St. Patrick's Day Fail.

On Sunday, my brother picked me up at 10 and we drove more than five hours to Illinois for a funeral. We were there long enough for the wake, dinner after and the morning service. Then we turned around and drove home again - to try to beat the next snow storm hitting the Midwest. It was a lot of time in the car, but the last time I took a road trip with just my brother was…well…never. So there's that.

I got home just in time for dinner (thanks again to my mother-in-law for staying with Miss B for the day and starting dinner). The boys had their first day back at school after "spring" break.

When I came in the door, my mother-in-law said, "I'm just going to run out to the store, I tried to get Lucky Charms earlier and they were all out."

"What?" I said. "Why do we need Lucky Charms for dinner?"

"Well," she said, "I guess Monkey told John he was the only one in the class who didn't have them for breakfast and he wanted me to get some for him."

And what we have here is a game of "telephone" gone horribly wrong.

As it turns out, Monkey explained that it wasn't anything about cereal, he was the only one in his class who did not get a visit from a troublesome Leprechaun.

Sigh. Really?

I just cannot keep up with the moms here. They are so much better at everything than I am.

I was already feeling overwhelmed by all of the people who seemed to dedicate an entire weekend to celebrating St. Patrick's Day in a drunken-stooper, and keep in mind I was gone for 24 hours of it. On Saturday morning, they began an exodus through our neighborhood to the nearby Irish Pub. The party started Saturday morning and went into the late hours on Monday night. That's a lot of drunk people wandering around our neighborhood. It was enough to make me not want to drink again. Ever.

But then, to find out I was supposed to orchestrate the antics of a Leprechaun too? What has happened to this holiday while we were out of the country? Apparently, if you don't have kids you are supposed to drink all weekend. And if you do have kids, you have to spend your weekend concocting a Leprechaun Trap. I guess I vaguely remember seeing a few posts last year on Facebook - about said Leprechaun Traps. And I even remember thinking they were cute and clever and how those kids were lucky to have such fun parents. But that was before I knew I was expected to be a similarly fun parent.

So I asked him, "Do you REALLY believe in Leprechauns?"

He got a goofy grin and shook his head no.

"Good, how about I buy you a box of Lucky Charms tomorrow when I go to the store and we call it even," I said, stealing John's original idea.

He gave me the thumbs up and we now have a box of Lucky Charms in our cupboard. And there is still half of a shamrock-shaped cake leftover - but that was complements of Grandma Sue, of course.