Happy "Clover" Day

Maddie keeps saying, "Happy Clover Day" instead of St. Patricks Day.  We hyped it up to make the holiday fun for her.  She has been positive that she is going to catch herself a lucky leprechaun, even if the rest of us haven't ever gotten to see one.  We built a trap out of a Kleenex box and got some gold coins and Easter grass to go inside.  She even cleaned her room before bed because I told her leprechauns won't visit dirty houses. When she set up her trap before bed on the kitchen table, she poured some Lucky Charms cereal around because she says "it is his favorite." As she was excitedly laying in bed, she voiced a concern, "but mom, what if the dogs eat my leprechaun?" 

This morning she woke up to this note on her bed...

The leprechaun is a tricky creature

Sneakiness is his famous feature

I saw the trap with coins on grass

So I grabbed the gold and ran real fast

Your trick to catch me was quite clever

But just remember that I almost never

Get trapped or seen by human beings

I left some footprints all around the house

You didn’t hear me leave them cuz I'm quiet as a mouse

Follow my shamrocks with your first initial

And you’ll find a surprise it will be official

That my tiny little present will be full of good luck

I hope you have a very happy St. Patricks Day!

The poem is kind of pathetic because when I wrote it, I was way past sleep deprivation.  After we read the note, we went to see if he was in the trap.  Maddie was more excited than she is on Christmas.  He wasn't in the trap but had stolen the gold coins and eaten all the Lucky Charms.  I made sure to tell her that we must not have caught him because his feet prints were big so our trap was too small.  He left feet prints all over the house, destroyed the cleaning we had done before bed, and left prizes for the kids.  We followed the shamrocks around the house to find where he had hidden all the prizes. Maddie got a new critter book about luck (Just A Little Luck ), a new Jasmine mini figurine for her collection and some mini m&m's.  Connor and Bri got giant candy bars. 

 

I wasn't ambitious enough to make green pancakes, so we ate Lucky Charms and green milk.  For dinner we had beef stew and homemade french bread that I forgot to color green.  We made some St. Patricks Day cookies and Maddie keeps asking when we can have this holiday again.  She was so much fun.  This is definitely a tradition I have to keep up with for her.  She loved it! In her prayers tonight she blessed all the leprachauns and asked that next time she gets a "girl" leprechaun to visit her house.

She had to have green nails before she went to bed because she was SURE that if the leprechaun came and she didn't have green nails he would pinch her in her sleep

Her trap.  She cut the shamrock all by herself....She barked the instructions on where to glue and the colors and I did it.

The trap with gold and lucky charms, before the leprechaun showed up

The trap after the leprechaun

Destroyed the house!  Stinking leprechaun

Magically Delicious!

Making play doh cookies and sporting her shamrock necklace

Our sugar cookie rainbows, shamrock and gold coin