Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Ryan has always thought it is a little silly when I insist on celebrating St. Patrick's Day.  I'm not entirely sure exactly how Irish I am, but I know there is some in there because my Grandma is like half Irish and we have always celebrated St. Patrick's Day with her and our extended family.  It's a tradition in our family, and just as much a holiday as Halloween.  We always get together, have yummy food, and back when my grandma would host, she would teach us Irish jigs and we would make toasts and well wishes for the family and the year.  This year my mom invited us down for dinner.  She has been babysitting some of my nieces and nephews so Lucas had some fun cousins to play with and I got to have our traditional dinner without having to make all of it myself.  Yay!

My mom asked me to bring dessert, so I got online to find something delicious and green.  I'm not a huge fan of things being dyed green that aren't supposed to be green.  Our traditional St. Patty's Day foods are either already green, or we just eat them the color they are supposed to be.  I found a recipe for lime swirl cheesecake bars.  I had a bunch of fresh lemons, not limes, but since the lime in the original recipe needs green food coloring added to make it really green anyway, I was okay with adding the food coloring to the lemon juice to make it more festive.  Green isn't too far off from yellow.  I pretty much followed the recipe exactly except I substituted lemon juice for lime juice.  I like lemon a little better than lime anyway.

I had my little Lucas helper to help crush up the graham crackers.

He probably worked at this for 15 minutes.  It was the perfect distraction for him while I made the lemon curd.  Oh Lemon Curd!  Why don't I make you more often?  You are delicious!

Once assembled and swirled, the cheesecake looked pretty yummy!

I was surprised that once it was cooked and cut up, it looked exactly like the pictures from the recipe.  Rarely does the stuff I make look as put together and perfect as the staged stuff.  I was pretty impressed at myself.  The bars were AMAZING!  I will definitely be making them again.

I told Lucas that morning that we needed to wear green for St. Patrick's Day.  He asked why so I showed him a couple pictures of shamrocks and leprechauns and instantly he was sold on the whole St. Patrick's Day idea.  He found everything green he could - green underwear, green shirt, green socks, green shoes, even his pants had a little green on them.  While I was working on the dessert, he colored himself a green hat to wear.  He is pretty creative.  I printed off some pictures for him to color and he cut them up and turned them into a hat.

I think Lucas was the most excited about going down for dinner.  He has gotten very in to holidays lately.  And here are all the cute little kids enjoying their corned beef, carrots, and green honeydew melon.

I think Lucas and Paige ate almost half the melon between the two of them.  And here I am in my green getting ready to dig in.

Dinner was so yummy.  And three of my uncles came for dinner and my brother John and his family, so we all had a good time spending time together and letting the kids run around.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!