Pioneers And An Early St. Patrick's Day

Hailey has been learning about pioneers this month at school. I told her all of the pioneer stories I remember MY grandma telling me, and after reading a school book about a pioneer girl who is responsible to churn the butter for her family along the trail, we decided to try our hand at butter-making.

Since we didn't have a wagon to tie our butter churn to, I used the tried-and-true method of shaking  heavy cream in a mason jar.

After about 50 shakes, Hailey was done. I shook it another 5000 times. Hailey, your poor family is going to be butterless along the trail if you don't step it up!

We do believe something is happening!

We spread some homemade butter on our authentic pioneer bagels atop our genuine pioneer plates.

We tried the buttermilk. Two thumbs down from two little girls-

but homemade butter on bagels gets two thumbs up.

Since we couldn't walk the Oregon Trail to burn off all of that homemade butter, we jumped. In true Pioneer spirit, we ignored the snow still melting in the yard.

Saturday both Makayla

and Hailey walked in the St. Patty's Day parade in downtown Billings.

Since I don't feed Amy and family on Mondays, we celebrated a day early on Sunday, using all those St. Patrick's Day crafts we've been working on for atmosphere.

I wonder if any of my kids remember our green dinners? On St. Patrick's Day, all of our food mysteriously turned green. 

This year a leprechaun was nice enough to make us a rainbow,

but while we were at church, he turned the bread I was making bright green.  Trust me, this picture does not do it justice. 

It's really odd, since Hailey has been hard at work making a Leprechaun catcher for a school assignment. 

Naturally, we checked it after seeing the bread, but the sneaky Leprechaun apparently managed to slip away. I wouldn't mention that part to your teacher, Hailey. Let's preserve your grade!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Watch out for those leprechauns!