The Hacker Five: St. Patrick's Day Fun!

Poppo's artistic representation of a four leaf clover (clockwise starting top left: Brooklyn, Gage, Kynlee and Westin

And another representation with Jackson as the stem of the four leaf clover :)

The bloomers that came with the dresses. I'm not sure how frogs go with St. Patrick's Day, but I thought they were funny. (Kynlee on the left and Brooklyn on the right)

We love St. Patrick's Day around here! Not that we do anything very exciting, but I do dress my kiddos in kelly green every year and I wish that I had a good St. Patrick's Day parade to take them to. I grew up in Savannah, GA and they have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade and celebration (I think it's one of the biggest, if not the biggest in the U.S.). I'd like to come up with some fun St. Patrick's Day foods and festivities for the future, but this year we were out of town and battling sick kids (by we, I mean me and the kids, as Clint was at home working and coming home to a quiet house, I'm a little jealous of the quiet house part :) Granna probably would have done something fun and festive at her house except for the fact that she was wedding planning, working, helping with sick kids and still trying to fully recover energy from being sick last week. It never ends . . .

While we did not make any fun food or attend a parade, this was the first year that I introduced Jackson to a tradition my mom started for us as kids and we all LOVED (so I guess we did do something festive) . . . Leprechaun catching. That's right, we tried to catch a Leprechaun. We did it every year growing up and as far as I know, no one else does this (ok, somebody else probably does it, just not anyone I know). Jackson and I built a Leprechaun house to set out the week of St. Patrick's Day so we could try and catch the Leprechaun that was sure to visit our house. We took our Leprechaun house to Granna's and the trap was set. In case you are unaware, Leprechaun's freeze if you see them, but they are very tricky so it's hard to catch them. Growing up, we caught Leprechauns some years and didn't other years, but they always left a small St. Patrick's Day surprise (a clover pin, green balloons, stickers or something else along those lines). They also visited every night during the week of St. Patrick's Day and we knew this because they would leave little things behind each night (apparently Leprechauns are forgetful).

Jackson was so excited to see if we could catch a Leprechaun, so we put the house out on Sunday night and sure enough, we had one stop by! On Monday morning we found a tiny soccer ball and a tiny can of coke! Our Leprechaun must like soccer, just like Jackson (he was so excited by this). On Monday night, he stopped by again! This time we found two tiny dominoes and a plate with some leftover cookies on it (he must have know that Jackson, Jacob, Kristen and I were playing dominoes earlier that day, maybe he was spying on us and thought it would be fun to have a game of his own). Once again on Tuesday night, the sneaky Leprechaun used the house undetected and on Wednesday morning, we found another plate of leftover cookies, a trombone and a small painting set (it's a good thing he didn't paint anything in Granna's kitchen with his art set, she would not have been very happy). Finally, it was Wednesday night and we were hoping to catch the Leprechaun the next morning on St. Patrick's Day. When we got up Thursday morning, there was a note from our elusive Leprechaun along with a St. Patrick's Day hat for Jackson, a green pinwheel and some superhero stickers . . . but sadly, there was no Leprechaun, he told us in his note that we were not fast enough to catch him this year. We were a little disappointed, but still enjoying the treats, until . . . Jackson spotted something by the back door. It was Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien (our Leprechauns). I guess they were not able to slip out the back door before Jackson spotted them and they froze! Jackson was very excited and thought he would get to keep them, but of course, when we went to bed Thursday night, they unfroze and slipped away (without giving us any Leprechaun gold, oh well).