St. Pat's Survived

This past weekend was our annual St. Pat's party.  We are officially outnumbered by children now with everyone who stays at our house.  It's loud, it's messy - and that's just Pollard....but the kids overall did very good and played downstairs most of the time.  I still need to put it all back together but since it's downstairs - I don't see the mess so it doesn't bother me as much.  We also had spring break that week so I got some quality time with the kids and we tried a few projects and ran a lot of errands.

Every post should start with Emma's cuteness and her great smile.  We got her picture taken so I'm waiting for those to be ready.  She is the best baby for photos in terms of getting a smile out of her.  Our photos were done and paid for in less than 15 minutes.

Emma was due for some meat in her diet so I put together a little chicken, sweet potatoes, and apples for her.

It was pretty simple and quick to put together.

You just saute the chicken a little in some butter (non salted of course) then add the apples and sweet potatoes.  The recipe says to add a chicken stock (if you ever had time to make one) but I just went with a cup of plain water.  Bring it to a boil and then let simmer for 15 minutes.  I was a little concerned that the chicken wouldn't blend well but it was just fine.  Has the same consistency of sweet potatoes, but you can smell the chicken for sure.  The apples I think really just added some more liquid to it.  Emma likes it though.  I have more to work on this weekend as our frozen stashes are running low.

So the next thing was something I saw on Pinterest that I thought would be so cute for St. Pat's.....

Basically you make shamrocks out of pretzels and coat them with melted candiquik that you have dyed green and added a peppermint flavoring too.......and I have never used Candiquik before.

So I had the girls lay out the shamrocks with the pretzels.  At this time I think it's all going well and they will turn out so cute.

And there was some pretzel eating of course too.  We actually ran out of pretzels....but little did I know I would not need them all.

So - Candiquik - if you have not used it ever before I recommend just melting one block at a time.  Once you have over cooked it, it's a done deal.  Microwaving it for even longer does not melt it.  I ended up wasting a block and a half before I finally figured it all out.

And this was our sad attempt at the shamrocks.  I used a frosting dispenser I had but didn't know the spring was broken so we had some issues controlling the Candiquik coming out.  It still tasted good though which was nice. Maybe next year we will try again.  I at least understand the Candiquik a little bit better now and would probably invest in a pastry bag as was recommended.  We had fun trying though.

Overall St. Pat's was pretty laid back.  Late nights and early mornings make for laid back parents for most of the day. 

A little bit of catch up.....

Well the Schmidt family has been busy with travel and spring break.  Mostly me traveling and getting to spend time with the kiddos for spring break.  We did actually get quite a bit done during spring break despite being outnumbered 3 to 1 and still needing to do homework for my class.

Emma has discovered her activity table and as you can see has a lot of help with learning to stand.
She is still only crawling backwards but is very effective at it at least.  We hope she shifts into first gear and starts going forwards soon.

We survived another St. Pat's with minimal sleep and minimal damages so that is good.  More photos to come on that later......