Tuesday night before bed, I was reminding the boys that the following day was St. Patrick’s day. I told them that maybe there would be some fun stuff waiting for them…that maybe mischievous little leprechauns would sneak in and play some jokes. Logan sort of freaked. “Um…but those aren’t REAL are they mom?” (nervous face). I ended up telling him that they were pretend and maybe mommy would do some fun things for them instead. While reassuring him, I’m thinking to myself, “Oh…so it’s fine if some big, jolly fat man climbs down our chimney…and it’s fine if his elves (like our “elf on the shelf”) watch you all during Christmas season and play games while you sleep…even a fluffy bunny with eggs is welcome, but no little Irish men!? Come on!” To keep it tame, I just left them a note:

ignore mis-spelling of leprechaun…and messy handwriting.

The next morning, they were TOTALLY pumped when they found the note and started looking excitedly around the house for more stuff. (un-prepared mommy say “what?!”) Aiden was talking about how leprechauns turn all the pictures in the house upside down so, while they weren’t looking, I turned the art in the gallery upside down and called them over to see. Then…while they were running else-where, I snuck into the kitchen and grabbed the green food dye and squirted it into the downstairs toilet (they thought that was awesome…idea totally stolen from my friend Kristina!) Later, when questioned on how they turned the water green, Brian explained that leprechauns have green grassy feet from walking around in Ireland. They must have stepped into the potty on accident and turned the water green.

After school that morning, we made the rainbow cupcakes I had been planning all week (a very tedious baking effort, by the way). When all the big kids got out of school, everyone from our neighborhood playgroup was invited (last minute, because whatever…the more the merrier) to join us in our scavenger hunt and to share our cupcakes.

Family Fun Strikes again: here is white cake mix divided into bowls and dyed different colors. You layer the colors into a cupcake pan. I used a spoon to gently move all the colors to the edges of each cupcake…it took a while.

Besides some little color bubbles on the top, they turned out just like the picture in the magazine!

The scavenger hunt involved finding colors of the rainbow and the clues led from the kitchen to: Brady’s red chair, an orange magnet on the fridge, a yellow ball on top of a clue under the white board in the dining room, the green tunnel on the playhouse and then under a blue bag tucked by the side of the porch (guarded by a blue lizard) which covered the pot of gold:

Here was the crew pre-hunt

The older kids took turns trying to read my messy handwriting and words like “gotta” which one of the moms said, to the poor child trying to read it, wasn’t really a word. I felt bad! I actually didn’t plan for the kids to read the messages or I would have written more clearly (oops) I don’t have readers yet!!

Aiden, triumphant after the search with cupcake in hand (I added cool whip “clouds” to them right before serving…handy in hiding the crazy dots on top!)

This actually isn’t the best example, but the insides of the cupcakes were super cool! Another one I cut open had nice, straight lines inside!

Brady and Jackson were playing together a lot. It was super cute so I took a bunch of pictures. Brady was, unfortunately, showing Jackson how to have a sword fight with pieces of tall grass.

They had a blast together running around,

Later followed by some laughing and serious ponderings over chalk in the clubhouse tunnel.