Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day fell on a Monday this year, meaning I had to work.  In this case, teaching the Preschoolers was a Godsend. Without them, their enthusiasm, their play- I'm afraid St. Patrick's day would have been a bit flat.

BUT, the preschool was exciting, because the preschool .....

HAD A LEPRECHAUN!!!

Even my most skeptical of preschoolers finally became convinced.  Isaiah resolutely told me last week that he didn't believe in leprechauns, and I told him truthfully that I'd never seen one.  And that MANY, many, many people did not believe in leprechauns either, so he was in good company. BUT, things just KEPT HAPPENING!!!  For one thing, we have these little paper leprechauns that I put on the wall for decoration, but they kept MOVING!!! and we NEVER SAW anyone moving them!!!  Add to that, the phone that rings with no one on the line, the papers and toys that fall when no one is near them... I mean... *shrugs*  What's a person to think???  And Isaiah became best at hearing soft "Tee hee hee" sounds coming from behind the piano! I mean, seriously, HOW do you explain THAT?

Before the weekend, the preschoolers spent an energetic, busy, (sometimes aimless- but that's beside the point ;) ) day devising and constructing Leprechaun traps!  Zane didn't want to leave his at preschool, even though we explained that we had the best chance of catching a leprechaun there because we had evidence that one had moved in.  As he left to go home, he made me PROMISE to call him if I found he'd caught a leprechaun.  Needless to say, they were all very excited to get to school to check their traps.  What they found was promising and disappointing.  All the pretend gold we'd used to bait the traps were gone.  :(  and some of the traps were broken, and had green toys shoved in them.  All the traps had a strange gold glitter on the bottoms.  But to top it off, our colored chairs were HIDDEN!!! and our green blocks were stacked up on the table.  ALL our green markers were missing!  There was some green threads of material stuck in Zane's trap! We were POSITIVE we had ALMOST trapped that tricky Leprechaun! but we couldn't find him anywhere.

And then, we found a box! Taped to the top was a note.  The note was from Daniel O'Toole, a Leprechaun from Ireland.

Apparently, he thought our traps were VERY tricky! and he'd ALMOST gotten caught!!! He took our gold, and then, discovered it was fake, but he'd had SO MUCH fun, that he decided to leave a treat for the preschoolers- a tiny pot of "gold" for each of them! (but instead of real gold coins, he'd given them CHOCOLATE gold coins! which most of them said they liked better than real money anyway!) He had to return to Ireland, but told them he wanted to come back to visit next March, because he'd had such a good time!  The children were thrilled!  When I handed little Zane his treat, he put his hands together, and said breathlessly, "THIS is the BEST. DAY. EVER!!!" 

As I waved good-bye, and climbed into my car for my drive home, I thought again about my job- actually I thought about retiring from my job, and once again, I wondered if I can survive without the gift of viewing Life's magic through a child's eyes. 

At home, I made a corned beef, and boiled cabbage.  YUM! And Bruce brought home GREEN flowers! :)  We had Luck of the Irish squares (mint and chocolate) And we had a wonderful dinner together.....

where the primary topic of conversation? was the preschoolers, 

and how they'd totally blessed me once again.

Erin go bragh!