Slainte

St. Patrick's Day 2010 has come and gone without much fanfare...I'm not sure why but we just didn't go to a lot of fuss this year. Probably because it was mid-week and hard to find time to make a traditional Irish meal. The only thing we did was participate in the parade as we did last year. This time, I was in charge of organizing and setting up the float for the kids' school. It turned out to be quite stressful in the last little bit, but that was mostly because I was also stressed at work at the same time. Needless to say, I am glad it's over and I don't think I will volunteer to run this effort again (for reasons to be stated later). The weather was not great this year, starting out in the upper 40s and cloudy and ending up in the high 30s and rainy. We were lucky to be Float #44 meaning we started down the parade route earlier than last year. That was also lucky because we didn't get rained on until the end of the parade route. By the time we'd circled back to almost where we started, we were soaking as was the float decorations. So that's the reason I will not volunteer again to lead this effort next year...since the decorations were ruined by rain, we are mostly starting from scratch. Keely was a good sport in the beginning but by the time the rain started, she was tired of standing and waiting. James ended up carrying her on his shoulders for the length of the parade route.

As usual, I hardly saw Quinn once we arrived because he was with his buddies the whole time.
Yes, that is me up on the float working hard on the balloons in the last few minutes before liftoff.
Keely and her friend Olivia posing with Ronald before the parade (and the rain).
Thanks to Nana for taking pictures at the parade. On the actual holiday, we had mashed potatoes and carrots because James felt like "we should at least have mashed potatoes" :) No corned beef this year though, but I am making some black and tan brownies and maybe some Irish Soda Bread tomorrow.