St Patrick's Day 2014

Holiday's are pretty important in our family.  But we never really do anything for St Patrick's Day.  It's what I like to refer to as one of the "lesser holidays."

But this year I decided that the kids might enjoy some of the little fun things that go along with the holiday.  So I came up with some things that I thought they might like to do.  

The first thing was setting traps to catch leprechauns.  My cousins have done this for years and they usually come up with some really elaborate traps.  Since this was our first year (and my kids are pretty ignorant of the laws of physics) we just did a simple trap.  The idea was that the leprechaun would grab the can and then the box would fall on top of him.  I meant to only do one trap, but Charlotte got really excited and found four more boxes and cans.  This girl loves building things.      

 Derrick and Lydia were interested in building with blocks rather than boxes.  They really couldn't have cared less about the traps.

 After the kids (finally) fell asleep I set up all the fun surprises.  The first thing was leprechaun pee and foot prints on the toilet.  I knew the kids would think this was hilarious.  I made the foot prints with washable paint that I put on the side of my hands.

 Then I sprung all the traps.  I made it look like the leprechaun climbed out the little flaps on three of the boxes and tipped over the other two.  I put gold coin candy on the floor.

 The coins led to the kitchen floor where I put more foot prints.

 The foot prints led into the laundry room.

 And then into the dryer.

 The leprechaun escaped out the dryer vent.  But the two cans of pineapple were too big to take with.  He also left a special present that was brought all the way from Korea.

 Brandon drew this picture of a rainbow and e-mailed it to me.  I laminated it after it was printed.  I filled the box up with buckets and shovels for our trip to the beach this week.  I also added new swimming suits for Charlotte and Lydia and "new" ones for Derrick and Veronica.  I also put in some sunglasses that were from my Aunt Lori.  Everything was "from Daddy."

 I even put two little foot prints outside our dryer vent so the kids would know the leprechaun got out and wasn't stuck in our dryer.

Charlotte woke up in the middle of the night.  She told me that she threw up.  While I helped her take care of that she noticed the leprechaun feet and pee in the bathroom. She was so excited.  She ran out to check the traps and found the money.  Then she noticed the foot prints.  She followed them into the laundry room and found the package.  She was fine leaving it there until morning.  I'm glad she was the first one to discover the surprises since she was the most excited about setting the traps. 

I brought her into bed with me and the last thing she said before she fell asleep was, "Mom, the lep-i-can didn't flush the toilet.  He's silly!"

Lydia ended up joining us in bed in the morning.  When both girls were awake Charlotte said, "Lyd-e-la, the lep-i-can came and peed in the toilet!"  They rushed off to look at it. 

Here is a video of Lydia discovering everything.  It also shows the girls opening the present from Daddy.  He wanted me to film it so he could see.    

[Sorry I don't know why the video won't show up.  I think it's something with my new computer's version of movie maker]

The girls had lots of fun with their coins.  About an hour into playing with the money one of the foil sides fell off and the chocolate was exposed.  Charlotte thought it was a magnet at first and was pretty excited about that.  Then I told her it was chocolate, but she only heard "chalk."  She was still pretty excited.  And then when she figured out it was really chocolate she was REALLY excited.  I love how easy my kids are to please right now.

 And that was the extent of our St Patrick's Day celebrations.  It was by far the most eventful one I can remember.

Oh and here is a bonus picture for you.  This is what happens when your kids are all pretty much the same size and you don't pay attention to who you are helping get into pajamas.