St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!  Are you wearing green?  I was lame and didn't make anything special for breakfast, but when I came down I saw that Charles had dyed the entire gallon of milk green!!! So that made everyone's lame cold cereal breakfast super festive -- thanks Charles!  And I'm making corned beef and cabbage for dinner so hopefully that will turn out well.  I've never made it in the crock pot before so hopefully it will be done cooking in time for dinner.  Raw corned beef = yuck!

 We held our little service club again this past Saturday and Rachelle came with her daughters, Aubrey and Anne.  The other people who came were Joy with Miranda, Clare and her girls, and Cherrie and her four kids.   We made birthday bags for the women's shelter -- where women and children go if they're being abused.  Its location is a secret so that their husbands/dads can't chase them down so I have to take the bags to another place.  The bags each have a cake mix, can of frosting, balloons, silly string, a birthday banner, candles, and tissue paper.  We thought it would be nice for them to have in case someone was staying there on their birthday.  At the activity, the kids decorated the bags and then assembled them.  It turned out so well!  Next month we're making May day baskets to take to the nursing home and in May we're going to finally take all of those old towels to the animal shelter !!   I wanted Ella to do that for a personal progress project and then I wanted Charles to do it for an eagle project --  Haha!  I had to just do my own project.

Ella's phone just rang.  Her phone is now the home phone, but Lucy lost her phone so she has it.  I had given her a special ring tone so whenever I hear it I think of my Ella :)  Lucy has spent the day shadowing someone at U-High since she applied there.  I am supposed to pick her up right now, but I didn't realize how late in the day it is (surprise, surprise) and Archie is asleep.  She just texted me and said she found a ride with her friend -- yea!  Then I can keep writing this, whoop!

 On Saturday we also went to the St. Patrick's Day parade in uptown Normal.   I think last year was the first time that I ever went.  It is a bit lame as far as parades go, but it was a pretty nice day -- only about 40˚ but very sunny and nice.  Charles has started volunteering at the Children's Museum.  He gets out of school at 12:00 every day and then comes home and is a complete bum so I called the museum to ask them if they could keep him occupied, haha!  He goes two days a week for two hours and on Saturday while he was there a little 4 year old boy became lost and had been missing already for 1.5 hours when Charles had to leave.  The police were there and everything.  As we walked up it was like a scene out of the "Fugitive" with bagpipes playing in the parade and tons of people everywhere -- the absolute worst day to lose a child in Normal -- usually it is completely dead!  We don't know what happened, but we never saw anything in the news so I assume it was a good outcome.