Happy St. Patrick's Day!

You gotta love St. Patrick's Day...even if you're half Scottish like me! Yesterday was a fun day filled with lots of green and a great party hosted by Family Student Housing and the Tenants' Association. For those of you who don't know I am the President of the Tenants' Association and I have a lot of fun being the President. It's a lot of work but I still enjoy it. This year FSH (family student housing) asked us to co-sponsor the party together. They were in charge of the food and we were in charge of the crafts and prizes. We had green eggs (with basil and cilantro) and ham, Lucky Charms, and a variety of other green delicious food. We set up craft tables to make rainbow hats, fruitloop necklaces, green ties, coloring pages, wordsearch's and we even had a treasure hunt for a "Pot of Gold". Everything turned out really well. There were a few things that weren't so great...the older kids ripped the clues to shreds and had no respect for anyone including myself during the treasure hunt. It was really chaotic but I think at least some of them enjoyed it. We also had a unfortunate mishap with our Pots of Gold we were giving out to all the kids at the end of the hunt. My friends Brad and Janeya helped me blow up 36 balloons (we had a helium tank) and tied them to each pot of gold so each kid would get a balloon in the end. They left them in the box to make sure the kids didn't just come over and steal the whole lot, and the only problem with that was the kids ran over and started pulling at everything and the entire bunch of balloons all knotted together and it took FOREVER to get them apart. Looking back on the situation now it's pretty funny but at the time it was a little hectic! The party was a total success even though we were a little squished. I'm sure people still had fun....I know I did!

After the party and after Daniel helped our neighbor move (we miss you Flemings!) we went out on an actual date to Chili's (thanks Kaitlin for watching the kids!!). We had so much fun together and we even ordered a Molten Chocolate Cake of awesomeness for dessert. We saw our friend's the Poland's there which was really fun then went home and went to sleep. It was a pretty exhausting day for both of us so we just didn't really have the energy to do anything else.

It was a great day! Here are the little random facts I found out about St. Patrick's Day for our treasure hunt.....

1. St. Patrick was born in 385 AD somewhere along the west coast of Britain, possibly in the Welsh town of Banwen. At age 16, he was captured and sold into slavery to a sheep farmer. He escaped when he was 22 and spent the next 12 years in a monastery. In his 30s he returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary. He died at Saul in 461 AD and is buried at Downpatrick.

2.Clovers: St. Patrick used the 3 leaf clover to explain the holy trinity to the irish. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest number of leaves found on a clover is 14! One estimate suggests that there are about 10 000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover. Legend says that each leaf of the clover means something: the first is for hope, the second for faith, the third for love and the fourth for luck.

3.The Snake: It has long been recounted that, during his mission in Ireland, St. Patrick once stood on a hilltop (which is now called Croagh Patrick), and with only a wooden staff by his side, banished all the snakes from Ireland. In fact, the island nation was never home to any snakes. The "banishing of the snakes" was really a metaphor for the eradication of pagan ideology from Ireland and the triumph of Christianity. Within 200 years of Patrick's arrival, Ireland was completely Christianized.

4.Leprechauns had nothing to do with St. Patrick or the celebration of St. Patrick's Day, a Catholic holy day. In 1959, Walt Disney released a film called Darby O'Gill & the Little People, which introduced America to a very different sort of leprechaun than the cantankerous little man of Irish folklore. This cheerful, friendly leprechaun is a purely American invention, but has quickly evolved into an easily recognizable symbol of both St. Patrick's Day and Ireland in general.

5. 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry, according to the 2003 US Census. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people.

6. The Irish flag is green, white and orange. The green symbolizes the people of the south, and orange, the people of the north. White represents the peace that brings them together as a nation.