Lucky Us!

One of my favorite things about where we live is all the fun moms that I get to hang out with. It is rare we go more than a day without seeing one another... so these kids almost feel like family. Today we threw a St. Patrick's Day party (now an annual event, pics from last year are here).

We held the party at our church so that we didn't have to destroy anyone's house. :)

My friend Cara started off the party by helping the kids make paper plate rainbow shakers.

Andrew actually made his mostly by himself. I was impressed. I think it helped having a focused crafter next to him :)

The kids ran around with their rainbows (and put the plates on their heads) and then we hung them around the room as decorations while we moved into eating treats and playing some games.

The menu was green. I made our lemonade green with blue and yellow food coloring while a few kids watched. They thought it was magic and were amazed.

Cara made jello jigglers that spelled "St Patrick's Day" and somehow all of the letters corresponded with most kid's names... so all the kids thought she'd made them their own special name jiggler. Andrew ate an A, Dylan ate a D... and so on. They were so excited!

After some snacks... mostly green treats for my kid, we played some games.

Chrissie organized "Pin the shamrock on the Leprechaun" and "Hot Irish potato." Isn't she an awesome artist? He was even life size ;)

This was the extent of blindfold wearing Andrew would do. It was off in 2 seconds...

So he had to close his eyes on his turn. I was impressed that he didn't try to cheat.

The kids had fun watching each other for a little while... and then they got distracted by all the toys in the nursery and went off to play so that the moms could chat!

Cate slept and then just hung out with the moms.

She loved getting passed around, watching the kids, and meeting some new friends.

What a fun morning! I'm still not quite sure why we celebrate St. Patrick's Day (and I know I could read about it... but haven't done that yet this year), but I sure do love a reason to get together, have a party, and hang out with friends (new and old). I think we had 9 moms and 14 kids this year, which was an even better turn out than last year!

Throwing parties with other fabulous people who put 100% + effort into making it great is also awesome!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! We feel so lucky to be blessed with so many wonderful friends!