St. Patrick's Day, 2012

St. Patrick's day this year fell just two days after my surgery.  I wasn't feeling the effects of the surgery yet, still doped up on pain meds, and John had to attend seven hours of church meetings on a Saturday, so the girls and I decided to keep the family tradition and go all out for the holiday.  St. Patrick's day is probably one of our favorite holidays, and I'm glad to keep the Irish genealogy fires burning in the kids' Irish hearts.

We worked non-stop from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.

For three hours, we made 17 loaves of Irish soda bread.  Let me rephrase:  we made 17 loves of the BEST Irish soda bread ever.  I like it to taste more like a scone, so I add extra sugar!  We made all different varieties:  golden raisin, golden and red raisin, cherry, chocolate chip, and cherry chocolate chip.  I made individual smaller loaves for each member of my Sunday School class (which Hannah distributed for me since I couldn't be there on Sunday), and we thought of our friends and home and visiting teaching families.  We had quite the assembly line going, and if my hands hadn't been so covered in dough, I would have taken a photo!  I have no doubt that Hannah can now continue this tradition in her own family--she has the whole process down, and by the end, I was doing nothing but standing by, watching her.

We then headed out to the grocery store to buy everything we needed for our Irish feast.  We decided on beef stew for dinner, and we picked the choicest, tenderest meat.  It looked tasty RAW! :-)  Red potatoes, baby carrots, and biscuits.  Because I knew my energy was limited, we cheated and bought our dessert:  shamrock cookies and the cutest cupcakes on the planet!  Sheep, lion, leprechaun and bunny cupcakes.  In honor of Anna, we bought beautiful, fresh-cut flowers (she always brings me some when she visits).







We came home and started the stew.  Once it was going, we worked on packaging up the bread.  We bagged it all and tied it with gay colored-ribbons and included a note with our favorite Irish blessing:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.


  Glo was in charge of setting the table.  She pulled out our beloved place settings from Ireland.  I bought them many years ago and we love them.  They are scenes of Ireland, pasted on cork.  We've been to many of the places, so it's always a trip down memory lane.  Too, she's adept at finding our crystal and setting that up.  It looks rather simple in the "before" pictures, but it was a delight to finally sit down and enjoy the fruits of our labors.  We added sparkling grape juice to the meal.  Within ten minutes, everybody was full and happy with Irish food and love.

A cute sidenote to all of this.  I showed up AFTER church for choir practice.  I have four callings at church, and I regularly go home with a headache after our meetings, so I knew going for the whole day wasn't possible after my surgery.  With the choir singing next week, I didn't feel right finding a substitute.  I had several boys from my Sunday School class come up and thank me for the bread--they had already eaten their entire loaves!  A girl came up and asked me how to make it, because she too had eaten hers.  Seriously, there's something special about Irish "love, loyalty and friendship" and I was glad to share some of it with those I love.