perfect day

What a wonderful, wonderful St. Patrick's Day! Jonathan and I made the kids green eggs and ham (and green milk) for breakfast this morning.


Pretty gross, but they ate it.


Then he went off to work and the kids and I got busy. First Lion had to put on his new sous chef uniform that he got from Uncle Andrew and Auntie Teresa for his birthday:


Then he and Blue helped me make Irish soda bread. And we threw together some jell-o salad. It is an old recipe I found in my mom's recipe box. Aunt Lonnie's Tasty Salad. Sounds tasty, right? It is. Here's the recipe, but I plan to double it next time since there was none left over.

Great-Aunt Lonnie's Tasty Salad
1 box lime jell-o
1 cup boiling water
3 ounces cream cheese
8 ounces ginger ale
1/2 cup crushed pineapple, drained

Dissolve the jell-o in the boiling water. Break up the cream cheese and beat into jell-o mixture until it dissolves. Add the ginger ale and pineapple and mix well. Chill for several hours.


This was so good. Light and refreshing and the ginger ale makes it sort-of fizzle in your mouth, like Pop Rocks or something. I will definitely make this again. Thanks, Mom, for the recipe.

So the kids and I had hot Irish soda bread for lunch topped with honey butter. So. Good.

Jonathan finished work a bit early and since the weather has been in the seventies, we piled into the car to go check out the garden center at Lowe's. There isn't much there yet. Which is a shame because we are just itching to get the yard in shape. There was a super nice lady working at Lowe's who told us to wait until mid-April to plant anything. But she sold us a nice big seed starter tray with a plastic lid that acts as a little mini-greenhouse. So we each chose a type of seed: Jonathan chose poppies, Blue picked Shasta Daisies, Lion got some bright blue Morning Glories and I picked out some forget-me-nots.

Then Blue had dance class tonight. So while I was there with her, Jonathan made a delicious Shepherd's Pie for dinner and we had that and the soda bread and Great-Aunt Lonnie's Tasty Salad. And limeade. With tons of green food coloring added to make it really, really green.

After dinner we planted our seeds in the new mini-greenhouse. The kids had a lot of fun sticking the tiny seeds in the dirt. I can't wait to see their faces when our flowers start sprouting up out of the dirt. Lion really wanted to get some pumpkin seeds, but we talked him out of it. For now. We plan to turn the existing sand box in the backyard into a vegetable garden this spring, so we will be sure to get him a pumpkin plant then. I am just so tired of the sand getting tracked into the house and there are lots of cats that roam the neighborhood and I am convinced they are probably using the sandbox as a large litterbox... Gross.

I loved watching the kids dig into the dinner tonight, knowing they helped make it. So maybe helping to care for the vegetables in the garden and watching them grow will make eating the vegetables more fun. We'll see. I'm going to go now and watch tv with my lovely husband. Or read the new P.D. James book I got at the library while he watches tv beside me. Sigh. What a perfect day.