"Is it raving you are, girl? To capture a leprechaun is no easy thing!"*

Two nights ago, Hannah tried leaving out shoelaces for the leprechaun because he is a shoemaker. He took the shoelaces and gold chocolate coins and got away.

So yesterday she got serious. She asked me to read her all of her leprechaun books yet again. We looked at our bookmarked leprechaun sites. She made me write down the following facts:

1) Leprechauns are shoemakers.
2) Leprechauns like gold.
3) Leprechauns are grumpy and live alone.
4) Leprechauns are drunk a lot.
5) Leprechauns are tiny.

If caught, remember the following:

1) Leprechauns are tricky.
2) Leprechauns won't lie. But their truth is tricky.
3) Leprechauns can't get away if you keep looking at them, so they will try to trick you into looking away.

Remembering all of the above, she set about making the final, most important (last chance until next year!) trap.

Alcohol. (Apple juice - we're fresh out of alcohol. And she had to borrow her sister's My Little Pony cups and bowls - she didn't want him to drown in a bigger cup.)


Shoelaces - lots this time. Chocolate gold coins. Not only in the bowl but in a path leading up to the bowl.

She was certain she had him this time. He'd probably get too drunk to get away but if he could hold his liquor, he wouldn't be able to get away fast enough with his arms so full of shoelaces and gold. Hee hee hee.

But 'tis no easy thing to catch a leprechaun.

He got away, probably drunk as a skunk. He drank all the alcohol and left the cups and bowls in a mess. He tipped over the gold coins and left a trail of them out the door. He dropped some of the shoelaces. The box knocked off and trapped his hat. He didn't get away unscathed, but he did get away.

Hannah had to inspect every piece of evidence.


Then she had to call her father and tell him all about it.


Until next year...

Books we had fun with:
*quote from Leprechauns Never Lie - how a leprechaun tricks a lazy girl into helping her grandma
Leprechaun Gold - how a leprechaun tricks a man into taking the gold he owes him
Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato - a lazy man catches a leprechaun who talks him into taking a potato seed instead of a pot of gold

A website you have to see:
The Leprechaun Watch - a webcam set up in a prime leprechaun viewing area. After you've read that page, click on 'webcam' up in the top lefthand corner. So much fun!

Snow day.

A week or so ago we went to visit my husband's family in Wyoming. We have cold here and we have wind here, but they have lots of snow. Want to see what jumpin on a trampoline in Wyoming looks like for half of the year?


Most of them quickly gave up and went on to more exciting snow activities.


But little Zee just kept on jumping. She never got much bounce.


The uncles decided that the four-wheelers needed to come out to play and one of them *cough Matt cough* got the four wheeler stuck in four feet of snow. They spent the next few hours trying to get it out.




Meanwhile, the kids had fun playing in snow.











Reaching for an icicle.


There was a lot of really fun, really fast sledding going on on one of the drifts, but this is the only picture I got since I was mostly helping children get on and aimed right and then helping them get back up.


We built a snow cave in one of the drifts for this cousin.


Ainsley ate snow.

About the four-wheeler - they finally did get it out. It took a tractor.


It's too bad the snow was too hard and crusty for making snow people. Hannah's been wanting to do that all winter.

Snapshot Sunday

Today is my first outside Snapshot Sunday. It was not a warm day, but it was one of those cool spring days that beckons you and you can't resist - and it wasn't just me. Nobody seemed capable of staying inside today. Which is why I could not seem to snap a single picture without some living creature in it. By the fifth picture I'd given up and included my own feet.



















How it began.


Sunnymama's up!

I missed Ramblings last week. Sorry!

Where we had to go in a hurry...

So the other night the kids and I jumped in the car and went to go stay with some cousins. The next morning after some quality cousin time, we went to go look at a litter of puppies. Cocker spaniel puppies. We came home with this little man to add to our home.


Look at that face.

We've been dog-less for awhile and looking for the perfect fit. We'd narrowed our choices down to two breeds, both good family dogs but both difficult to find quality breeding in our area. Hence the road trip when a good litter of spaniels had a few extra unexpectedly available.

His name did not come easily. Hannah liked Midnight, I liked Jake, Ainsley called him Foo Foo.


Someone suggested that we put the first two names together and call him Midnight Jake. I decided not to since I don't want a dog whose name evokes images of a Chippendale dancer.


As an aside, does anyone know how to fix his eyes in this picture? It was taken in a dark room, so I needed a flash, but you can see what that did to his eyes. Spooky. The red eye reduction tool doesn't work on this.


So Jake was out, but not Midnight. Hannah decided that Twinkling Star of the Midnight Sky was the perfect name for this dog and that I could call him 'Middy' (short for Midnight) as a nickname.


That lasted until I went outside with him to check on the goats. When I called "Middy, Middy, Middy!" I ended up with one puppy and five cats at my feet. Back to the drawing board to find a nickname that doesn't sound like kitty, ladies, mommas, or girls (my calls for my cats, poultry, goats, and horses respectively).


My constellation obsessed five year old decided that her favorite constellation, Cygnus was good. Of course, he'd have to be a black cygnus. And while it's not the easiest name to call a pup, for right now it's stuck.



So meet Cygnus.



Or, to the five year old, Cygnus Twinkling Star of the Midnight Sky. That's what she calls him. She's never done saying his name by the time he's made it over to her.


Or, to the two year old, Foo Foo.


We're all twitterpated. Except for my husband. He doesn't get twitterpated. But this pup has been declared "a good dog." That'll do.

When we got up this morning, the trap was sprung.



Hannah lifted up the box with her net in hand.



But he'd escaped - and with all but one of the coins!

We're going on a quick, last minute out of town trip tonight, so she's leaving him some coins "to make him think I'm generous. Hee hee hee" and will reset the trap tomorrow night. Wish her luck!

Catching leprechauns.

Hannah read a Little Einsteins book in which the Little Einsteins caught a leprechaun. She talked nonstop about leprechauns for several days, so when I saw 'leprechaun traps' mentioned on a forum as an idea for St. Paddy's day, I suggested it to her. Boy howdy, that set off some excitement. I'm not much for Hallmark holidays, but this might be fun.

First things first, she declared. "We must have gold chocolate coins." We must? "Yes. We must." Why chocolate? "Because, Mother, if we don't have enough money to rent all those movies I want, then we don't have enough for real gold coins. .... Do we? Can I rent a movie?!?" No. Let's find chocolate coins.

Five stores later, we found chocolate coins. When Daddy came home from work, she was waiting, bouncing up and down with excitement. They gathered the supplies and discussed the drawbacks and benefits of different ideas. Ainsley licked salt dough beads.


They put the trap together. Ains climbed on the table.


They tied the string from the pencil to a gold coin and placed the coin in the bowl. Ains worked on a wedgie.


Hannah covered the bottom coin up with a few more coins to fool the leprechaun...


and then added a note that said "Here are some coins, leprechaun. We won't hurt you. Hee hee hee." I tried to get her to leave the "Hee hee hee" off, but she thought it was necessary.


All done and ready for the leprechaun to get greedy.


Ainsley inspected the finished product. No matter what the body language in this picture tells you, she is not in charge in this house.


Then the girls practiced catching leprechauns with their Elefun nets. That was a good ten minutes of energy released right before bedtime. The girls' parents may have egged them on for another few minutes for purely selfish "please-go-to-bed-soon" reasons, but that's neither here nor there.


Hannah has informed her father that if this leprechaun trap doesn't work, she's enlisting his help in making a robot to use the Elefun nets to catch the leprechaun tomorrow night. It was her top choice for a trap, but her father talked her into trying the old box, stick, and bait method first.

When I mentioned that leprechauns usually live in Ireland, Hannah decided to enlist the fairies help in tricking the leprechaun. She took the nature art she made from her gathering expedition the other day ...


and stuck post-it notes all over it explaining her plan and asking for their help, because, in her words, "Fairies can talk around the world so they can tell him to come get his gold. Hee hee hee." She was careful to note that she was just catching him, not hurting him. Then she stuck it out on the porch table. She and Ainsley kept peeking out the window, looking for fairies, every ten minutes for the next hour and a half. We obviously didn't make them practice catching leprechauns enough.


Ainsley wrote the fairies enough notes to make a book. She wouldn't tell me what they said. When I asked her, I got a pointed finger in my direction along with a "NO, momma. Mine talk fairies. Mine notes." Okay, then. A girl must have some privacy.


We'll see what happens tonight. We've told her that she only has until March seventeenth to catch one.

Does anybody have any good ideas for this? I figured that for every night he doesn't show, we'll find out more about leprechauns and use the new knowledge to try and catch him. I've got some leprechaun books on hold at the library for my husband to pick up and I have some interesting websites bookmarked. When we were in line at the store to pay for our chocolate coins, Hannah was telling the woman behind us about her plan to catch leprechauns and when she got distracted, the woman told me about a St. Paddy's day tradition they had when her kids were little. She said that while the kids were asleep, they would turn chairs upside down and do other generally tricky things around the house and blame it on the leprechauns. Matt thinks that sounds like fun. I am a wee bit skeered.