St. Patricks Day

My goal with holidays is to have them be simple and fun, with a heavy dose of simple and just enough fun to add to the magic of childhood. St. Patricks day is one of those minor holidays that I usually celebrate with green pancakes and wearing green and call it good (with some rainbow fruitloops thrown in for good measure if I'm feeling really festive). However, this year Caleb came home from preschool talking about leprechauns and wanting to make a leprechaun trap. I didn't do much to encourage him but was happy to let him explore what that would look like on his own. He eventually asked me for some specific help and I helped him set up a box with a stick on top and some candy underneath to "trap" a leprechaun. Lydia and Austin both got interested in what Caleb was doing and decided they wanted to make their own traps, too. We ended up with five traps ranging from an empty cardboard box sitting open on the floor to a trap built with magnatiles, to an elaborately decorated trap with a pool of maple syrup designed to lure a leprechaun in and stick him to the trap. It was awesome. 

The kids set out their traps and I remembered at midnight, right as I was drifting off to sleep, so I woke myself up, printed out a little note (thank you google search) from a leprechaun eloquently saying "good try, better luck next year" and stuck some little green candies and a "lucky buck" which was a little green leprechaun dollar. I had some hesitency because we don't even do Santa - do I really want to encourage the thought of a little green man roaming around our house at night? Weird. But the kids were so thrilled when they woke up and checked their traps in the morning that I feel like it's fine. Childhood. 

Because we did the whole leprechaun trap thing, I felt like we needed to read some books about leprechauns that morning. I clearly hadn't planned on celebrating so thoroughly so I didn't have any books from the library, but we've just discovered recently that you can look up books on Youtube and there are people that will read them out loud. It's really a great discovery and we've really enjoyed reading some books on specific topics that we couldn't get from the library! We pulled up a handful of St. Patricks day books, including one about the real St. Patrick from Ireland, and a couple of fun leprechaun ones. 

We also (unrelated to St. Patricks Day) read a book about color and a painter who loved to use color, and the kids asked if they could paint. So I pulled out our paints and let them explore with color, which also seemed fitting because = rainbow. 



Austin doesn't typically like to paint, (or do anything of the sort) and watching him explore color with big swaths across his paper, dripping from his brush, and mixing on his palette was such a huge joy for me. 

I had planned to make fruit loop necklaces for St Patricks day, even before the kids set the tone for the celebration day, so I felt like the whole day was a huge win for me. The kids thought it was the best St. Patricks Day they've ever had, and I only spent a few minutes printing out some leprechaun notes, making green pancakes, and remembering to add fruit loops to my grocery order. Simple + Magical. 

December

Just wanted to take a run through our awesome December. 

The month started off with Shantel going with my Mom and Dad, Wendy and Amy to the Festival of Trees to celebrate my mom's birthday. The kids loved it, mostly because Grandpa bought them hot-dogs for lunch and scones as a treat. He pushed them around in the stroller so Shantel could walk with the others and did a good job keeping them entertained. 

I actually have no idea what this picture is, it must have been while I was at work, however....this looks like typically Austin trying to find any treat he can get his hands on.

We had our ward Christmas party (a breakfast with some  music and a little program). The kids made little bracelets with bells on them and got to shake them along with the singing. Both of them loved it.

This is one of my favorite things this December. We had some boxes out and Austin said he wanted his lunch (pasta) in the box. Once I had him set up with his "box lunch," Lydia also really wanted a box lunch. So I went to the basement and found another box (not quite her size, but close enough) so she could eat lunch in a box too. She insisted on a table and so we pulled over the kitchen stool as her table. The funniest thing about this was that by chance, I also happened to have two real box lunches in the fridge that were leftovers from a work event, so Shantel and I also had box lunches!

There was a killer meat sale at Ridley's with great prices on bacon, chicken, hamburger and some other meats. Shantel made an early trip in the morning to get some before it was sold out and then that afternoon we packaged it up into small baggies to save it and make it easier to use.

Buying frenzy. I mentioned in our Black Friday post that we did most of our shopping on Black Friday and the rest we would do online, here are the results. Box after box shipping to our house. Not all of this ended up being Christmas stuff- Shantel also got some maternity clothes etc. and other things that we needed. The big winners of all of this were first of all, Us, we got some awesome stuff and second Target and Amazon who lured us in with their great prices and free shipping.

We found out how awesome having a video monitor is, especially when Austin starts taking off his footie jammies.

Lydia and Austin ate about 100 pieces of "hot butter toast." to combat the cold weather.

We tried, unsuccessfully, to corral our kids for a family picture to use for our Christmas cards.

We visited my parents one Sunday and eneded up eating dinner there and our kids insisted and loved helping to decorate the Christmas tree.

I left the kids a note with an orange one morning when I had to leave early to work.

Shantel got our Christmas cards printed and then the kids helped her print the envelopes with the addresses. I was at work- but apparently they both really got it down and actually were each doing their own role to help her get it done.

Okay- this next thing is really my favorite thing this December. We decided to make Rice Krispy treats as neighbor gifts this year. However, we wanted them to be nice and thick and covered in delicious chocolate and caramel. Shantel and I spent an evening together whipping up the treats, covering them with chocolate and getting them all packaged up. There was a significant amount of laughter and we had such a great time. It was past midnight when we got them done- but they turned out awesome.

P.S. This is some sort of Christmas Hallmark movie on in the background to keep us entertained while we worked.

The next day there was drizzled chocolate and caramel left on the counter and it made the perfect breakfast treat for our kids. We let them try to get as much off as they wanted, but it was stuck on pretty good so mostly it just kept them busy without them getting much chocolate.

The next day they went around to deliver all the treats and Lydia did an awesome job as the delivery girl.

We had the Peaden Family Christmas party which included an awesome game of Christmas Bingo. We were using skittles as our pieces and for some reason Austin started trying to put them on his head and they were just sticky enough that they would stick right to his head. Then he kept adding more and more, it was so funny. After Bingo we did a giant snowball fight, which was incredible and then a White Elephant gift exchange. Our white elephant gifts are really competing to be the best, so usually you are trying to end up with the best treat. We ended up this year with some chips and dip (my favorite kind), chocolate creamies, a Hawaii hat and a paw patrol thing for Lydia. Also, Amy and Kevin who were in charge of the party this year (and probably should be every year, it was so good) set up a "photo booth" with props and we ended up with some awesome photos.

Austin walked around with the red nose, putting it exactly where it was supposed to go. It was so funny, but most of the time he had it turned around so he could see the red part instead of having it face outwards. Shantel helped for the picture, but he was really so amazing getting that nose in just the right spot.

I love this one of Lydia, so she is so cute and doing awesome to be able to hold up both things in the right spot at once!

The very next day we had a Walker Family dinner at our house with Birthdays for Matthew, Melissa and Brooklyn. We did not take many pictures, but got this of Lydia helping Grandpa Walker make the brownies.

We've had a great December so far, we'll recap the rest with our Christmas and New Year's posts.