St Patrick's Week

At school this term, Ellie's class are studying shapes and colours. Each week has been designated a particular shape and a corresponding colour, and parents have been asked to provide the Friday snack in that shape and colour... what was I thinking - I signed up for Green Shamrocks, and we're not even Irish!!! It was an interesting week as when Ellie first learned about Shamrocks on the Monday she came home and said: Shamrocks are green. They ring people brack. What...?

By Tuesday, she knew that tomorrow was Shamrock Day! In fact, she was talking to Grandma and said "Do you know what tomorrow is?" And Grandma, expecting her to say Daddy's birthday was most surprised when she informed her it was Shamrock Day and everyone needed to wear green or they would get pinched. What...?

On St Patrick's Day proper, she dressed in a cute green dress. And was very excited to help Daddy celebrate his birthday, but was more excited that she wasn't going to get pinched. Although she was quite keen to help him open his presents. I have to tell you, Mike got three things for his birthday from us - a new camera, a camera case and a laptop backpack and Ellie determined who would give him what - the camera itself was from her, the backpack from Jamie, and I got to give him the camera case! She’s not stupid - she knew that the camera was the best present to be giving! After school that day, Ellie could now tell us that Shamrocks were made of 3 blobs and a stick. And that they make people cluck. What...?

We went out for dinner to celebrate Mike’s birthday, and we were lucky enough to have a private fireworks display directly outside the restaurant. Because here in China anyone can set off fireworks - they are often quite small intimate displays. There is a function on our new camera... So here is a photo of the fireworks.


As Mike’s birthday is St Patrick’s Day - he traditionally likes to have a Guinness for his birthday. We were out and about the Sunday before and happened to be in a pub which had Guinness on tap... so fortunately for Mike we got his birthday Guinness in nice and early!

Having not had too much time to work out the settings etc, the next photo is of the rich chocolate birthday cake I made... but the candles are a bit flarey. I needed to go to 3 supermarkets to get an ingredient for this - each one increasing in stock of imported items! Anyway, I can now make this cake about 10 more times!!

For Friday at school I had to make our contribution to the snack... I had been working out what to make. I bought dried sliced kiwi fruit - trying to be creative. But then Mike made me a biscuit cutter out of an old formula tin... I didn’t have to be creative after all... He did!! Happy with the way they turned out, and loads for everyone. The green icing even worked a treat!!


By the way - Ellie finally worked out what Shamrocks are for... They bring people GOOD LUCK!!! And the pinching thing?? Well that’s an American tradition (according to Wikipedia) that if you didn’t wear green the leprechauns would get you...

Happy St Patrick’s Day!!!

Come on spring!!

When will this winter ever end??? It's March, and it is still cold!!! It has been forecast to be -1 degrees tomorrow and the next day... admittedly -1 is the low for each day, but I'm sure it wasn't this cold for this long last year! I thought that going back to Australia for a month was going to make winter seem really short - I was mistaken.

There are signs that it's getting warmer, like buds on the trees and some flowers blooming. And the fountains aren't freezing up anymore, but I still need to wear gloves, and mostly a hat. I've dispensed with my scarf, but somedays wish I still had it with me! We are also having a lot of rain at the moment, so it makes it hard to go out with Jamie who is learning to walk, and wants to, but all too frequently ends up suddenly sitting down.

Anyway, that's just a short rant, because my fingers are too cold to type!! Come on summer, come on spring!!