St. Patrick’s Day 2008

Sullivan the leprechaun arrived as usual on St. Patrick’s Day with a few tricks up his sleeve. He didn’t turn the whole milk jug green this time. Instead, he dabbed a little green dye on the bottom of the cereal bowls and cups, so the milk did turn green after all. Also, when we flushed, the water in the toilet bowl turned green. Let see, what else did he do… Oh, yeah, he covered Miss Life11’s bed ladder in plastic wrap. Luckily her foot went right through it, so, no accidents. He stayed for a few days and one of the mornings I hear Miss Life13 say “I’m gonna kill Sully!” I looked at her sitting on the ground with her jeans pulled half way up, flopping her leggs about like a mermaid’s tail, trying not to laugh. Turns out that Sully has sown the bottom of her jeans shut.

Another important thing that happened while he was here is the fact that our family will have two spy elves come December. In the after-Christmas sale, Miss Life13 found this doll that she said looks like Seamus and Sullivan, and insisted we buy it. Well, when Sully came over and saw it, he let the girls know that that was ‘old Galahad’s likeness’ from the North Pole. He’s put them in touch with each other and now Galahad has just let Miss Life13 know that he will definitely be coming to our house before Christmas.

Galahad and Sullivan

They’re still welcome in my house…

And that’s because, even though they have done some messy things, they also cleaned up after themselves if we didn’t have time or didn’t feel like it. And they did some sweet things too, like finish decorating the tree when the girls secretly asked them to, since they were too tired. After they told me, I asked them to finish my cleaning to see if it would work, and, guess what. It did! They even cleaned the vacuum (my least favourite thing to do). There was also the time they have used our digital camera to take pictures of themselves, which made us realize that we have this timer feature on the camera we didn’t know about. It came in useful not long after.

Ok, so here are some more photos of Seamus and Sully during their December 2007 visit:

Having a ’snowball’ fight

They took this picture of themselves snooping thru some gifts

They invited some Winx dolls to play monopoly with them

Sitting around a little tree they brought us one night

Another picture they took of themselves

Binging on Halloween candy. Miss Life10 was really mad when she saw how much of her loot they ate!

Seamus looks like he’s got a tummy ache

Sullivan having some green candy

 

 

When you’re hosting a spy elf…

…you have to know your kids behaviour will be at their best. And if they slip up, the elf will be reminding them, either by email or through notes left on the computer. At least that’s what Seamus was doing last December. He arrived on December 1st, and brought snow with him. We live in the Pacific Northwest where we don’t see snow often, so that made it very special. Every morning the girls would look through the whole house searching for Seamus, making sure he was still with us. He was found in the weirdest places. Then, on the 8th, Sullivan the Leprechaun decided to join his cousin Seamus, spending some time with us. His idea of fun is doing as much mischief as he could talk Seamus into doing every night. I shudder to think what he would’ve done if he would have been left on his own. The first morning after he arrived, we found a note from Seamus saying “I told him not to do it!” (written backwards, of course) .

Click on photos to enlarge.

This is what ‘it’ was…

Making snow angels on the kitchen counter

Using a 25lbs rice bag to make a sledding hill

Playing some card game

They dared unwrap one of my gifts, so they could watch the DVD

 

 

 

I’ll add some more photos of their exploits later.     

What the heck is an Elfrechaun?

Well, that would be Sully’s cousin Seamus, of course. You see, in Sully’s own words “me mum’s own sister married one of them elves up at the Pole” and “Seamus takes a little after his old man, so we used to tease him a lot about his height and his ears size”. So, Seamus was with us for a couple of days last March and he also has an email that he uses to keep in touch with Miss Life12 and Miss Life10 throughout the year. He lives at the North Pole and he is a spy elf. He came to stay with us in December, spying on the girls and when Sully dropped by for a few days they got in some scrapes together. More about that in a later post.

Leprechauns Antics

To continue the story, while Sullivan was here for the next ten days or so, he would just look like a toy during the day, but at night he would be doing all kind of crazy things. He would use the computer to email the girls, answering any questions they had. I don’t remember every thing he did (can’t blame me for trying to block out some memories) and we didn’t get to take pictures of all of them, but the funniest trick was played on Miss Life10. She woke up one morning to find her underwear box empty, so she just borrowed a pair of panties from Miss Life12 and blamed Sully for the disappearance. We should’ve known there was more to it, seeing as we found him sitting on top of Miss Life12’s swing, covering his mouth with one hand. I could swear I heard him snicker when I took the picture!

Right before Miss Life10 had to leave for school she remembered something she needed to put in her backpack. Imagine her shock when she found all her underwear stuffed amongst her school books. Let me tell you, she was not happy at all with the leprechaun’s sense of humor! At least she was spared the embarrassment of discovering them  in front of her class!

Well, lets see, what else I remember… Every morning the kids would rush to see if Sully was still with us. One time they couldn’t find him, so they thought that he finally had to leave. Later he was discovered in the box of Lucky Charms, munching on a piece of cereal.

Then, there was the incident with the floss. One morning we woke up to find the bathroom covered in floss and Sully floating in the middle of the web. I have no idea what he was trying to do. I’m pretty sure that if he was flossing, there wouldn’t have been floss wrapped around the lightbulbs, the shower head or door knob. Maybe he was trying to weave a pretty spider web, but failed when his long nose got weaved right in the middle of it. Well, at least he didn’t use my favourite floss, so I didn’t mind much. The thing that I minded was when I was almost late taking the girls to school because I had to clean frost off of my car. We found the garage empty that morning and my Isuzu Rodeo was pulled almost sideways at the bottom of the driveway. And who was hopelessly tangled in the steering wheel? That’s right: good ole’ Sully. Well, let me tell ya, I had no clue what a difference parking in the garage makes! And how the heck did he actually drive that far? There was no key in the ignition…

So, Sully was enjoying himself so much that he decided to invite his cousin Seamus over to show him what a cool place he has landed himself in. Well, no wonder he was having fun. Besides all the tricks and exploring he got to do at night, he was being included in all the fun activities during the day by the girls and Mr. Life. They even played Foosball together: girls vs. boys. The girls won, but barely.

Here is one more picture of Sully after his movie night. We had no popcorn in the house, so I have no clue where he got that from…

How it came that my daughter needed a Non-Human folder in her email…

Last year, sometimes in February, my girls started getting these really weird emails from Leprechaun Sullivan. They were written backwards and to my 12 year old sounded like some kind of joke my brother would play on them. Well, Sully (as he called himself) wanted to know if he would still be welcome at our house on St. Patrick’s Day. My (then) 10 year old, said sure, come on over. Miss Life12, on the other hand, was more like: who the heck are you?, and after several emails she was inclined to believe that he was just a creep with no life of its own and way too much time to spend in front of a computer screen. Although she did get a little freaked out when Sully said he will show her what he thinks of non-believers when he’ll come over to turn the milk green for Miss Life10. Well, that was the end of the emails and we almost forgot all about it until the morning of St. Patrick’s Day when our house was obviously visited by a leprechaun. The milk turned green, as it usually happens on this day, but this time there was more. In the bathroom, there was a backwards message on the counter written with my green Bath & Body Works soap saying ‘Sully was here’ (it was conveniently located next to the mirror, so easy to read it) Then, the table was decorated in green and a box of Lucky Charms was placed in the middle of it. There seemed to be green & gold glitter all over the house, but the best thing was that Miss Life12’s room was TPed in the middle of the night. The girls share a room, but only Miss Life12’s half was covered in green and white crepe paper. It kinda matched her room since her walls are lime green and teal. Miss Life10’s are pink and purple. So, while they were both asleep, Sully was busy redecorating half of the room. I was taking pictures of all this the next morning, when to our surprise, what did we find in the closet tangled up in the green wire that was stretched all over the ceiling, but a tiny little leprechaun. We found out later that one of the girls must’ve woken up while he was in the middle of his naughty trick, which made him freeze into a toy-looking leprechaun. And he decided that, since we have caught sight of him, nothing will please us better than to have him over a few days more. The girls took to him right away, Miss Life12 going so far as to get him a comfortable chair and bed and tucking him in at night with a glass of water next to him, cause you never know when a leprechaun might get thirsty. I guess I was the only one that was a little freaked out by the fact that he looked just like a shrunk up little old man. But then I got so used to his looks, that I got quite fond of his sharp nose and naughty twinkle in his eyes. (To be continued…)

The Table Offering

Miss Life12’s Room (She has just spotted Sully in the closet)

Sully rescued from the closet tangle