Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! In my family, we are always proud to be Irish (and Scottish, and English…), but of course, we get “our Irish on” even more so on St. Patty’s Day. We always like to celebrate with our annual traditions. This morning my girls both wore their matching green, shamrock shirts to school, and I painted my 9-year-old’s nails neon green this morning (much to her delight!). For breakfast, the girls had their usual cereal, but drank milk with green food coloring in it and used “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” napkins. At the grocery store yesterday, I bought each of the girls a green carnation and hid those in the garage last night. This morning I set the breakfast table with a clear vase with green-tinted water and their 2 carnations. I also packed a festive napkin in my 9-year-old’s lunch box and surprised her with green-tinted fettucine alfredo in her Thermos! I know she’ll be excited about that, because last night she was telling me about another girl at school who was going to have her mother put green food coloring in her bottle of water for lunch.

Both girls had a great time celebrating St. Patrick's Day at school today, too! Our eldest daughter's teacher apparently tried out an Irish accent today, while her music teacher taught them the Irish jig during music class. And my little one came home from preschool with lots of St. Pat's Day art projects -- including on on her cheek! One of the class moms was doing face painting and did an adorable rainbow and pot of gold on my girl's cheek -- very cute! And it was such a beautiful (almost Spring!) day, that we all went outside to play for a while before dinner. We can't wait until Spring! (I'm sure I'll be taking down the St. Patty's Day decorations and pulling out the Easter decorations this weekend!!)

Tonight we had our traditional corned beef and cabbage – none of us really loves the cabbage (I just use a little) but the girls like the corned beef, the carrots, and I always make mashed potatoes (tinted green!), which are a big hit with them. The girls enjoy celebrating and being festive – although when I called my 3-year-old “My little Irish girl!” this morning while I was getting her dressed, she got very crabby and said, “Don’t call me Irish girl!” Ok! Won’t do that again next year!