Pots of gold, sneaky leprechauns, and a silly jig

Yay for St. Patrick's Day! As with Valentines Day, I really love St. Patty's Day... because it's simple and low-key (even just wearing green for the day), but can be as fun as you want it to be... and like with Santa Clause, my kids truly believe in the existence of leprechauns. :)

Of course we wore green today- earlier in the week, I realized that Emma didn't have any green shirts, so we went to Target to look around, but didn't really find anything we liked... however, in the process of looking around, we came across a shirt with green on it that we actually already own, but I had just forgotten about... so I told Emma that it's okay that we didn't find anything, because we can just wear the green shirt she has at home. This made her VERY sad, because she thought she was going to be getting a NEW shirt. I was trying to think of a compromise or something to cheer her up, and while wandering the store (how can you NOT wander Target when going there?), we came across the nail polish... I asked Emma if she would like to have her finger nails painted GREEN... and she was thrilled! perfect. It's nice that as for now, simple things will please them. :)




For a morning snack I told the kids we were having 'pots of gold'... Emma then asked, "are they gold cookies?" Even though it wasn't cookies (but lemon jellow instead), they still seemed to like it and ate it up.


Later on we did make some shamrock sugar cookies. I had the kids help me out a bit, but I told them that we weren't going to eat them till after dinner... I told them that we'd have to be sneaky and try to keep the cookies well hidden or the leprechaun's might steal them. Emma was really into this and together we agreed that we'd keep our frosted cookies in the fridge because she thought that leprechaun's wouldn't want to get cold.... (to see if the leprechaun's actually stole the cookies, read on... hint: they do).


That morning the girls also got their jig on and danced for a quite a while to an array of Celtic music (using Pandora). These girls are just so silly and fun... keep an eye on Becca as she dances- she pulls the strangest faces...


The BEST part of St. Patrick's Day this year was that we got to head to the airport in the afternoon and pick up my dad!! Yay!! He's currently here visiting and then he'll be driving up to Utah with us in a couple days where we will get to spend a week with my family. SO great! Lucky for my dad, he wore green, so when we picked him up from the airport the girls didn't have to pinch him. :) When we got back to the house, dad/grandpa kept the girls busy with puzzles while I cooked up our St. Patrick's Day dinner.


For dinner we had GREEN food - green pesto pasta and green beans... as well as some Irish soda bread. After dinner I told the girls to get the cookies out of the fridge, when (surprise surprise) they were MISSING. But in place of the cookies was a note, sending the girls on a little hunt to find their stolen cookies...


Emma told me afterwards that she didn't know that leprechauns knew how to write ;) Now we are just enjoying having my dad here visiting... stay tuned for future posts about our time with Grandpa. And in the meantime, here's one more video... Emma gave the "missionary moment" in Primary this past Sunday. Since Ben was going to be working and not able to see it, I recorded her practice run that morning. Emma was funny about it and insisted that she stand behind a table (like the podium at church) and that the table needed the flowers for decoration (you'll probably have to turn up your volume to be able to hear her little voice).

A whole lot of stuff

Oh my goodness! I have so many pictures and fun things to blog about - so this may be an epic of a post. :)

I just got a bunch of pictures sent to me from Ben's family from some stuff that we did in March, so I thought I'd start with that. We went to a St. Patrick's Day Festival in downtown Phoenix last month. It was an interesting crowd and a hot day but it was a fun time. There was a parade first and then we were entertained with music, food, and bouncers for the kids. The kids had the most fun dancing to the Irish music - it was played live by a band and it was really great. My favorite part was dressing the girls in green.




Ben took Emma camping with his family in March as well. Seeing as I was so prego, I stayed home with Becca - but it was fun to see these pics, since I wasn't there to see it myself. The campsite and surrounding area was so green and beautiful! It almost makes me wish that I went along.








So, fast forwarding to the past 2 weeks... We recently all went camping in Sedona as a family along with so many great friends. Since I was toting around a 3 week old Jacob, I was the lucky one who got to take off to a hotel for the night while everyone else braved the cold night in their tents. I almost felt guilty about being so spoiled and having a nice shower and getting to watch TLC on my comfy bed in my resort style room.... but not too guilty. :) It was awesome to get to spend some fun time away with our friends and their families. We are nearing the very end of medical school and will be parting our different ways for residencies throughout the country... I'm incredibly sad to have to leave our good friends of 4 years and try to make new friends... sigh. (A lot of these pics were taken by Jess and Heather - thanks guys!)


































Ben's birthday was on the 19th of April - he turned 29! Can't believe next year will the big 30... I guess we'll just enjoy our 20's while they last for they won't last much longer!


April is a big birthday month in our family - Becca, Ben, Ben Lee (Uncle Ben to the kids) and my dad all have birthday's this month. I was actually quite pleased that Jacob came a little early because that means he can be a March birthday instead of part of the pile of April birthdays. :) Our good friend Aubree also had a birthday this past week. What a wonderful friend she is... and she just gets younger and younger looking the longer I know her. For her birthday we got together for a little swim party. This was our first swim of the summer! Is it summer? Maybe I should say it was the first swim of spring? Well, anyway, the weather was good, the treats were good, and the company was great. :)





Singing Happy Birthday!
I feel like I've been neglecting posting much about my dear little Jacob. I look at him and think.. he's such a little man. LOVE him! I'm losing lots of sleep getting up with him at least a couple times each night, but I honestly enjoy doing it. I'm sure I won't say that in another month, but for now, he's just so sweet and little and perfect and I just love to care for him. Let me say, though, that having 3 kids is hard - I'm still trying to figure out how to continue to be a good mother to Emma and Becca while spending all the time needed to care for Jacob. At the same time, I'm very happy right now with our family of 5. I'm very blessed. Heather recently took some wonderful pics of my little Jacob man... here's some of my faves-








At Jacob's 2 week appt, he was 75th for weight, 95th for height, and 25th for his head.... so basically the opposite of Becca. :)

And finally, we are currently in the process of buying our first home. Holy cow! We recently put an offer on a home and are now just waiting to hear if we'll get it. There were 2 other offers on the house, so we're not so sure what will happen, but if we don't get this house, then we'll just keep looking. Either way, it's exciting (and a bit scary) to be reaching this phase in our lives. But I'm soooo anxious to have a house of our own!