St. Patrick's Day

When Rex was 3 and we had just moved here and I was so bored and depressed, I decided to cheer myself up by making a scavenger hunt for Rex for St. Patrick's Day.  And now I have to do it every year.  And I hate myself for doing it every year.  I even complained to Greg about it and how time consuming it is and stressful and Greg said, then don't do it.  And I said, but then the kids will think I don't love them.  And then I had to run off to church for New Beginnings and Greg took the kids out to dinner.  When I got home, Greg said all Rex talked was how excited he was for the leprechaun to come and leave a treasure hunt for him the next day.  I felt slightly more justified.  And I think Greg saw a bit of why the seemingly silly things I do (making complex sack lunches or cutting out individual letters for cupcakes) are important and help the kids feel loved.

This year, I had to do 3 separate scavenger hunts since I do one per kid at their level.  Rex gets a letter with random acts of kindness to do while at school, which is actually really hard because his school has so many rules (no sharing food, no getting out of line, run 3 laps instead of play during recess).  Alice got a series of literary and math activities.  Henry got gross and fine motor activities.  He was not interested and mostly just got into Alice's stuff.  Their prize this year was a bit of rainbow (Skittles) and some gold (chocolate coins).  I wanted to do something cooler, but apparently St. Patrick's Day isn't a big enough deal for stores to carry little green prizes.  And no, I did not want to spend $10 a t-shirt for the kids to wear once.  Alice and Henry were thrilled with their candy.  Rex got his out of the pot of gold and then continued to look for more stuff.  When he realized all he got was candy, he said, "That's it."  He seemed a little disappointed.  Come on kid!  I just threw 3 birthday parties and am gearing up for Easter, give me a break!

Stringing her clues together to make a rainbow banner

Henry refusing to do his activities and playing car instead

Henry briefly sorted colored puff balls before he discovered that they're pretty fun to throw

Alice matching pieces of a rainbow with letters on them to items in the room that have the same sound as the letter on the rainbow.

Filling pots with gold according to the math problem on top

matching rhyming words on clovers

Henry really liked this one: he used tongs to collect pieces of cloud from the end of a rainbow (cotton balls).  He did this a few times. 

Matching captial and lower case letters written on quarters

Henry got bored again and used the sink from the play kitchen as a hat

more matching

One of these years, I'll take a picture of everything before I give it to the kids just to congratulate myself for all the time I spent doing this, also to help me remember for the coming years.  I really hope when my kids grow up that they'll look back and see all the time I spent putting dumb stuff together for them so they can have a special day.  Or maybe they'll just think, man my mom wasted a lot of time doing dumb stuff for us, wish she would'v just played with us instead.  There's never a right answer!

We had corned beef and roast cabbage, which Rex said was delicious, for dinner, followed by 

rainbow s'morals for dessert, which I proceeded to eat almost the entire pan myself.  But Rex missed dessert because he had to run off to baseball practice. More on that to come.

But we are ending holiday season, which, at our house, starts October 1.  We get a few months off before 4th of July, which I kind of need right now, because I kind of love and go crazy over most holidays. Oh wait, there's Cinco de Mayo! Maybe we'll make it Cinco de Cuatro this year just to be hipster (it's from Arrested Development season 4).