Tales of a Hockey Wife: March 2012

Right now, my life is so busy I cannot think straight enough to blog...but I thought I would repost my St. Patrick's Day post from last year! Wishing you all a wonderful day filled with luck and good beer!

Are you wearing green? Is the corned beef in the crock pot and the Guinness beer chilling in the cooler? Well then...today must be St. Patrick's Day! For some of you, maybe you will pull out the one green item you have in the back of your closet...something you only wear once a year so you won't get pinched. Maybe you are like Megan Fox, and you borrow your 8 year-old's t-shirt...and it f*cking fits!

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Anyhow...every year my husband gets a copy of the dates for the upcoming season sent to him. As soon as we get this schedule, I narrow down a few important dates to see if my husband will be home or away. These dates include...

My children's birthdays
Christmas
All-Star break
ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Ever since I can remember, my husband and I have celebrated St. Patrick's Day instead of Valentine's Day. We exchange gifts, give each other cards that profess our love to each other, and we drink Guinness while we dine on corned beef and cabbage.

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Of course it is not that we are jumping on some green bandwagon...we really do have reason to celebrate. Our love was built on both of our love of anything Irish. We both have Irish family roots. My husband's mother was born on St. Patrick's Day. We have similar tastes in music, such as The Waterboys. I have had a four-leaf clover tattooed on my foot since I was eighteen (and a shamrock on my back). I offered to buy him a Bushmills the night we met. (My favorite hard beverage...stirred not shaken please!) We honeymooned in Ireland. Our children both have been given Irish names. Let's be honest...who wouldn't want to find a reason to dress like this?

This is my son on St. Patrick's Day when he was almost one year old!

That day we took our children to the local Irish pub to have a traditional Irish breakfast (skip the blood sausage please!). As we walked in the place went nuts. Here he is next to one of the bartenders showing off their matching green mohawks and guinness shirts! Supposedly, this picture is framed on the wall of the bar...my husband and I are so proud!

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From the moment you walk in our house (where ever that might be for the hockey season)...it is obvious that this is a home that takes their Guinness Drinking seriously! Our framed artwork consists of prints by John Gilroy...best known for his Guinness Beer art.

As most ~~bad~~ parents do, we let our daughter take a sip of Guinness, upon her insistence, when she was almost three. I can tell you she didn't like the taste of it, and this is how I know...

One day, after we had just returned from a two-week trip, I was sitting in our living room talking to my sister on the phone. I heard my daughter make some strange gurgling noises and was acting like she was gagging. As she came in the room, I could smell a putrid smell on her. My immediate thought was that she had consumed a poison of some type.

ME: What is wrong? What did you drink?

HER: GUINNESS...(she said it as though she had just consumed a near fatal dose of arsenic!)

ME: Guinness? I tried to think what poison could be mistaken for guinness....OH MY GOD, SHE DRANK OLD ENGLISH!!

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Then I found it...My daughter had found a sippy-cup of old milk (over two weeks old) and had taken a sip.

(I will wait for you to stop gagging)....

In my daughter's mind, the only thing more disgusting than drinking two-week-old milk...would be Guinness!