St. Patrick's Day was on a Thursday so we got to enjoy doing "green" activities with our play group. Fun!
However, I failed to get the standard "my 3 kids in matching green outfits" picture. I was tempted to stage one, but decided that was ridiculous and not worth my time. If I'm being honest I was feeling a bit of mommy guilt. One of the super cute moms in our group showed up with her 18 month old daughter in an ADORABLE outfit complete with tutu (with clovers) and they had on matching gold shoes! I arrived realizing I had forgotten to even dress Titus in green (opps!) and the girls had simply picked out a shirt they owned that was green.... It made me feel very guilty as I compared my one-child mom self to my current mom self. But, then I reminded that every mom has her own thing she is good at and mine just isn't matching holiday shirts. (Please refrain from looking back to my children's Valentine's day outfits!)
Here is Grace with Titus (Go Bears!), Ruthie, & her friend Sophie. Her and Ruthie are sporting matching green barrettes so that counts, right?
Here Faith is enjoying playing in the gym at play group. I really had to talk her into wearing green at all. She is very opposed to wearing blue or green clothes as these are strictly boy colors. Luckily I remembered this outfit which is mostly purple so it passed inspection. She really wanted to wear pink, like every other day, but Grace kept telling her if you wear pink on St. Patrick's day you will get kissed. Which made her cry! Now you know how I might have been distracted from dressing Titus in green...
The craft for the day was very cute. We cut green peppers to make a clover shaped "stamp." I thought it was very creative.
So.....you may be wondering why this post is entitled "First Official Humiston Family Holiday" Well, I'm getting there hang with me.Almost a year ago we were reading an Arthur book about Christmas. (No, I don't think it was at Christmas time) In the book one of the characters says his mom is very sad because of his parents' divorce. To make a long story short another character suggests they make up their own family holiday instead of celebrating Christmas. While I obviously don't support skipping celebrating Jesus' birth Grace caught on to the idea of having a family holiday and thought it sounded like a great idea. And so the idea of having our own official Humiston family holiday was born.
Because Jeremy's Papa was Irish and we've never had any special St. Patrick's day traditions we decided our holiday would be on March 17th in honor of our Irish heritage. We had lots of fun coming up with different activities that were connected to our family.
Picture on the Stairs: My Grandpa & Grandma Holst always took pictures of all the cousins on their stairs each holiday. Since my Grandma's house was damaged in the fire the staircase no longer exists. But, we used this photo op as an opportunity to talk about them and I think will be fun to compare as the kids grow over the years.
Grace took this picture of us.
Block Challenge: Our kids' block set is full of family history. Jeremy made them from wood From Grandpa Don & Grandma Kay's walnut grove. This is the same wood Grandpa Rick made their crib from. We loved talking about this.
We "branded" some of the blocks with this family logo that is on the back on their dining room chairs (made from the same wood!) It is a picture Grandma Kay drew of a cardinal.
Mom & Faith's creation
Daddy & Grace go tall.
It all falls down!
We also had a big breakfast for dinner in honor of Jeremy's Papa. Whenever he would visit Papa & Nana in Michigan Papa would make a huge breakfast for him. After that we made popcorn in honor of my Pop-o and Mom-o. Whenever I would go to their house there was always popcorn every evening. We ate our popcorn while watching a movie, one of our family's favorite things to do together. It was a great evening and fun new tradition. We are hoping this is something we can do each year and will become part of our kids normal growing up experience.So, maybe it is okay my kids didn't have matching green shirts after all. ;)
