It's Official!!!

Helaman is a reader!!! YAY HELAMAN!! He is so excited! He carried around his book today and spent the drive to and from AR to drop off David reading. It was fantastic! Congratulations Helaman!

Did they come to your house?

Well, those tricky leprechauns came again! Laurence and Larisa, the leprechauns that visit us every year, visited us yesterday. The kids had prepared on Monday night for their potential arrival by making this leprechaun trap.

The top has a hole cut out and then covered up to act as a trap door. There are gold beads scattered on top of the covering and a sign that says: "Don't touch Gold Clusters" that the kids put on. The boxes and books are the stairs so that the short leprechauns can climb up on to the big box. This is what we spent our Family Home Evening doing.

The next morning the kids woke up to this on the kitchen table. They were so excited... according to the note the leprechaun's left, the kids almost caught them! Darn it!!! They get away every year!!! The good news? We got green snickerdoodles again! The kids love snickerdoodles and rarely get them...my favorite are chocolate chip cookies and David says snickerdoodles aren't the best dippers so they just don't get made often.

Then the kids noticed eachother's faces and all had to go into the bathroom to see! Those blasted leprechaun's stamped the kids' faces with a shamrock stamp! Can you believe it?

Vilate made a trap as well. Her's was for Winky at school. The first graders have a leprechaun that comes and visits and the kids have to make a trap for homework the week before St. Patrick's Day to bring in and try to catch Winky. We found the idea online and made it. The top on this "hat" is just a paper cover that has little bits of gold ribbon made to look like gold clusters. The idea is that Winky would climb the ladder, because there is a sign prohibiting it and we all know that leprechauns love to break rules. Once at the top of the ladder, Winky would climb on the top of the "hat" and fall into the oatmeal container. Yesterday morning when Vilate and all the other 1st graders in her class got to school they saw the mess that Winky made. He set off everyone's trap, left glitter all over the room, colored on the whiteboard, left footprints everywhere and who knows what else! Winky also left the kids some, as Vilate called it: "Leprechaun pasta with green cheese sauce that was so gross. Well, other kids liked it, but I didn't!" Winky also left some candy for the kids, a green jumprope, a black and green football and I don't know whatelse.

Overall it was a successful St. Patrick's day! Was it ever this exciting when you were a kid? When I was a kid it was all about pinching!