St. Paddy's Day at the Ran house

With St. Patrick's Day approaching, the kids' after-school program worked on building Leprechaun traps to catch the little guy. They thought it was the coolest thing ever! Well, of course we needed to build some at home too. Legend has it that the Leprechaun is the size of your thumb and he has a pot of gold to give away to the person who can catch him. But he's not easy to catch so you've got to be EXTRA prepared. The kids built a trap with gold coins to lure him in. 

 ...but they DIDN'T catch him! So close! He even left tiny footprints all over their things to show how close they were!

Even though they didn't catch him, Lucky, the Leprechaun that visits our house each year, left them some special treats (and tricks!). He left a special breakfast, complete with green milk and yummy cinnamon rolls. He also dyed the toilet water green and left donuts and a dollar for each kid! Even though they didn't catch him, they quickly forgot with all the surprises he left them! ;)

Carter's school open house

Carter has been loving second grade, and recently, we had a chance to go to his classroom open house to see some of the projects he's been working on. Each day, students get an hour to do research and work on a project with a topic of their choosing. They are working on sentence structure, how to research, handwriting, etc. during this time. Carter LOVES these projects -- he's done one on bears, too. This one was on alligators (sweetly spelled "alligaters" throughout).

Since it was during the Olympics, they were also each assigned a country to research. He was assigned Norway.

I thought his whole research paper on Norway was so cute. He did a great job! I also loved his self-portrait, complete with mint chocolate chip ice cream. YEP -- sounds about right. So proud of my sweet boy!