Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is a few days early, but seeing as how I still haven't blogged about Christmas, I won't start patting myself on the back just yet.

St. Patrick's Day in my family has always been fun.  It was a pretty big deal when I was little, but sometime while I was taking a family history class in college, I decided that I wanted to make it a really big deal for my kids.  I like to think that I have some pretty great ancestors, and while I'm sure that a few of them were duds, I'm appreciative of each of them for making it possible for me to be here.  The majority of m ancestry comes from the British Isles and Scandinavia.  I really didn't know too much about my Norwegian ancestors until maybe 10 years ago, so I'm still learning about ways to incorporate Scandinavian traditions and celebrations in our home and family.  However, with a mother whose maiden name is Kiley, we are definitely in touch with our Irish ancestry.  Music has been instrumental (pun intended) in keeping us all in touch with our Irish background.  My grandpa plays all sorts of jigs on his whistles, and my mom has been taking Irish fiddle lessons for almost a decade.  I always wanted to take Irish step dance lessons, and last year I was finally able to live vicariously through Renae when she took her lessons (and we hope we can start those up again soon). 

However, we also have a lot of fun memories when it comes to Irish food.  For me, one of my favorite memories has to do with the scones recipe that my grandmother brought back from Ireland with her after my grandparents traveled there with my parents a while ago.  I lived with my aunt in Maryland one summer for an internship, and one added bonus was that she lived only a few minutes away from my grandparents.  Sometimes after work I was able to time it perfectly to stop in to visit them just as my grandma was taking the scones out of the oven.  Pure deliciousness!

So it should come as no surprise that we have always looked forward to St. Patrick's Day.  As kids, we'd make sure that each of us had something green on our pajamas the night before so that we wouldn't wake up unprepared!  None of us wanted to be pinched!  (And I had several sneaky siblings who were good at catching us unprepared.)  My mom would often buy shamrock stickers for us to wear for extra luck that day, too.  Then, in the evening, we'd have what was quite possibly our favorite meal of the year: corned beef, potatoes, carrots, and the oh-so-delicious Irish soda bread.

These days our St. Patrick's Day celebrations include all of those fun traditions from my childhood...with a few updates.  I remember always being interested in leprechauns as a little girl, so about four years ago, I thought it would be fun to introduce my kids to our very own family leprechaun.  I seriously don't even care if that's a departure from traditional legends.  Our family leprechaun is Paddy O'Brooks (Paddy being short for Patrick...never 'Patty' as it's a girl's name).  Sometime during the night, he creates a little bit of mischief in his attempt to hide his pot of gold treats from the kids.  Then, when they wake up, they have to unravel the mischief.  One year he made a mess in the kitchen, that trailed to the bathroom, and went back into the living room, and the kids had to follow the mess to their treats.  They've also had scavenger hunts with all sorts of clues to decipher.  This year was probably my favorite when Paddy O'Brooks created a tangled web of yarn all over our downstairs area and hid the kids' treats in various locations that the yarn snaked through.  It was so much fun to watch them follow the yarn all over the place!

This year we also watched a few movies set in Ireland, and I really enjoyed doing that.  We watched "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" and "The Secret of Roan Innish."  I really wanted to watch "The Quiet Man" with Brandon, but we ran out of time.

Since Brandon will be gone on Tuesday, we had our traditional dinner tonight.  While corned beef isn't traditionally Irish, the association is there, so I have no problem with serving it up.  I usually just cook it in a crock pot, but today I cooked the corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage in the pressure cooker, and it was AMAZING.  I love my pressure cooker.  All of my kids ate dinner like it was going out of style.  I am so glad they love it as much as I do!  I'm also glad I have leftover potatoes and cabbage so that I can make colcannon (think mashed potatoes with cabbage, onions, and ham mixed in), which is very much Irish.  However, I knew that I'd still want to do something on the actual St. Patrick's Day, so I invited a few of my friends who also have husbands gone in the evening to bring their kids over for dinner.  We are just doing corned beef sandwiches, green side dishes, and are decorating shamrock sugar cookies for dessert.  Then we are going to hide some laminated leprechauns that my friend has for the kids to find.  I'm really looking forward to it!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Erin go bragh

(Ireland Forever)

PS...forgive the inevitable typos in this.  I'm tired, but I told my cousin Kristen that I would write about our traditions today, so I did!  I'll add photos tomorrow, too!  The kids were so stinking cute this morning when they were looking for their pot of gold treats.