St. Patrick's Day Greetings from the Emerald City by the Sound

This year we celebrated St. Patrick's Day not with corned beef and cabbage, but with rainbows and paper. On Monday night we had a St. Patrick's Day family home evening where we talked about the legend/maybe or maybe not truthful story that St.Patrick used a shamrock to explain the Godhead to a Pagan mob. I have never heard that story, but I think it is interesting...shamrocks have three leaves (or three lobes of one leaf?) united by one stem--just as the Godhead (Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are separate beings but so united in purpose that they are often confused as one being. So in honor of the shamrock we decked out our ceiling (after first cutting down the red, white, and pink hearts that were there).



Clancy saw me preparing the shamrocks before FHE, and of course asked about a bazillion questions about them so when it came time for him to say the opening prayer, he thanked Heavenly Father for the "what kind of rocks are they?" (imagine this question repeated several times until we could figure out that he was asking a question).



This little leprechaun showed up overnight, much to the kids' delight!

This morning when I burst through the door to wish the kids a happy St.Patrick's Day, I was, of course, wearing green and Clancy was wearing green pajamas. Chloe, however, was wearing her obligatory pink pajamas with no green. When I reminded Clancy that Chloe didn't have any green and asked him what we should do, I expected him to volunteer to pinch her. Luckily, he surprised me by saying "we'd better get her into green!". He reminded me to have her wear green in his most frantic animated voice when I started putting on her pink tights (with a green dress to follow of course). He also very thoughtfully included in his breakfast prayer a thanks to Heavenly Father that he can wear a green shirt and a plea that Heavenly Father would bless me that he (Clancy) can't pinch me today (Many Thanks Clancy).






The green eggs and ham and Irish Soda Bread didn't make it to our table this year, we had leftovers instead, but our big splurge was some rainbow cupcakes with a cloud on top. A friend saw this in "Family Fun" magazine and made it for ABC school. I thought they were so neat that I was excited to make them for Activity Days. It was so fun, but I think next time I'll save myself the trouble and make it a cake!