Category: St. Patrick’s Day

Last Saturday—technically the day before St. Patrick’s Day, but close enough—Henry & I grabbed our little Lego selves & hopped aboard a Caltrain packed with green-clad revelers to attend the parade in San Francisco.

Highlights of the two-hour+ (!) festivities included a phalanx of giant Irish wolfhounds; a gathering of the one Irish-produced automobile (the DeLorean!); a float commemorating the Chinese & Irish Railroad Workers; a bowler-clad mini BART train; numerous traditional dance troupes; and—why the heck not—a twerking St. Patrick.

We wrapped things up by enjoying Irish coffee & live music in the stunning old Hibernia Bank building, the sight of which made Hen proclaim, “This must be what heaven looks like!!”

Check out our gallery from the day.

Oh man, we’ve all been there: You’re psyched up to bite into a delicious chocolate chip cookie, only to discover—raisins!! It’s not that they’re objectively bad, just that they’re not what was promised. Our expressive man Henry does not take such things lightly—to say the least. Behold… The Taste of BETRAYAL! 😝☘️ (Happily he recovered quickly. Happy St. Pat’s to you & yours!)

On Saturday we journeyed to San Francisco to show the boys the local St. Patrick’s Day parade. The cloudy skies & bluster made things feel like a bit of the Old Sod. A few highlights:

• It being the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, we got to teach the boys a bit of Irish history.
• The guys were of course obsessed with catching candy & little toys thrown from the floats, at one point enlisting a fellow bystander’s umbrella to claw at some distant Tootsie Rolls. Henry was proud to walk off with a small plastic velociraptor he promptly named “Sean” (as, I guess, an Irish dinosaur might well be named).
• Noticing a car carrying state rep. Phil Ting, we couldn’t resist having fun putting on an Irish accent: “Ah boys, I tell ya, if it’s not one Ting it’s anudder.” :-p

Check out our little gallery from the day, as well as a quick video below and even some 360-degree panoramas (click each one & then drag it).

In advance of St. Paddy’s day today, the boys explained that they wanted to try and trap some leprechauns. This is not something John or I had done as kids, but apparently building leprechaun traps is a new practice for kids these days.

Finn explained how the traps were supposed to work, and we did some online research to see examples before we started building our own. Critical trap components include Lucky Charms, which Dad-O & Henry ran out to get, fake rainbows, clouds, and of course, the trap.  Finn and I stayed home during the bait run to devise cereal bowl and Lego-based traps. You’ll see in the gallery what we came up with – paper rainbow entrances with Lucky Charms and fake cotton ball “clouds” to lure the leprechauns into leaving gold at the end of each rainbow, before the cereal bowl trap fell onto them.

We set the traps out on the back steps before bedtime and listened for suspicious rustling on the back porch. John thinks he might’ve heard something but was too sleepy to go out and check. This morning, as soon as the boys awoke, the first words out of Henry’s mouth were: “Dad-O, could you shut off the burglar alarm so we can go out & see whether we captured any?”

Lo and behold, our traps worked! Well, partially… Although the little bootprints left at the scene indicated the leprechauns eventually escaped, they did leave a pile of gold coins (old Mexican pesos), and chocolate coins under each trap. The boys were ecstatic! Henry exclaimed “Now I know that leprechauns are REAL!”

Erin Go Bragh, 2009-style! 🙂 (See previous St. Paddy’s images & videos.)

The Germans have a treacherous racetrack they’ve dubbed “The Green Hell.” I wouldn’t go that far in describing last Saturday’s festivities, but there were moments when, as somewhere between 12 & 15 4-to-6-year-olds simultaneously tried to asphyxiate me, I thought, “Wow, I wish I were wearing a GoPro so that other people can see what it looks like to die this way.” 😛 Check me out (if you can even somehow see me) at the bottom of a tot-pile at our friends Jake & Shay’s annual St. Paddy’s party:

Henry Seamus, I’m so proud: when Dad-O, forgetting the date, inadvertently dressed the G-Man in a “London, England” t-shirt, the wee Irishman promptly puked all over it. Aww, shucks. 🙂

The Green Beings & I were glad to spend a bit of the day helping friend Harper Hogarty ring in her third birthday, with Finno ensconced in his cool new “Finn” ballcap (a birthday gift from his Liggett GPs). Here’s a handful of photos from the day. (See also St. Patrick’s gone by.)

Finnegan & Henry Seamus Nack bid you a hearty “Sláinte!”  As Finn would say, “Go Irish!” (“Beat the bad dudes!”)  We can pretend that Henry’s non-seasonal pumpkin is a boiled potato or something. 🙂

For a bit of historic fun, see how Finn looked on his very first St. Patrick’s day, and what the two of us were doing last year.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! I’m late in getting a blog post up for the occasion, but I wanted to get a chance to document Finny wearin’ a bit of the green. Margot and I talked about finding him a little derby to wear, or at least grabbing a good stick outside to make into a small guy’s shillelagh, but the stars didn’t quite align on that front.
No matter, though: we snapped a few pix (HTML) of Finn sporting his new Irish-themed bib from Grandma Nack, accompanied by green-eyed Dad. He’s sure come a long way since last St. Pat’s, eh?

Hey everyone–Happy St. Paddy’s Day! The wee man has of course gotten into the spirit of the day, thanks especially to a very cute out from our neighbors Kristin and Steve. He actually got a little too into the spirit, pounding drinks last night and then coating himself in puke (too much info, I know, but I couldn’t resist ;-P)).

Update: See also the very funny “Stuff White People Like” post about the holiday.