survived the seder

I survived the Seder last night! Wahoo! Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the evening -- you know, to prove that it really happened and that it really was a huge deal! A bunch of us set up the tables and chairs at the stake center on Monday night. I took the family with me and we called it a family service project/FHE activity. We set up 47 tables and 235 chairs. We had a full house last night. We ran short of salad (that never happens!) and had to dash out at the last moment for more lettuce. When we got to the church at 4:30 to set up, Bro. Rona told us that he needed kids -- about 10 of them to join us for the evening. Say what?! We scrounged up some girls that were willing to dress up and participate in the evening, and you know what? the girls had a fabulous time! The evening was long -- 2 1/2 hours of listening to him speak. Everything about the passover meal is symbolic and it was very enlightening -- if I could pay attention the whole time, which I couldn't, because of being in and out with the food and sitting near the back. Despite that I did learn a few things. The salad, soup and sorbet were good. The matzah was like a cracker or crouton and went well with the soup. The horseradish smelled bitter, as expected, but I didn't actually taste it -- I think I was serving soup or something during that part of the meal. The haroset -- an apple, nut, date, cinnamon mixture-- smelled like apple pie, but needed more sugar to suit my taste if I were going to eat much of it. Clean-up of the event went much faster than expected and I got home around 10:00. It's good to have this event over, but there's much work to be done for the next one...