other and they colored several of the pages as well. It was a nice activity for the morning.
Aden has gotten so much neater with his coloring. We're really proud of the progress he's made!
Jonathan too!
Last year on St. Patrick's Day we ate green food all day. This year it was a little more low-key...mostly due to the fact that I didn't plan well enough in advance and with our car in the shop an additional trip to the store wasn't in the cards. I will say, though, that green sprinkles were a lovely way to add a touch of green to food without the mess of food coloring. This was part of their breakfast: A blueberry bagel with cream cheese, topped with green sprinkles. The rest of the day we pretty much had regular food. A few touches of green were celery, lime jello, and grapes. For dinner we had leftover Irish stew. Yum!
One of the highlights of our day...the shamrock hunt!
Each shamrock had a clue on it that led them to the next clue. There were twelve clues in all.
Thanks Mom for your creative and clever clue contributions!
And the last clue led them to this...
I meant to have gold wrapped chocolates again like last year (you know, a pot o' gold) but I completely forgot to get them when I was in town. Thankfully we had Skittles on hand. I figured I could go with the rainbow theme this year. And I added a gold star to the Hershey kisses...
And, in case you're wondering, I ate most of Sissy's candy. She's a little on the young side for this stuff, right?!
The boys amused themselves for a while with Chutes and Ladders.
This is not my favorite children's game, that's for sure.
Grammy sent this dress for Elizabeth several months ago. It fits her perfectly now and it was a perfectly darling dress for St. Patrick's Day! Thanks Grammy!
They REALLY got into it! And so did I! Dancing with kids is such a happy, carefree kind of fun!
And it's good exercise. Here they are catching their breath between songs.
Not a great picture but I loved the spontaneous "arm around his sis" moment.
For this craft I gathered a bunch of green things: buttons, sequins, stickers, ribbon, yarn, foam shapes, and pipe cleaners. The kids and I also cut green pictures and bits of green paper out of magazines. (Well, I should clarify. The kids looked for green pictures in magazines, found really cute ones, and then I held my breath and sat on my hands (so as to not take over) as they mangled them cut them out with their scissors and their limited fine motor skills. Once they were done mangling them cutting them out, I intercepted them as they were dropped into the bowl of green clippings and went about salvaging what I could.) Together we managed to gather quite a few green clippings. Next, we glued the various green objects to our shamrocks as a fun and different way to "color" them green. They turned out really cute and we all really enjoyed this project. Jonathan enjoyed it so much he made two!
Mine
Aden's
Jonathan's #1
Jonathan's #2
To make things a little more festive...
Fine motor skills practice, fun, and dessert all in one package!
Stringing green Fruit Loops on a yarn necklace and then eating it!
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
3 comments:
Darn Aimee, you really go all out for St. Pat's Day. What a fun and creative day... Good job!!
Jesse's right...you go out more than any person I know - even people who ARE Irish : ) You are a great mommy!
It would have been fun to be a part of the Moore dinner. It's always fun to see all of you together, but it's a little sad too, to see what we're missing. Maybe we should shift our holiday travel to St. Patty's day from now on.
Hugs and kisses to you all!
Aimee - amazing, really. You are such a great mama and your sweet babies are blessed to have you.
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