Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Some luck o' the Irish

I don't remember the leprechaun coming to visit us at our house when we were little, but maybe that's because we didn't decorate much for the holiday. The boys have been waiting for St. Patrick's Day for about nine months, because back then was when they decided they'd start working on a trap to capture the leprechaun.

The one they had built, along with a plan for how they were going to entice him into the trap (fake gold coins under a shoebox held up with a pencil attached to a string; in hiding, Benny would activate the trap and Lou would pounce on the box to make sure he didn't get out), was long gone, so they worked the better part of the day on Wednesday putting one together.

Earlier that day I was under the impression that I had a 24-hour bug and went to school with Benny for his St. Patty's party because he was more looking forward to that than his school birthday party! We had ordered beaded shamrock necklaces for his classmates and teachers and planned to make green rice krispie treats. With being sick I didn't get to make the treats, but figured we'd pick up some iced green sugar cookies from the grocery. They didn't have any! So instead we picked out some chocolate cupcakes that had icing in the center (the only treat we could find that definitely didn't have exposure to nuts).

Spending the day at Benny's school was so much fun! All the kids and even the teachers were dressed in green and the classroom was decorated as well. We read St. Patrick's Day stories and did activities about leprechauns and gold. We talked about the leprechaun and how Miss Cathy said she saw one out of the corner of her eye when she got to school that morning.

When it was time to run out on the playground we set the trap to try to catch the little guy. We came back in twenty minutes later and the room was turned upside down! That mischievous leprechaun had flipped over chairs, emptied out toy bin and knocked over the puppet theater! The trap was down and we quietly checked to see if we were lucky enough to capture him so we could get his pot of gold. No such luck. He was too sneaky for us, but he did leave chocolate gold coins for each of the students!

When Daddy got home we went to a friend's St. Patrick's Day party. It was so nice to see friends that we haven't seen in ages. What was also neat was that some of these friends had kids our kids' ages and they were all able to play in the backyard while the adults caught up on this pleasant evening. The kids didn't (remember) know each other when we first got there, but in the way of little ones, were best friends when we left.

The next morning the boys came downstairs to find the house in disarray and the trap set off, but no leprechaun. However, there was plenty of candy in shiny wrapping--because leprechauns love shiny things!

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