Catch up: March

March was a month of fun...we had to stick around Milwaukee (baby coming soon, and although it didn't snow, it was about 20 degrees all month), so we went on a few field trips:

The Milwaukee Public Museum...Anna loved the butterfly exhibit. Hattie was to paranoid she would accidentally smash one, and Niels thought...who knows what he thought but he kept running away from them. But Anna could have held that butterfly all day.

 But Niels did enjoy dressing up like a butterfly...

 ...and sitting on a huge dung beetle.

 We also went to the zoo...

...and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Glad I did all these things before the baby came...and before it gets warm and they'll want to be outside all day.

The art museum is right on the lake. They have a great kids exhibit that lets the kids do lots of hands-on art.

Hattie lost tooth #2

 The kids snuggled Paul whenever he was home.

And of course, St. Patrick's day. Honestly we didn't go all out this year...no trap building party with friends or making green bread. But we bought Niels some fancy green suspenders for church...

 ...and the girls, who had been planning our trap for months, spent the entire afternoon decorating it.

 They filled it with beautiful green and golden things...

 ...and then placed a golden marshmallow on the floor and glued it there. They then placed Glue Dots on the floor all around the golden marshmallow, so that when the leprechaun tried to pick up the marshmallow, his feet would get stuck and we would trap him.

Sadly the next morning, we had no leprechaun. But we did have his shoes! Glued in place :) Despite having not caught the real leprechaun, the girls were pretty thrilled to have some shoes out of it.

 We also did swimming lessons...again, something to do while it's still cold and before the baby comes.

And Paul got the goose-egg of his life while playing Marshmallow Wars in a friend's basement. He ran into a basement pole.

 Immediately after

 Day #2 morning

 Day #2 evening

 Day #5

 Hattie lost tooth #3

And the best purchase of 2014: A king-sized tempur-pedic mattress. We have talked about getting a new mattress for the last 6 years, when our queen-sized one got moldy on the bottom when we first moved to Texas. But we've procrastinated and postponed, and now, almost 3 pregnancies later, I finally said we had to do it. And we love it. I made this quilt almost 3 years ago in anticipation for the day we had a king-sized bed and I love it. I've been sleeping so much better, and that's coming from a woman who is 9 months pregnant.

 Coloring, iPad, headlamp, and fort-building.

 And I ran into a friend that I haven't seen since I was 10 years old! She is in my stake, but moved about 2 weeks after I ran into her. Strange to run into someone from my past - from 22 years ago! I'm getting older...

And the kids favorite part of March was going to the park again! Ready for spring!

Trap time

March...St. Patrick's Day. If you are a seasoned reader of this blog, you'll know what that means in our Iverson house - lots of corny, green decorations, an unexplained obsession with trap building, homemade root beer, and candy.

Paul tried his hand yet again at making his father's homemade root beer. And some how it turned into a root beer slushy. Oh well. The girls loved all the "smoke" and the slushy was still tasty.

We threw our 4th annual trap building extravaganza. We ate some amazing Reuben sandwiches, colcannon, corned beef brisket, and soda bread. Delicious as always. 

Our trap this year was primarily Hattie's plan. Ever since Valentine's Day, she has been asking what we were going to do for our trap. (the girl is obsessed with holidays. She's always asking when the next holiday is and making decorations) In the mornings during breakfast she would come up with ideas to try to lure the leprechauns to our trap, how to trip the trap, and how to secure them in the trap til morning. Having built a few traps myself over the past few years as an Iverson, I tried to help her think of something we hadn't done before. So she came up with this: Hotel O'Niels. Lure him in with lots of green and gold stuff, and certainly a huge glass of root beer. Then we would give him something to make him fall asleep for the night. So yes, she decided to drug him.

But what would we put in the root beer to put him to sleep? Smarties of course! They would send him into a sugar-induced coma that would knock him out for the night. Hattie thought it was great. She even practiced dissolving smarties in water a few times before actually building the trap.

 Anna was primarily in charge of decorating the outside of the hotel room.

She was particularly proud of this golden wire draped with tape. Nice aesthetic touch.

And Hattie and I worked on the inside of the room.

Paul build a huge green hat to put the hotel room on. And voila - a high-rise hotel room.

The Burroughs family made a trap with a fancy umbrella and lounge chair...but not before the leprechaun crossed hole in the ground covered by palm leaves!

And Aubrey decided to make her trap so warm and cosy that the leprechaun would never want to leave! 

Another St. Patrick's Day without catching a thing

These Legos perfectly represent last Friday...Match Day and our annual St. Patrick's Day party. (Thanks Steve M for using your Lego divination powers to find them!)

Paul decided that this year we would make a cooler trap...in recent years we were so busy getting ready for the party that we didn't put too much effort into our trap. So we took a trip to Lowe's for some wood, and Wal-Mart for spray paint. We did some prep work before the party...

Dinner first... shepherd's pie, chicken and dumplings, Irish soda bread, roasted potatoes and asparagus, rainbow jello, homemade root beer, and pizza for the kids.

Then it was back to the garage to finish it up.

The Miller family trap...I love their rock wall. We'll have to incorporate one into ours next year.

The Lindsay family trap

The Mayer family trap

The Flake family trap

The Foutz family trap

On Saturday morning, Hattie came to our bedroom announcing that she had stepped on a lot of chocolate in the hall. Paul gave her a flashlight to investigate.

Somehow we didn't get a great picture of the girls with the trap. You can see behind Anna's head that there was a rope ladder for the leprechauns to climb, but they still somehow managed to escape the 2 foot tall trap. Hattie has already been giving ideas for next year's trap.

Before Anna ate each individual jelly bean she asked, "Can I have one please?"

And Anna enjoyed the leprechaun loot...eating one bite out of each.