Happy LOST day!

M. had already decorated the house (in the morning before he went to work—who else would decorate before 6:30 am?!) and the minute he walked in the door from work in the afternoon, he already had the Celtic music playing. Loudly. I returned home from class later that evening to find that M & L were hip deep in their St. Patrick’s Day celebration. My kitchen was knee deep in their mess from making dinner and carving soap. They had waited dinner for me. Mark, with L’s help, made his traditional meal of vegan hash, baked potatoes, corn, and Irish soda bread. They stepped it up a bit this year with green bread. They added green food coloring to the bread dough. It was indeed green. It tasted great, but the idea of eating green bread was a little creepy to me—much too mold-like looking. M. also had green beer (also made with green food coloring).

L. was very proud of the fact that she not only helped with dinner, but had completely set the table by herself. I was not allowed to go into the dining room until the food was on the table, and then she led me into the room with my eyes closed, so I could be surprised by her table-setting artistry. When she commented about how much she loved that bread, M. said that they could make it anytime she would like. She said she could only eat in on St. Patrick’s Day or it wouldn’t be special.

They did their traditional Irish Springs soap carving while I was at class but waited until after dinner to do the traditional sea-worthy contest. This consists of filling the kitchen sink up with water, putting some of their D&D die-cast miniature characters in their carved soap boats, and dropping them into the water. The winner is the one whose boat didn’t sink (or at least floated the longest) and whose miniatures stayed upright in the boat. M. won the first round, but L’s second boat did better than her first. They usually carve lots of other miscellaneous items too. This year, as Dej wasn’t around, they decided to hold off on the rest of their soap carving and wait until this weekend when Dej could join in the fun.

I started to clean up the kitchen mess after all of the festivities, but M. shooed me out. While I took care of feeding the indoor and outdoor critters and reading L’s bedtime story (Nancy Drew), M. did a good job of cleaning up the kitchen. I was pleasantly surprised when I finished everything up and got L. tucked into bed, to find that the kitchen was sparkling clean (and smelling very strongly of Irish Springs soap).

It’s so cute how silly little traditions like this are so meaningful and memorable to the girls. L. told M. that she would always remember that day, because it was so much fun.