St. Patrick's Day Dinner

 

We had our yearly celebration of St. Patrick's Day at Ye-Ye and Nana's house today, and as always, it was a really wonderful time.  There were all kinds of seasonal decorations celebrating all things Ireland, and of course the Irish music playing - and then there's the food.  Yes, there's Irish soda bread, and yes there's the corned beef and cabbage and potatoes too.  We had St. Patrick's Day desserts too, and all was well.  Even the weather outside had that Irish feel, overcast cool skies with hints of drizzle in the air.  

Okay, check this out.  Technology is moving along fast - some day this post will seem like such old news and in fact it probably already is.  But AI is such that the average person can take a photo now, and convert it into something fancy.  I asked for this photo above to be changed to an oil painting sort of image, and it did a pretty nifty job!

For the record, I just can't seem to like cabbage.  I'm trying.  Maybe not as hard this year, as evidenced above.  That's my sampling of cabbage this year, just because I'm trying.  Maddie even tried some cabbage.  Aunt Shain, Maddie and I are hard passes on the cabbage. Sorry, Ireland!

We all came dressed up for St. Patrick's Day.  I was wearing my Buc-ee's st. Patrick's Day shirt, but Hannah here outdid us all with an Irish flag!

After the party, we came back home to shut down the rest of the night.  It was the close of all Winter sporting games in Italy, the end of the Paralympics, and that meant one last huge game, the sled hockey game between Canada and USA on the ice.  Canada and USA faced each other in the gold medal games for women's hockey and men's hockey - we watched both of those games.  Now today we were watching the US team battle Canada in sled hockey.  The first part of the game was fairly close, as expected.  But also as expected, the US team just had more depth and a couple key players that are supremely talented.  The end score was 6-2, and there was a whole lot of celebration.  USA swept the ice hockey games, defeating Canada for each of those finals!

These games were really awesome to watch.  If I can see something like that around here locally, we might go check that out.  

The other thing that we saw tonight were the Closing Ceremonies, which were really great.  The visuals were so creative, with these LED ropes used for an amazing sequence, and then a whole series of white boxes - so simple, and yet really imaginative.  The snow globe above was a beautiful design and centerpiece.

It was super cool.  And it's bittersweet, because now it's really all over with.  We'll see all this again in four years in France, but that's a long time from now.  But looking backwards, the time does go by quickly.  I will say this is probably the most engaged with the Paralympics.  

As for the rest of the day, of course it was Sunday.  We were at KidPak this morning and it was really nice.  We were talking about the Ten Commandments, continuing with our Spring Training series, which has been pretty good!

Mom is feeling better, although not quite 100% yet.  But a lot better than she was yesterday, and that's a good sign.  She took it easy today.  Tonight we read from our time-traveling adventure in the Discworld, and then it was time for sleep.  We have classes tomorrow for Maddie and things get going again.  It was a good day today.