I’m not Irish, but I really enjoy St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe even more than a holiday like Valentine’s day, because there’s not a lot of pressure for gifts or dates, and you don’t even have be in a relationship to enjoy the holiday. And for some reason, Ireland has always been one of THOSE places I have been in crush with. I even got to spend 3 glorious days there in college. I wish I could go back and finish seeing all the places I want to there some day. 🙂

So, in honor of this great, green day, we donned our green and pretended to give our kids some “culture” today. Which included a stop by at the city aquarium. Not sure how that one fit in, but Evie did sit on a green mermaid, so that counts, right?)

We almost successfully took pictures –or not– to send to Grandma of the shirts she sent for the holidays. I tried super hard to get a cute pic of the kids together… and all of them turned out like this or worse. 

Also, it involved bribing the toddler. Which is why she looks so sweet in this one. Chocolate chips do the trick, people. Or saying you can go outside to play after nap time. Whatever works. She likes to change it up often.

I made our favorite St. Patrick’s Day Shepherds Pie recipe, which is a lot of work and not entirely clean-eating approved, but worth it for a once-a-year meal!

And of course, we watched most of “The Secret of Kells” together… I love the animation and storyline, and it’s totally worth checking out if you haven’t seen it yet. I first learned about The Book Of Kells in my senior year of high school thanks to my mythology teacher, and then I actually saw it on display at one of our stops to Trinity College in Ireland, which was pretty amazing. Google is your friend if you haven’t heard of it before. It’s worth a side trip to learn about that artifact! 🙂

(Do you see what they did here,  people?! This happens throughout the whole movie.)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Internet! Or as one of my favorite brothers would say: “Happy Green Day!”