Leprechaun Hunting

Well, it has been quite the St. Patrick's Day around here.  It all started when I picked O up from preschool on Friday.  "Mom, mom, come in and see our Leprechaun traps!!!"  Apparently the kids had read a book about leprechauns and learned a few things from it, and before pickup time, the boys had engineered some great snares.  Owen's was made of wooden blocks that formed a little well, and a ladder up the side.  "Mom, you put a sign that says GOLD INSIDE and then the leprechaun goes up there to find it and gets TRAPPED!!!  And if you catch the leprechaun you get HIS gold."  Nathan and Matthew had other ingenious traps of their own.  They were all QUITE excited and are anticipating going back on Monday and seeing if their traps are full. 

Today I was desperately getting some cleaning done, and kept shooing the boys away.  Then I found that they were just gluing themselves to the computer.  If there's something worse than a kid playing games for too long, it's another child perfectly content to just watch!  That drives me crazy.  So, an ingenious idea if I do say so myself...found a crystal votive holder and filled it up with some Chuck E. Cheese tokens (gold) we had lying around.  The kids were already in their green clothing, so they were the leprechauns, and I hid the treasure around the room I was cleaning for them to find.  Usually they needed some help, so Owen learned about clues and how to interpret them:  "If the gold had fingers, it could throw snowballs without getting cold!"  OK, so maybe I'm not the best clue-giver, but eventually Owen was figuring out that the prize was in the mitten basket.  This lasted a good hour!! 

Then, the home-building of leprechaun traps began.  Dad and Owen worked on some new design ideas.  Owen constructed them from legos.  It was so adorable.  He *really* thinks he's going to catch a leprechaun.  I keep telling him that I'm not sure anyone has ever actually caught one, but he says he's pretty sure his trap is a really good one.

Me:  Owen, do you want to put some of the gold in the trap to lure him in?
"No.  I'm just going to put a sign that says there's gold and trick him.  Then he won't take MY gold if he gets away."

MOM!  You CAN'T blink or the leprechaun runs away.  See, watch [eyes bugging out trying to stare without blinking very forcibly].  I'm practicing so when I go to my trap he'll have no chance to run.

This is going to work SO well.  There is more than one leprechaun you know, Mom.  Matthew thinks there might be a billion.  I have one trap at school and now TWO at home, so I will probably catch at least one.  They are just very tiny [holds fingers an inch apart].

I think leprechauns might be nocturnal.  I think that's maybe why we never see them when we're awake. [Umm, that and we don't live in Ireland?  Hee hee.]

Caught a little movie of the leprechaun-catcher explaining his tactics.  Hope we don't have a terribly disappointed little boy in the morning!!  http://vimeo.com/38706681

For supper the kids ate their weight in corned beef, accompanied by butternut squash pizza (sounds weird, but yummy!!) and pepperoni pizza for the kids (wasn't sure they'd go for corned beef).  And celery sticks.  And coffee cake from breakfast for dessert.  It was a weird meal, but hey, I actually cooked it.  We've been eating out of the freezer a LOT.  Which I don't feel bad about at all...I think it's a minor miracle that the children have been steadily fed at all for the last 6 weeks :}  [The awe for her mother-in-law with 6 children further deepens...!!]