It's easy being green...

Last night, my enterprising 8-year-old designed a new, improved leprechaun trap for 2007, since the 2006 version hadn't worked. He made an elaborate diagram, and then he and his 6-year-old brother worked together to make the trap.


A trail of fake gold coins would lure the leprechaun up the Lego stairs to the top of an overturned moving box, where more gold coins waited. But in front of the coins on top of the box was a trap door, covered by tissue paper, so the leprechaun would fall in when he tried to walk across. My son was concerned that the leprechaun could hack his way out if he happened to have an ax, so he wanted to fortify the sides with wood, but settled for heavy books.

The result--a message from the leprechaun, spelled out in fake coins: HA HA.

It appeared that the leprechaun had used a computer mouse he found around our house as a rope to hoist himself out of the box & get away. But he left behind treasures anyway, some gold-wrapped chocolate coins and some Spree candy in green bags. Also a leprechaun-themed rubber ducky with a note: "Hee Hee. You can't catch a real leprechaun, and you can't have my real gold! Better luck next year!"

The kids were a bit astounded that the leprechaun left them chocolate coins in bags with the "Coins of the World" label on them. "It has a tag on it!" they said about one of the bags. "He got that at a candy store!" They wondered how a leprechaun could shop at a store. "Wouldn't they notice he was a leprechaun?" they asked. My 6-year-old then figured out how he could have gotten the candy, which makes perfect sense for the high-tech leprechaun who used a mouse cord as a rope. "Maybe he bought it on eBay," he said.

For breakfast today, it was Lucky Charms, of course, and later we had our annual green dinner (lunch in this case). Our special guest was the cutest leprechaun in the world! Oh, wait, that's just my baby. ;-)

And after lunch, the 6-year-old lost his first tooth...that was lucky! We expect to go to the park pretty soon to look for four-leaf clovers--one year we found quite a few! HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY TO YOU ALL!