Happy St. Pat's!

What a day! I love St. Patrick's Day! I love the story of St. Patrick - what a great story of missions and faith to share with our children. And I love good ole' Irish tradition. So this is that one day of the year that I can let out that tiny piece of Irish merriment trapped in my genes (I'm something like 1/16 Irish) and party down.

We start out the morning with green eggs and ham for breakfast. We have lively Celtic tunes on CD that we listen to throughout the day. And of course we all dress in green. I read the story of St. Patrick to the little ones, and we also enjoyed the tale of Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka by Tomie DePaola. In between basketball games, we sat down and watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People. This movie was a classic that I always enjoyed growing up - Warning - the banshee can be a little bit scary for some younger ones though!

For dinner, we had some Irish Lamb Stew (seasoned with Guinness, of course!) and Soda Bread. This meal is a new tradition of ours. My family grew up eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Pat's, however, I am not wild about corned beef and my husband isn't too keen on cabbage. The first year that we were married, we went with some friends to an Irish pub on St. Pat's and had some fabulous lamb stew. My husband discovered his love for lamb, and so I found a recipe that is wonderful! And no, the boys wouldn't try any, so they had hot dogs. Boy, they don't know what they are missing!

What a great day! Hope yours was wonderful as well! Slainte!