To Catch a Leprechaun

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Sean's teacher assigned an optional project - a leprechaun trap!  I asked Sean if he wanted to make one and he said yes! After we brainstormed together and I searched the Internet for ideas, we decided on a design. The design was also influenced by a tip from Sean's grandpa that leprechauns are not very good climbers unless they have a ladder :-)  Essentially, we'd lure a leprechaun with pennies as bait to the trap and up a ladder leading the leprechaun to the top of a tall oatmeal tub, and then the leprechaun would fall in and be stuck!

With Clare helping, we started with an empty oatmeal tub and began to paint it green...

...and then we took a short break for some drama over who got to use the purple paintbrush (hint: it wasn't Clare):

That didn't last too long and soon we were all calm and painting the tub green together :-)  Once it was painted, we set it aside to dry and focused our attention on the bait - shiny pennies!  But we didn't have any pennies that were super-shiny, so we took a little science break to shine up our pennies.  First, we made a solution of white vinegar and salt.

Next, we soaked 4 or 5 pennies at a time for about 10 seconds.  

Then, we rinsed the pennies in water.  

And finally, we dried them off and polished them until they shined bright enough to attract leprechauns.

After this, the kids messed around with the water for awhile before lunch and nap.  After nap, I took Clare to the craft store for some more decorations for the trap.

Later that evening, Sean started on the ladder...

...and the next morning, we got busy decorating the trap and setting the bait.

We added a rainbow for a bit of insurance that the leprechaun would follow the trail of pennies up the ladder to the rainbow.

And in case the leprechaun should approach the trap from the back, Sean wrote out a sign:

Finally! The trap is complete and ready for Sean to take to school on Monday.  On Tuesday afternoon, he told me that his trap caught not one but TWO leprechauns!  He was so pleased!

 And a picture of our little cuties ready for school (and parties) on St. Patrick's Day:

Philadelphia Flower Show

We've lived in this area for just about 10 years now and we've never made it to the Philadelphia Flower Show.  It's held every year in early March and it's billed as the "largest indoor flower show in the world" and attracts nearly 25,000 people each year!  I got some last-minute tickets at work and we decided to break up yet another long weekend due to snow days and take the kids.  This year was a great year to go - the theme of the Flower Show this year was "Celebrate the Movies!"

There were several displays based on Disney movies, like this one based on "Up":

"Fantasia"

"Alice in Wonderland"

And course, there was a display based on the Disney Princesses, ending with Queen Elsa's castle from "Frozen!"

"The Nightmare Before Christmas"

We also saw displays based on "Mulan," "Finding Nemo," and we tried in vain to find the display based on "Ratatouille."  There were also many displays that were just generally nice to look at :-)

We took a break for refreshments at spot near a big screen.  We watched the first 25 minutes or so of "The Wizard of Oz."  The kids really got into it - so, I made sure to request it at the library for a movie night a few nights later :-)

Warm Thoughts (Part II)

Warm thoughts didn't work this week - it snowed all day on Thursday so the kids' schools were closed on Thursday and Friday.  We watched a couple of movies...

And of course we played outside several times (Clare insisted on bringing her "baby" for one trip):

We played Legos:

We put together puzzles:

We played with Play-Doh:

 And we played outside again:

We made a fort:

Warm thoughts

As we face yet another ice and/or snow storm, let's go back, back, back to Puerto Rico and revisit a fun little nugget from our trip...

...a visit to the Bacardi factory!

We visited the "Cathedral of Rum" and learned about the history of the Bacardi family. Cuba, and Puerto Rico...

  

The Bacardi bat symbol - Sean thought this was super-cool:

The factory was all dressed up for Christmas, too: 

 

The tour, which included a visit to the distillery, a little museum dedicated to the history of the Bacardi family, and a gift store, concluded at an outdoor bar area.  At the bar, we were enjoyed our free Bacardi drink - Thom John chose a Cuba Libre and I chose a Mojito.

The kids enjoyed unlimited fruit punch - yum!