St. Patrick's Day

The little kids woke me up this morning asking for help finding green clothes. Evidently we need to plan things out better the night before. Luckily, they all had things in mind and more or less knew where to find their green clothes, so they mostly woke me up to tell me they were going to look for green clothes. Alexander couldn't find his green pants. I couldn't recall him having green pants. So he stormed off and found his green pants by himself (as he should have done in the first place). He needed a little help finding his leprechaun shirt. Zoë needed help buttoning and tying her lovely green velvet dress. She's taken to wearing fancy dresses every day of the week. I guess since we never go anywhere that requires dresses, she may as well get to wear them at home. The older three were completely self-sufficient.

Last night I had spread out all our St. Patrick's Day goodies on the table. 

Usually we don't have any St. Patrick's Day goodies, but this year we had so much! It felt like we were being visited by little leprechauns all month! First a package from my sister Kelline arrived with silly headbands and clover necklaces and green bracelets and buttons and mustaches and all sorts of things.

Rachel

A few days later another package arrived, this time with a St. Patrick's Day beanbag game. We set it up to play right away but we weren't sure who it was from because there was no note (as there had been in the package from my sister), so I just figured that this was also from her. I snapped a few pictures and sent them to her and she texted back to say, "That looks like fun. But I don't think I sent it to you..."

Then who? I had no clue!

A few days after that another package arrived with some shamrock stickers—but still no note.

I put things aside for St. Patrick's Day, thinking I would just have to do a post about how happy we were to have received these anonymous presents...but then when I spoke with my mom on Sunday she asked if we had gotten the bean bag game she'd sent us, so at last I knew who our last leprechaun was! The mystery was fun while it lasted.

Benjamin

The kids were very excited for our St. Patrick's Day party this afternoon. All we did was dress up, play the bean bag game, colour some pictures (at Alexander's request), and eat some green cookies that Rachel had made. They thought it was the best thing ever.

Alexander and Zoë kept chanting, "We're having a party! We're having a party!" the whole time. 

Zoë

It's almost as if they can't remember what parties are really like (though I suppose this was an actual party, it was still only an "us" party). It feels weird to think that after staying in this house alone for over 365 days we'll eventually not have to do that anymore. It's hard to really know how to time our re-entrance to society or to know what that will look like. 

Andrew is halfway vaccinated. 

I will hopefully be vaccinated soon.

The library is back open—with masks and a temperature check—and I went today to check out more books. And I wondered when things will feel normal again. I just don't know.

But Grandpa (who is also halfway vaccinated) is buying a plane ticket to visit us in a couple of months, which is wild to think about. It's strange to think about seeing other people at all, but it's kind of nice to think that it will be considered safe to see other people again. 

Alexander

The kids are very excited about Grandpa's visit, particularly Benjamin, who has decided that they are going to go on happy little bike rides everyday—ten times around the pond! We'll have to keep him practicing before Grandpa arrives.

Alexander fighting with his mustache which unsticks when he smiles

Anyway, here are (too many pictures of) the kids enjoying the bean bag toss:

And here are a few pictures of the kids not enjoying the bean bag toss:

Benjamin was getting really rough and started pegging people with bean bags. There were also a few scuffles over bean bags (the game came with three but we pulled out some extra ones).

Here we are back to fully enjoying things again:

Here's Miriam sneaking through:

She missed most of the party because she was getting ready for her organ lesson, the one outside-the-house thing we've maintained (and only since...I can't remember when she started again...but her teacher—in spite of getting COVID between Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year (I can't remember now when their family got it)— has been very careful about masking and sanitizing and staggering students and so forth. 

Rachel made green shamrock pancakes for dinner. And then she cut up the shamrock pancakes for Alexander and Zoë and arranged them on their plates with a row of pears (white) and peaches and/or mandarin oranges (orange) to resemble the Irish flag.

Thank goodness these kids have a sister like Rachel, who will make them fun foods, and thoughtful aunties and naaniis who send them fun activities so that I can feel like a fun mom sometimes!

It was a pretty good day (and no one even nearly knocked their front teeth out or anything).