Our St. Patrick's Day!

I love holidays! I love traditions! And now that I have my own little family to enjoy making traditions with! I have never really had very many traditions for St. Patrick's day other than to wear green and spend some time with family. This year I decided to look into what St. Patrick's day is really about and make some traditions with my little family.

First, I want to share a little summery of what I found out about the meaning of St. Patrick's day. I never knew that St. Patrick was a person, until last year when I read about him on some one's blog. All I knew growing up about St. Patrick's day was, you wear green so you don't get pinched, the clover was a symbol, that leprechauns had something to do with it and it had something to do with Ireland.

Anyways this is what I found out with the help of google.

St. Patrick was a person who's name wasn't Patrick when he was born. He was born in Britain, was kidnapped and taken to Ireland at he age of 16. He was made a slave and his job was a sheep herder. He was there for 6 years and returned to Britain. He then started to have visions that he needed to go back to Ireland and be a missionary to the people, to bring Christianity to the Irish. He took on his priesthood vowels and became a priest. He took on the name Saint Patrick and brought Christianity to the Irish. He died on March 17th, that is why we celebrate it on March 17th. My reason now to celebrate St. Patrick's day is that he brought Christianity to the Irish!

Why the color green and the clover. It is a myth but could be true that St. Patrick taught the holy trinity with a clover. Green comes from the land in Ireland. It is covered in hills of green.

Leprechauns and how St. Patrick's day made it to the U.S. There was a potato famine in Ireland and the people left Ireland to take care of their families. A lot of them came to New York. They celebrated St. Patrick's day and it caught on in America. As for the leprechauns, people came up with this by the way the people were dressed when they came from Ireland.

There you have a short version of what St. Patrick's day is about.

Anyway, this what we did on St. Patrick's day.

I noticed last year from people's blogs that one of their traditions was to dye food green. I decided to take on this tradition. I made green waffles for our breakfast!

Ayla enjoying her green waffle!

I enjoyed mine with the usual strawberries and whip cream! Yummy!

Then we got dressed in our St. Patrick's day shirts!

We headed out the door to go shopping with my mom that day!

My Mom and I took Ayla to McDonald's so she could play!

I think I will make this a tradition, to take my kids to eat somewhere, where there is an inside play ground! Ayla had so much fun!

I also made some green chocolate chip cookies! We had them after dinner of course!

Ayla enjoying her cookie!

For an activity, I came up with a tradition, to have a pot of gold hunt!

I had these fake coins that I hid in certain parts of the house. Each coin had a new location of the house written on the back that Ayla knew. She had to find the coin in that location and have her daddy read the next one, until she found the pot of gold.

Here was the pot of gold.

I just bought some simple things from the dollar store and wrapped them in yellow tissue paper. I couldn't find any yellow wrapping paper, so the tissue paper had to do.

I recorded the whole pot of gold hunt on video and so the pictures down below of the hunt were taken from the video.

Ayla at the computer desk!

Handing it to Daddy!

I hid one on Kermit!

She found the one by the sink!

One in the apples!

One in her room on her doll house!

One in Mrs. Potts, that she loves to bathe with!

She had to find one in "Toy Story 2!"

She found the pot of gold in her closet!

And opened her gold!

This was a little fishing rod with fish.

At the end she was asking, where the gold was!

I guess she was wanting a whole pot of those gold coins! I guess she had more fun with those than opening the gifts! LOL!! It is the simple things in life that make us happy!

Then we played with the bubbles that she got from her pot of gold!

I love this picture!

We had a fabulous St. Patrick's day! It has a whole new meaning to me now!