St. Patricks Day Prep

What I have found out about myself is that I like to have "projects". I like to have crafty, creative things on my to-do list. Sometimes the projects are new recipes I want to try, sometimes they are impossibly crazy-crafty things I have seen online and sometimes they are just a glue-glitter-staple-paper-cutting mess! Having projects lined up gives some sort of shape to my weekends and prevents me from stewing around wondering what to do with myself.

So for the last few weekends, Orion and I have been prepping for our St. Patricks Day celebration. We decided to host a St. Patricks Day dinner - are we Irish you ask...not sure but I don't think so, but you know how it is in the States...it doesn't really matter does it? You can wear green and get loaded just like the girl next to you.



The little black spot on the mouth is a goatee - just like his dads!



Anyways, back to our projects. The first one was to collect small, smooth rocks on our walks after work. I had this idea that we could clean them, paint them and use them as place markers at the dinner table. This was a great project that took up lots of time and sparked lots of conversation about size and texture and cleanliness (!) of rocks. Second project came like a bolt of lightening as Orion picked up a stick on our walk and almost impaled my eyeball. The stick was curved just like a rainbow (ok not really but hey, work with me) and so another project became to make a rainbow out of this curved stick. You know like the rainbow that goes into the pot of gold! Eric managed to find gold spraypaint in town and we spent another walk with Orion's wagon out hauling bigger rocks that we thought we could turn into gold (of course that is the picture that didn't load properly...the big pile of gold rocks!)

And last but not least...we have a leprechaun door in our bathroom. There is this tiny door that is installed under our bath tub so that the plumber folks can come and work on our bathtub. Orion never noticed the door before because the shower curtain hangs over it and covers it. Well, a few days ago, he noticed the door and asked me what it was for. Of course this is about 0650 in the morning - I am trying to brush my hair and get ready for work, he's half naked and foaming at the mouth with toothpaste - so I take one look at the door and say "why that's the leprechaun door". OMG H O L Y S H I T B A T M A N...you should have seen the look on the kids face, priceless. Needless to say we have spent hours debating what the leprechaun does under there, if he lives under there, what he eats...and "mamma, I think we need to make a leprechaun trap!"

Our rainbow that will go into the pot of gold...O cut the stripes out and we glued them together (and our fingers and the tablecloth and the scissors...but it was fun, right?!)

Place Markers

The little leprechaun
 door in our bathroom!

Moyen Section D

Orion's class school picture finally came home! We kept getting these announcements in the dreaded communication book from school that said "due to overwhelming response, please be patient while the pictures are processed". I think I google translated that phrase at least three times but...better late then never and look what came home in the backpack yesterday.

I sat down with O and asked him the names of the children. He did pretty good and named about 80% of the kids in the picture. The kids have complicated names - no Tom's, Dick's or Harry's here - not even one Ashley, Julie or Amy but rather Mahado and Ahawa and Mathilde. Orion pronounces even the more European sounding names with this crazy Frenchy accent - so a name that I would recognize in writing all of a sudden becomes something uncomprehensible with a gutteral French accent. C R A Z Y

Getting Good with the Clippers!

I Heart Art!

O's impression of our happy family...note Eric's dreds and the fact that he colored himself orange!