Leprechauns abound

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A leprechaun turned our toilet water green. She drew shamrocks and faces all over our windows & mirrors this morning. She switched Lilly & Shawn's toiletries. She turned our coats inside out & hid our shoes. What a prankster!

Then, when Lilly and I were leaving for a make-up Spanish class at our old Language Stars center, my car wouldn't start! The battery was dead. AAA was able to jumpstart the it and ran a test. Turned out that I needed a new battery. Luckily, the guy was able to change it on the spot. Though we missed our morning plans, today was an okay day to have it happen! (How often does that ever happen?!) Yesterday, I presented to Shawn's class for the AVIC art program - missing that would've been a much bigger inconvenience for more people. So, this could have been worse! (Bonus: I got to Skype with Jennifer since I wasn't going anywhere!) Now I just need to schedule a make-up for Lilly's make-up class! Oh, well.

Since our morning plans had changed, I took advantage of our unexpected time at home and practiced a little piano. The books for beginners that I got from Freecycle are great because I can skip over the lessons about reading music and I feel like I'm progressing quickly! Ha! It was fun to play Ode to Joy (an abbreviated version), in which my hands played in unison, Rockets, in which my left hand played harmony, and Sea Divers, in which my right hand played harmony - this was the first for me playing the piano with hands independent from each other!
YouTube (I play the last 2 songs right after each other, so it may seem like there's only 3 songs.)

I wanted to keep going, but Lilly needed a nap. She won.

When Shawn got home, Ms. Johnsen emailed us about their day:

From: "Johnsen, Karen S" <Karen.Johnsen@d303.org>
Date: March 17, 2015 at 4:25:15 PM CDT
To: "Shannon Puri" <shannonpuri@hotmail.com>
Subject: We didn't catch the Leprechaun!
I want to thank you for all the supplies you sent in for our traps!  I will be sending home  pictures of the traps! The kids did an awesome job!  They worked in small groups of 3 to create a trap. Then each group had a chance to present their trap to the class. They had some very interesting ideas of how to trap the Leprechaun.
He was very sneaky and fast. When we got to school the classroom was a mess chairs everywhere, the calendar all messed up and our daily schedule upside down and backwards.
In each marker box was a green bracelet, a piece of gum, some stickers and a gold coin, then in the pencil cups there was a new pencil and a gold coin with a shamrock on it.  The Leprechaun left a note for each student and he talked about playing in their traps and all the fun he had.  He left shamrock and leprechaun glitter on all the traps!
When we returned from art there were chocolate coins, erasers and a smencil at everyone's place!
But we never caught him!
Maybe next year!
We had a busy day! In the morning we wrote about Leprechauns, pots of gold or what we would do if we caught a Leprechaun. Then we had a chance to share the stories. We read all our Leprechaun poems and books. In the afternoon we had an hour of math, Lucky charm sorting , graphing, adding, comparing, most, least and the fun part eating them! It was a good day!
Happy St. Patrick's Day
Enjoy your evening!
Karen 

After karate, we dropped off 2 oversized garbage bags full of donations to Goodwill. Phew! That felt good to get out of our space (and my car)!

Back at home, we listened to Celtic music and ate corned beef brisket with carrots and onions all cooked in Scottish (not Irish - oops!) ale, twice baked potatoes, and bread. Raj was excited to make sandwiches from the leftovers, but also put in a request for Bangers and Mash (sausages and potatoes) next year. I didn't make my traditional Copy-Cat Shamrock Shakes this year, since we still have ice cream cake leftover from Raj's birthday. I'm sure we'll come up with a reason to make them another time.

After dinner, Lilly wanted to play hide-and-seek.

Oma found the perfect poem for her at http://allpoetry.com/poem/8605367-Hiding-by-Dorothy-Keeley-Aldis :

Hiding

by  Dorothy Keeley Aldis

I'm hiding, I'm hiding
And no one knows where;
For all they can see is my
Toes and my hair

And I just heard my father
Say to my mother -
"But, darling, he she must be
Somewhere or other;

Have you looked in the inkwell?"
And Mother said, "Where?"
"In the INKWELL?"said Father. But
I was not there.

Then "Wait!" cried my mother —
"I think that I see
Him Her under the carpet." But
It was not me.

"Inside the mirror's
A pretty good place."
Said Father and looked, but saw
Only his face.

"We've hunted," sighed Mother,
"As hard as we could
And I am so afraid that we've
Lost him her for good."

Then I laughed out aloud
And I wiggled my toes
And Father said —"Look, dear,
I wonder if those

Toes could be Benny Lilly's?
There are ten of them, see?"
And they WERE so surprised to find
Out it was me!

Author Notes

From a book entitled "A Child's Anthology of Poetry"

© by owner. Added by volunteers for educational purposes and provided at no charge.  Dmca

It fits Lilly perfectly. Shawn giggled when I read it to him, though I had to explain what an ink well was.