Over the top, and we know it.

As Rachael and Lisa already mentioned, we were all visited by the leprechauns this year.  Each leprechaun left identical goodie bags for the kids but did something a little different at each house.  It amazes me how much they love to compare with each other and speculate on the reasons for the differences.

Spencer started talking about his plans for the trap a couple of weeks ago.  One afternoon he asked if I could take him to the store so he could look for a steel trap to use this year!  Things got busy, I was lazy, and at the last minute, like at 9:15 p.m. Wednesday night, Jason came up with this idea with the kids.  You can't see, but under this grass are little drops of glue, so he'd get stuck!  Spencer was pretty upset Thursday morning when he realized that the leprechaun stole his trap idea by knocking down the crayon and propping up the trap with that gold coin you see laying in the grass after his escape.  He was not happy about the design flaws of this years trap!

Though he got away, the leprechaun left the kids Rolo's and rainbow sour strips under some little hats, along with some glow wands, and a box of Lucky Charms.

I didn't find out until he got home that Spencer actually wore the little hat with it's elastic chin strap to school...Not my proudest moment but it made us all laugh super hard.  Good times.

The little fella played some tricks on us by turning our milk and our apples green.  He also left a trail from the trap, down the island, and out the back door.

 At about 3 o'clock that afternoon, I suddenly felt inspired by my balloon rainbow to whip up some rainbow cupcakes.

 And since a simple idea can never stay simple, I decided we should have everyone over for a dessert party.  It was actually an idea mentioned by Rachael as we shopped at 10 o'clock Wednesday night for everything we needed for our ideas on Thursday.  I'm not sure when we're going to learn that our last minute/late night conversations always lead to over the top events.

By 7 p.m. my kitchen was full of goodies.  Cookies made by Grandma, Irish mint brownies by Lisa, homemade caramel topping made by Rachael, and my rainbow cupcakes.

(I hate terrible lighting!)

The kids spent the evening running around outside trying to track down the leprechaun.  They were convinced that he was still around since they kept finding his "tracks" (confetti) in new places.  There's no genius's here since it never occurred to them that the tracks kept getting carried around on people's shoes/feet!  We also had our second jug of milk mysteriously turn green after dinner while I was doing the dishes, again confirming their suspicions of him being close by.  At 8:30, after everyone left, I had to tell Spencer to come in from the dark (in the backyard) because St. Patricks Day was over and that was the only day the leprechauns run around searching for gold!  Every year I wonder why in the world we started this tradition but it always seems worth it in the end.

After seeing Rachael's post I felt like a loser for not taking pictures of my kids wearing all their green.  Then I felt stupid for realizing that we do all this for them and I didn't take a single picture of them.  I decided to take pictures of them today enjoying their afterschool snack (rainbow vanilla pudding left over from yesterday).  The results from my attempt were worse than hers.