Holiday Celebrations

I love holidays. Halloween especially, but I love them all. This past week provided 2.5 excellent holidays for my entertainment--Easter, St. Patrick's Day, and the Ides of March (the last one only gets half-holiday status). It seems like most people wait until they have kids before they pull out the traditions, but not me. Much to Jon's dismay, we have been celebrating every holiday since we got married with various ridiculous and not-so-ridiculous activities.

I was glad to have Marah here to celebrate with me, since she is a much more willing participant than Jonny (although I'm quite convinced that if she had been at home and my mom tried to pull this off, Marah would have rebelled).

So, the Ides of March. There's not really too much you can do with this one unless dressing up in a bloody toga is your thing. I did, however, try to convince them that it would be really fun to walk up to some random person and whisper, "Beware the Ides of March!" But of course, Mr. Rationality had to shoot that one down by pointing out that a proper warning has to be given in advance--not the day of. "That's like going around saying, 'Beware today' or 'Beware right now.'" Next year I'm going to make him wear a toga.

St. Patrick's Day is always one of Jon's favorite holidays. Last year I made green 4-leaf clover pancakes. This year, it was green bread bowls and broccoli cheddar soup. I think this all stems from the fact that my mom dyed our milk green every St. Patrick's Day when we were kids. Jon usually expresses his excitement over the festive food by emitting groans of various volumes and frequencies. But, of course, he eats it anyway because green food is STILL food. Oh yes, and everyone in this house wore green (although Jon's was a matter of chance, not choice).

Easter is much tamer. There's not much you can do until you have kids big enough to find Easter eggs (no, I do not make Jon hunt for eggs, although, in retrospect, I should have tried it to see what he'd do). We're also not big sweet-eaters, so all the Easter candy is pretty useless around here. Of course, I did buy two Cadbury Creme Eggs--one for Marah, one for me & Jon (I think the baby would bruise several internal organs if I tried to eat a whole one. He hates it when I eat candy). So, all I'm left with is dyeing eggs. Jon may hate this more than the green food, although I think some of that stems from the fact that I spilled the dye all over the carpet the first year we were married. I've been very careful ever since, especially now that I'm pregnant and prone to dropping, spilling or breaking everything I touch.

Jon worked very hard at undermining the egg-dyeing this year. I boiled 6 eggs--2 for each of us--which I considered to be a very manageable number, even for Jon. So of course, he insisted on eating one of them when we got home from NYC at midnight and there was no food in the house. Thus, on Easter Sunday the boy has just ONE egg to decorate. It still took me & Marah 15 minutes to pry him away from Starcraft and get him to the table. He then proceeded to "accidentally" drop his egg into the black dye, declared it a lost cause, and went back to Starcraft. At least Marah & I made some cool eggs.

Lastly, here is a picture of the White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Marah & I made. This has nothing to do with a holiday--I'm just please with how it turned out (except for the mushy crust). Thanks again, Kellie, for teaching me how to make cheesecake!