St. Patrick's Day Is Coming

Do you enjoy celebrating St. Patrick’s Day like we do?

We have enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day ever since our first son was born on March 16, 2001.

Turning 21, is quite a milestone, so I asked him if he wanted to go to an Irish Pub for his birthday, he said that would be awful!

Instead of going to a bar, he asked us all to go to Pine Mountain and go hiking with him. I guess all those daily walks during our homeschool days paid off, even in the cold, icy, and wet days.

When my kids were little, we always celebrated by wearing green, hunting for 4-leafed clovers, and making a festive snack. 

Here is Bella when she was in 3rd grade.

Wanna do this with your family? Just take a piece of bread, spread some peanut butter on it, then take a banana and cut 4 coin slices. Now stick the bananas on the bread to make a 4 leaf clover, then sprinkle with green sugar. Repeat ever year, lol! 

What are you and your kids doing for this festive green week? I would love to hear from you!

Our favorite activity was putting together a dish garden with clovers, moss, and add little treasures and put it on our kitchen table, anticipating spring!

For our extended family, my mom invites us over on a March Sunday to have corned beef and cabbage. She is Catholic, so she loves to tell us about Saint Patrick and how he taught the trinity using a clover. 

If you are using the Waldorf curriculum, and your kids are young, just wait until all your hard work of instilling festivals and celebrations fill you life with such blessed memories!

Over the years, we have grown to love Irish music, thanks to the musical heritage of the pennywhistle. The path of the pennywhistle leads to a great wealth of Irish songs.

A fun book we use is called, Irish Songs for Tin Whistle, by Thomas Balinger. It includes guitar chords and the pennywhistle pictorial fingerings for every note to every lyric.

We also like St. Patrick's Day because of the essence rainbows and hopefulness of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which inspires dreams, wishes, magic and luck. And you know how I love green and rainbows, lol! 

Just this week, one of Bella’s WISHES came true and it also relates to St. Patrick's Day. She is my 17-year-old daughter.

"Mom, I want to go to prom this year and I need to find the perfect dress." I asked her to describe her perfect dress according to her best features.

She is is 5’9”, a swimmer, and she has long arms and long legs. She said a full length dress with spaghetti straps would be nice.

I asked her, “What color?”

She said, “Well I have this emerald green, 4-leaf clover necklace with a gold chain that I love to wear, How about emerald green?”

She put the wish out there, and two weeks later, we went shopping for her to get some new pants AND hanging on the rack was this beautiful, silky, full length, spaghetti strap, emerald green dress with the most beautiful diamond speckled top! What!?!?!

So of course, she tried it on, and it fit her perfect and she looked amazing!!! And we weren't even shopping for a prom dress! Oh! The treasures life has in store for us, if we do the wishing and let the Creator do the work, and then in a surprising magical way, it shows up!

Here is a picture of Bella with her new dress.

MY MUSIC LESSONS

One of my favorite MAGICAL moments as a teacher, was when I was teaching Miriam’s daughter, Maya, songwriting on the ukulele. She has been taking lessons for about 3 years.

Every new month, I have her mom print out my monthly practice plan. 

In one box, we fill in all the important dates of the month with holidays, birthdays, vacations, etc. This is a great way to focus on what each month has in store for our lives, and with music, it goes so lovely with celebrating life.

Last year in March, as she was writing down St. Patrick’s Day, in the Important Date box, she asked me if we could write a song for it. 

And of course, since I have a deep love for this special holiday, it sparked my songwriting bug. So together we starting writing this song during her lesson, and by the end of the day, we had a new song!

This is a picture of Maya and her brother, Lucas.

YOUR GIFT

 We love having you here, so here is our gift to you, we hope you enjoy it!

You can listen, sing, play ukulele, play the recorder, however you like.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY! May it be filled with magic and treasures!

Love,

Jodie Mesler