Happy St. Patti's Day

My mom's birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, so she claims that she is Irish. Todd is part Irish, so my children are also. I figure by default of both of my mom and Todd, I am some part Irish. So, I definitely had to sport the Irish Pride and go to Cleveland's St. Patrick's Day Parade.

I went with my friends Jenny, and Yvonne, along with her husband and all our children. Walking downtown we looked quite hilarious with one man, three women, and eight children. Todd got off earlier than expected and met us at the parade. It was good to have another set of hands, even though we did rely on Yvonne's eight year old girl, Jenna, a lot. She lent her sunglasses to Grant:

The best was when Jenna told us that she was 50% Irish and her brother Samuel was only 25%. If you know this family, it's even funnier because Samuel looks like he is adopted. He is very, VERY dark. We have all suspected that the milk man may have been involved... Jenna has just confirmed this belief.

The parade itself was not all that cool. It consisted of people just walking down the street. Very few floats, and whenever there were bands they would just march to their drums as they passed us. We did follow the Janning Tradition of getting a Shamrock shake from McDonalds.

As we were leaving the parade, we saw that someone was lying in the middle of the street. Todd ran over there and helped them until an ambulance arrived. We sat at the opposite corner watching. It was fun seeing my man in action, even though I could barely see him because he was behind a police car that was protecting them from being hit by a car, plus I couldn't take my eyes off my kids too much.

It was such a beautiful day, so we walked down to the dock of Lake Erie. We watched skaters perform at the skate park. We didn't want to stay too long for we feared that Roger would jump over the fence and start skating with them.

We went to the science museum. It was not busy at all, and the kids really enjoyed playing with everything.

Then we spent the remainder of the afternoon on a grassy hill (with bird poop all over). The kids had the greatest time just running up and down the hill. I tried to get a picture of my boys together, but this impossible feat still has not been done. I always have at least one kid causing a problem.

I'm not joking, it is difficult to get a decent picture... there's just too many kids to make sure each and everyone of them is cooperating, looking at the camera, and smiling! But we did finally get this:

Close enough.

We ended up getting home just in time for me to go to Young Women's that evening, so we didn't have our Corned Beef and cabbage...but don't worry, we enjoyed it for dinner the next day.