St. Paddy's Day

St. Paddy's Day has special significance to us in this house hold. Here's why:

1. It's the anniversary of Jim's and my first kiss. The story is written down here if you care to read about it.

2. My brother and his beautiful wife were married on St. Paddy's day ten years ago! Happy ten years guys!

3. Our niece Colleen was born on March 17th three years ago. Happy B-day Colleen!

4. Jim served a mission in Ireland, so of course he loves anything Irish (we even named our daughter after his favorite Irish city - Tralee.)

5. Jim's favorite color is green. . . so he pretty much loves St. Patrick's Day for the excuse to deck out in all things green.

Those are all the reasons I came up. Someday Jim and I would like to travel to Ireland together. We're hoping this adventure comes sooner rather than later, but it will come. Until then . . . this is how we spent our St. Patrick's Day:

1. Woke up and made green eggs, green yogurt, and green milk for the kids. . . .and by kids I also mean Jim.

2. Tralee woke me up by climbing into bed with me, turning my face towards hers, and requesting "brown cake." I think she was remembering the brownies I made on Sunday. I usually only bake on Sundays now-a-days. However, since it was a holiday Tralee and I spent the morning baking chocolate cupcakes with green mint cream cheese frosting, and then sprinkling shamrock sprinkles on top. I would have shared them with our neighbors, but thought against it the twelfth time Tralee dipped her same finger in the batter/frosting and licked it clean.

3. After cupcakes I started on my Grandma's recipe for corn beef and cabbage. When I served it for dinner Jim announced that he never once ate corn beef and cabbage the two years he lived in Ireland. He ate cabbage. Lots of cabbage. Lots of potatoes. But corn beef? Nope. Not-a-once.

4. We all wore green yesterday. In this house, Jim will pinch you HARD if you don't wear green on St. Paddy's Day. The worst is when he pinches you with his toes. Jim has abnormally strong toes, and it REALLY hurts when he pinches you with them. So. . . the first thing I did was dressed myself and kids in green. We needed protection.

5. Usually Jim and I give each other a cute St. Patrick's Day card with a little made-up limerick written in it commemorating our first kiss. One year we both picked out the exact same card to give each other. Of ALL the cards, we picked the same one. Funny. Well, neither of us did it this year. We both forgot. I wonder why? We're a bunch of lazy bones I guess. Either that or we're not as sentimental as we once were. At least we both forgot so the other one doesn't feel bad.

Even without the St. Paddy's Day cards we still had fun as a family wearing green, eating green things, and dreaming of our future trip to Ireland.