St. Patrick's Day Festivities

This year, St. Patrick's Day fell during Spring Break, and since we didn't go out of town that week, the kids and I decided we should do something fun on St. Patrick's Day.  So we sat down and planned out a St. Patrick's Day party with crafts and games and green food.  It was a little crazy, but lots of fun.  :)

Here is Dallin showing his leprechaun puppet.  He made it ahead of time so there was a sample for the other kids to copy.

Daphne displaying her rainbow craft.

Our crafting supplies

Lots of kids working on their Leprechauns

The big kids were big helpers.  Thanks girls!  You guys were good sports.

Here are pictures from one of the games we played.  Technically it's not a St. Patrick's Day game, but it's an Irish tradition that I read about and thought it sounded funny.  In Ireland, there is a race on a certain day of the year (I think it's the day before Lent starts) where all the housewives line up in the street with their aprons on and a pancake in their frying pan.  Then they run and toss their pancakes while they are running.  Whoever makes it to the end without having dropped their pancake wins.  

Apparently, it's a centuries old tradition based on a funny story about a woman who was late to mass and when she heard the church bells ring, she ran all the way to the church still in her apron and flipping her pancake as she ran.  

Since we live in New Mexico, (and also I didn't want to make pancakes) we used tortillas.  And since I didn't have a frying pan for everyone (or room for everyone to race at once,) we went in age groups.

Here are the 7-8 year olds

5-6 year olds (Daphne passing behind the kid standing in the middle of the race course just begging to get clocked with a frying pan.)

Hayden kept lining up with every age group to run his race, so he had his own special run.

Here are the 3-4 year olds

We also did the 9-13 year olds but I figured you get the picture.  :)  

Anyway, fun times.

We also had a wide variety of green foods--everyone brought something to share, so that was fun, and actually quite healthy--lots of fruits and veggies.  I made some shamrock cupcakes that didn't really turn out how I envisioned, but happily, the kids didn't care--the cupcakes were all eaten by the end of the day even though they didn't look like shamrocks.  I think the kids' favorite part might have been the green kool-aid.  I got a lot of comments about the "green drink."

I didn't do anything creative with green food for dinner, (in fact, we ended up getting rotisserie chicken from Boston Market)  but we had green cups and plates and napkins, listened to my Irish Folk Music that I bought just for that day, and then watched "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" afterwards.  (I think that may have been Sean Connery's first film--he looks so young in it!) All in all, a very fun, and very green day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!