St. Patrick's 2013

This is one of those silly things that just makes me happy.  I had seen ceramic deer heads floating around blog land and the look was starting to grow on me.  So when I came across one at HomeGoods back in November I couldn't help but pick it up and put it in my cart.  As Derek and I walked around the store I started dreaming of the fun ways I could decorate said deer head for the holidays.  But I just couldn't justify the buy.  I didn't need a deer head, and I knew Jeff wouldn't be particularly crazy about it.  So I went to put it back and Derek exclaimed, "What are you doing Mommy?!  We need that deer head!"  I told him I didn't have a place to hang it and we didn't need it, and he said he was sure he could find a place for it in his room.  I was a little surprised that he had grown attached to it in the short time we had it in our cart (and I hadn't shared any of my daydreams with him so there could be no bias on his part about the fun we would have "dressing it up").  I know, I know, who in their right mind lets a 4-year old make the buying decisions?  But his determination that we needed the deer head was all I needed to justify my purchase.  It took me a while to get it up, but I found the perfect place for it and hung it right before Patty's day (so the first costume was a cute little leprechaun hat).  It makes me smile every time I walk past... so that makes it totally worth it.  

Because St. Patrick's day fell on a Sunday we had to go simple because we have early church and I have meetings.  The kids love Fruity Pebbles and I don't buy them very often so it was a real treat!  I made a green apple smoothie too, but that they didn't like that quite as well.

And another story, only mildly related...  The week (or was it two?) before St. Patrick's day we had the missionaries over for dinner.  I had planned to make haystacks and then have ice cream sundae's for dessert.  At about 930 the night before they called to verify the appointment and to let us know that Elder Hatch needed to eat dairy free.  I breathed a sigh of relief that I had planned for haystacks, and decided we would just have to go without dessert.  But then I remembered a dairy-free mint chocolate chip mousse that I had come across while planning our St. Patrick's day breakfast. I whipped that up, but decided it looked kind of sad all by itself so I checked to see if I could make brownies with a GF mix I had on hand work.  By using coconut oil instead of butter I could!  So I did, and I can't tell you how glad I am I decided to do that!  About half way through the meal Elder Hatch confessed it was his birthday and I was so relieved to tell him I had cake for him!  We put a candle in his brownie, sang happy birthday, and let him make his wish.  They are such cute missionaries and after dinner I asked them if they would sing and play the guitar for us (they had done a musical number the Saturday before at a convert baptism we had in our ward and I wanted Aiden to hear it).  We pulled out Aiden's guitar and they did a couple of songs for us.  It was so fun to have them!