St. Patrick's Day was on a Saturday this year which meant I had plenty of time to make some shamrock sugar cookies with my girls for the occasion. It's become one of their favorite holiday activities and hey, who can resist such a tasty activity? So here we were just hours before the AOC Bingo Night icing and sprinkling some of the beauties. I was also taking the day to rummage through my old photos of my time in Ireland. Having spent nearly a year there cumulatively, I have a real soft spot for the island and revisiting those memories every year is a pleasure.
Women's restroom in Dingle, Ireland 1995
A letter from my great, great grandfather Edward T. Welch who was born in County Galway, Ireland on May 1st, 1851. My favorite line: "Ran away from home. Was wild." My grandfather gave this copy to me just before I traveled to Ireland for the first time in 1995 and he said it could be helpful if I had a chance to research our family history while I was there. I was a junior in college and I didn't exactly jump at the chance. Tucked away in an envelope all these years, I pulled it out again in January when I was doing some poking around on Ancestry.com. And now, for St. Patrick's Day I thought of it again. Such a legacy of lives interrupted and lives lived.
Spending the evening at AOC testing my luck of the Irish was a perfect end to the day. I surprised myself and actually won the raffle I hoped for--a smoothie making-blender machine called the Ninja. The girls were psyched and I felt like a million bucks. Woo hoo! School fundraisers don't suck as much when you bring home something good. The next day I kept the good vibes going with a birthday brunch for Marija at M. Wells Dinette at PS 1. Since she turned 40 this year, we planned to make a week of it and this was a great start with some of my favorite ladies. The lunch was terrific as well. I had the relatively benign parsnip soup and croque madame with the creamiest damn béchamel. But oh my was that good. I missed out on the bar hopping afterwards since I was trying to get back to relieve the babysitter but that's okay. I needed to pace myself for the rest of the week.
Nothing like a mid-March snow day to shake things up a bit, right? We had thankfully just restocked at Trader Joe's so there was no chance of starvation. Instead I offered to host a few extra kiddos on our day off school and that was just fine for Elisa and Carolina. They were more than happy to play with friends and created a whole Lego village recreation of Sunnyside. It was too cute. In truth, the 5 girls (Skylar joined us for most of the 7 hour day) played better than my kids would have alone. We ended with watching "Beauty and Beast" before finally checking out the snow drifts at the end of the long day inside. Nacho was traveling but I still wanted to pamper myself so I made a delicious cabbage roll soup in the instant pot and I have to say it was such a cozy evening in. I almost didn't mind the snow.
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