...and a Happy St. Patrick's Day to you, too!

Oh, the fun we O'Brien's have on St. Patrick's Day! It all started last week with William asking me what a Leprechaun is. I explained it was a wee folk who will give you his pot o' gold if you catch him...and they also like to play pranks, too. I'm not sure if that last part is really part of the lore, but I threw it in for good measure. Last night, William went to bed determined to catch that leprechaun. Well, his mommy is always two steps ahead of him!

With a bottle of green food dye in my pocket all day, ordinary things would magically turn to green and I would exclaim, "William...you just missed the leprechaun again!" and he would laugh hysterically at the newly green item. To give some "for instances," last night I turned a whole gallon of milk green. This morning, I asked William to grab the milk out of the fridge for breakfast. He opened the fridge and yells out "oh, my gosh! The leprechaun must have put his finger in our milk, mom! I gotta find that guy!" He then went to school telling the tale of his green milk. (I'm sure he got alot of strange looks for that one!) Later on today, I asked him to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge for me...low and behold it had turned green, too! And when we tasted it, it still tasted like water!

The highlight of the pranks would definitely have to be when I put the dye in the water tank for the toilet right before bedtime. When he flushed the toilet and green water came out, I thought he was going to explode! "The leprechaun did it again, mom!" But, alas...the leprechaun got away. No pot o' gold this year. But William has grand plans for next year, and so do I!

On a nostalgic note, I remembered a story from St. Patrick's Day past that I shared with Tom and he said I had to blog it for posterity's sake. Well, this happened way back when I was in first grade. The morning of St. Patrick's Day I was picking out an outfit for school when my mom decided to teach me a little bit about our family's geneology. She was explaining that some of my ancestors came from Northern Ireland, therefore they wouldn't have worn green since they would have been against anything Catholic/Southern Ireland (? not sure if I got any of that right at all.). Anyway, she explained that in order to honor our family history, maybe I should wear orange instead of green. Sure, mom. Sounds good to me. So, I get to school and we have a spelling test and after the spelling test we are given a printout to color. It's of a shamrock. Now, my mom never told me I couldn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but that's what my 7 year-old mind determined she was getting at. So I pulled Mrs. Beten aside and told her, "I'm sorry...I can't color that picture. My family doesn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day."

So, I tell this story to Tom and he asks me what my teacher's response was. I thought about it and really she didn't seem to be surprised at all. Then I reminded him that we were the only Mormon family in the school district and many people find Mormons to be weird, and maybe she just thought Mormons don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day! There you have it, Mom! I stuck up for the family heritage at the ripe old age of seven!

And a last note: we found out that you can hook the Wii up to the internet and purchase/download old Nintendo games (you just turn the Wii-mote on it's side and it's set up just like the old-school Nintendo controller!) We downloaded Mario 3 for my sake and it was so fun to play! I am absolutely terrible at it! But I reminded Tom that I haven't played in probably 15 years (oh, my gosh I am old...) and Rome wasn't built in a day...