Spontaneous Acts of Affection

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Small Successes

1. We did some rearranging and completely cleared off our back deck!  We've always had our grill there and since the grill is rather large and the deck is rather small there was never any useable space left.  We moved the grill down near the side of the house and set up some lawn chairs with a cooler-table in the now opened space.  It's wonderful to be able to sit up in the shade with a great view of the yard.  Even the kids love to sit up there!  I see this getting much use this spring and summer!

2. The garden is prepped for planting!  After digging out two years of neglect we mixed in top soil, compost, and peat moss.  We've also got our seeds planted and sunning upstairs on the desk in our room.  We even have a few seedlings coming up!  It's just sweet peppers so far but soon we should see sprouts for romaine, mizuna, jalapenos, peas, okra, garlic chives, dill, and cilantro!  We're waiting on sowing and planting directly in the garden bed until we have the kids early birthday present assembled... a sandbox!

3. I frequently take the kids to a great little playground near our restaurant that's fully fenced in. So far it's the only outdoor play area I've found where I'm comfortable taking all the kids by myself.  With all three of the kids prone to running off in different directions at once it's important to have that perimeter!  Directly across from this little playground though, is a short trail and this week we walked it!  All by ourselves and with no strollers for anyone!  It was a nice stroll and, for the most part, everyone listened well, ending our playtime on a high note.  (And the extra energy spent on the trail after playing hard at the playground meant that there was no fussing about getting in the car to go home. Bonus!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Enjoying our sweet treats.  :)

I also wanted to share how to make these awesome pretzel shamrocks. I found the idea in Family Fun magazine... I think. Not a lot of effort, and a super fun snack.

Lay out three yogurt (or white chocolate) covered pretzels and arrange them in the shamrock shape. Break off a piece of another pretzel and place for the stem. Melt some vanilla candy wafers according to package instructions.  Pour melted candy into a piping bag with a small round tip and squeeze onto center joints of the pretzels, filling in all the gaps and making sure everything's stuck together.  Let dry.

Tint some decorator icing green and pipe a line around the edges of the pretzels and down the stem to make the shamrock. Press down into a bowl filled with coarse green sugar.  Allow the icing to set.

Voila!  So easy and the kids love them. 

St. Patrick Prep

We've been getting ready to celebrate St. Patrick's Day tomorrow! We have shamrocks up all over the downstairs and a nice banner for our wall.  On the biggest shamrock we added cut-outs to symbolize the Holy Trinity.

I also made a paper bag puppet of St. Patrick using the tutorial over at Catholic Icing.  Addie will put her puppet together tomorrow.  She thinks he's so cute. 

We've been singing this super cute song all day, the kids love it! 

They will also help make some special green pudding (vanilla with food coloring... not a fan of pistachio), and we'll chow down on shamrock pretzels 

while watching this short Veggie Tales video.

St. Patrick's Prayer

May the Strength of God pilot us.
May the Power of God preserve us.

May the Wisdom of God instruct us.

May the Hand of God protect us.

May the Way of God direct us.

May the Shield of God defend us.

May the Host of God guard us.

Against the snares of the evil ones.

Against temptations of the world 

May Christ be with us!
May Christ be before us!

May Christ be in us,

Christ be over all!

May Thy Salvation, Lord,

Always be ours,

This day, O Lord, and evermore. Amen.