Sorry, I meant to post this closer to St. Paddy's Day, but I'm finding that life gets in the way of blogging from time to time. I've always loved St. Patrick's Day. I'm half Irish, and I went to a very Irish Catholic college -- my friends and I used to do a rendition of a typical class roll call: Collins, Connelly, Cullen, Murphy, O'Brien, O'Connell, O'Connor, O'Donnell, O'Dougherty, O'Hare, O'Keefe, O'Leary. Anyway, in keeping with my Irish roots and education, I love drinking and I hate snakes, so I can totally get behind any holiday that involves drinking green beer and thanking St. Patrick for driving the snakes out of Ireland. As with most holidays, though, St. Patrick's Day has gotten a bit more elaborate than it used to be. When I was a kid, we wore green and possibly ate a green bagel. That was it. When I was in college, we wore green and drank beer, but that didn't really distinguish it from any other day.
Well, starting last year, leprechauns started visiting my children's classrooms and, yes, causing trouble. Turning the toilet water green and such. We tried not to think much of it -- we figured "okay, so there are leprechauns now. Clearly they are "classroom leprechauns," not "house leprechauns," so we don't need to worry about them showing up at home and ransacking the place. The elves really create enough holiday-related mischief for one year, thankyouverymuch.
But then Jacob started lamenting the fact that St. Patrick's Day fell over spring break this year, and therefore he would not be there when the leprechaun came to his classroom. We tried to explain to him that vacation is really much better than some desk chairs getting turned upside down, and pointed out that if it's an ungodly mess that he's hoping to see, he could just look around his own house, and he wouldn't even have to wait until St. Patrick's Day.
But the leprechauns must have heard Jacob's pleas, because we were shocked to wake up on St. Patrick's Day and find this:
We are thinking they must be bigger than those little elves, because there is no way that the elves could have possibly turned that brown chair upside down. Presumably the leprechauns were far more wasted than the elves, however, so it is still a pretty impressive mess.
If I could direct you to the hearth, where Jacob is standing, you will see that the leprechauns left a
The kids were delighted! The parents had a bigger mess than usual to clean up! Sound familiar? We're just hoping that the Easter Bunny will be too busy hiding eggs to be bothered with egging the house or whatever the next big thing in holiday-related mischief will be.
