Green Day

No, not the band Green Day, the day Green Day.  The kids have no idea who St. Patrick is (and really, neither do I) so Daxton started calling St. Patrick's Day "Green Day."  It started to stick.  "Mom, is tomorrow Green Day?" "Nope, Green Day isn't for three more days."  You get the idea.

In the past I have kind of struggled to find ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, other than trying to find a green shirt to wear.  I know awesome moms who create evidences of mysterious nighttime leprechaun visits, complete with little green footprints.  I am still not there yet.  But I am getting a little better.  So we celebrated St. Patrick's the way I like to celebrate most of my holidays.  With food.

Voila.  Green pancakes.  Cora was excited.

And then, at lunchtime...Shamrock shakes from McDonalds!  So festive!

Cora is all decked out in green, and Arden has a green balloon on her shirt, but you may notice in this picture that Daxton is not so green.  Even though green is his very favorite color, he wouldn't hear of wearing anything other than his new shirt, which has a T-Rex wearing sneakers on the front.  He cheerfully put up with some little pinches from Arden and me, but finally changed to green later in the day when I told him that Grandpa pinches HARD.

And for dinner...we went to a Mexican Restaurant.  What?  Well, it was my mom's birthday on the 16th, and she wanted to go to a Mexican place to celebrate, so that is what we did.  (Don't worry, Preston still made me eat corned beef and cabbage, just a day late.  He loves that stuff.  Me, not so much.  The kids are total carnivores and devoured the beef part, but mostly left the cabbage part.  Can't really blame them.  Back to the story).  After dinner, we came back to our house and mom blew out her candles:

My sister Amanda brought over a bunch of balloons to add to the festive atmosphere, and we had some balloons still floating around from Arden's birthday.  All together, there were quite a few balloons at the Zaugg house.  While the rest of us were eating cake, Dax gathered them all up, and had someone tie them to his wrist.  He then climbed up on the arm of the couch.  I could tell he was up to something because he was so dang excited his feet were doing a little happy dance.  He gathered himself up and launched himself into the air, his face practically glowing with excitement. 

Then he landed, about 0.5 seconds later. 

I have never seen anyone's face fall so fast from utter exhilaration to complete disappointment.  He made a very angry little growling noise and then bellowed, "ARRRRGHHH!  I CAAAN'T FWYYYY!" He was expecting to go floating around the room, poor kid.  He's seen "Up" he knows how it works!  I grabbed my camera, but he was already freeing himself from his obviously defective balloons:

All in all, it was a pretty fun day.  Maybe next year I will really get with the program and leave leprechaun footprints.  Or at least google St. Patrick.