Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What a fun holiday this has been! I first started celebrating St. Patrick's Day when I was teaching first grade. I researched to figure out why in the world there even is a St. Patrick, and ended up being fascinated with the story of this guy who was captured by pirates as a teenager, spent time as a slave in a foreign country, was taught and converted to Christianity by monks, and then escaped to return to his home and spread the Gospel in that pagan land. Anyway, on my Mom's side of the family, we're descended from the Ferguson and Calhoun families, so I love to claim a little Irish heritage.
This year we got carried away with our connection to Ireland since the weather prevented us from being in the parade as we'd planned. Friday morning we kept debating whether it was worth the trek downtown, to risk getting soaked with 3 kids, and finally decided against it. This was after we'd already enjoyed dressing up in our green and Elijah sweetly cooperated as you'll see here, to give us some joy, in spite of the gloomy weather. (Yes, James did break out into a few Elton John lyrics because of the sunglasses!)

After being severely disappointed about missing the parade, James and I decided to host our own local parade. We coerced a few families into gathering today, so we'd have an excuse to toss all this candy I'd stocked up on, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We took the parade to the Barlows' neighborhood, since they couldn't load up their kids and the 2 friends Amy was keeping today. I pushed E. in the stroller, I. and A. rode their bikes, and James threw candy, beads, and Irish flags. Though I didn't have time to line up a marching band, I did the next best thing and we blasted U2 from Ronda's car stereo. We startled a few innocent neighbors who drove through the neighborhood looking very confused at our silliness, and one startled UPS man took a flag and candy from James a little reluctantly. There was one lady who was enthusiastic and shouted a cheery, "Top o' the mornin'!" to us. Oh me. It was great fun and these pictures should leave no doubt about that.