Spring Break/St Patrick's Day

We kicked off Spring Break by celebrating St. Patrick's Day at the school.  The kindergarteners always bring in leprechaun traps.  I love this tradition, but I've gotta say I was pretty shocked at some of the traps that the "kindergarteners" had made.  Parents, please do your kids (and the other moms) a favor and actually let your kids make the traps.  There were all sorts of fancy schmancy glitter covered pinterest worthy traps with so much spray painted gold deco-podged rainbow brilliance that I sort of felt bad for the kids.  Leprechaun traps should not cost money, and they most certainly should not include a hand tiled trail of rainbow candy pressed into pristine marshmallow fondant landscape leading to a colored chocolate waterfall that looks like it came from Rick's bakery.  Fine for the holiday if you wanna go all out, but don't send it with your kid to school labeled as their creation.  The child with the chocolate and fondant trap's parents were the worst offenders by far. The kid wasn't even allowed to touch the dang thing because her mother was hovering over it like a royal guard. 

Quincy knew exactly what materials she needed to make her trap and had it put together in about 15 minutes.  She used two styrofoam bowls, tape, and pennies. 

She pressed double sided tape all over the inside of both bowls, stuck the pennies inside ("because leprechauns like gold money the best"), then taped the bowls together to make a closed capsule with a door.  Leprechaun sees the money, he goes inside the bowls, his feet stick to the tape and he's trapped inside. Genius. After using frog tape to tape the bowls together, Reese said, "hey, that looks like a leprechaun hat!" so Quincy covered the whole top bowl with tape to make it green, and then used some electrical tape from the bin to make a sash.  My contribution was the square in the door so it looked like a buckle. Done and done. 

The trap on the right was Reese and Corbin's creation.  They used a snowcone wrapper with a hole cut in the bottom to make a trap that works like a fruit fly trap.  They baited with pennies and later added some cereal so the leprechaun wouldn't be hungry while he waited for them. Reese was worried that if he wasn't distracted by food, he'd come up with a way to escape before she could discover him.  

Quincy made another trap to set up in her room that I didn't get a picture of.  This girl could make an excellent engineer. Her design was simple and smart: She put a bowl in the middle of the room, placed a dishtowel over the bowl and set a penny on top of the dish towel in the center.  The leprechaun would run across the blanket to get the penny, but he would weigh enough that the towel would drop into the bowl, trapping him inside with no way to climb out. 

I went to the school to meet with Mrs. Rogers for Spring Parent Teacher Conference.  Quincy is doing well and is right on track to be ready for first grade.  Mrs. Rogers says Quincy is kind to others, makes her friends laugh, and loves school.

Quincy dressed in green from head to toe on friday. She also lost another tooth. Cha-ching!

I checked the girls out of school early after the conference/st. paddy's celebrating, and we hit Sonic for happy hour slushees to kick off the week together.  Then, we went to walmart and bought 700 lbs of manure, sphagnum peat moss, and mushroom compost to add to the garden beds. (which I hauled into the yard myself, thankyouverymuch).  We planted our Spring garden (much to my dismay, since everything but the broccoli and cabbage froze yesterday.) and had fun in the backyard, playing in the dirt...evidenced by my flip flop dirt-tan. Gross much? Yeah, that's a leaf stuck to my toe.  And the red flecks on the big toes are from the pedicure I got in JULY.  Time for another, I think.

I snagged a pic of Corbin because his face was so caked in dirt, his eyelashes kept sticking shut.  Happy. I cannot wait for it to warm up so we can spend more time outside.

Later that night, while the kids bathed, I threw our swimsuits, a few shirts, shorts and flip flops in a bag (literally---a plastic bag. Our suitcases are in storage, so we filled a couple duffel bags and put the rest of our crap into a white kitchen trash bag. We're classy.) and hit the road for a last minute not-really-planned trip Destin, Florida the next morning.