passover seder 2012

Apr 7, 2012

Last night we held our annual Passover Seder! We invited my Worldviews students, their parents and one student’s younger siblings to come experience our favorite holiday of the year. Due to my need to be horizontal at almost all times, my girls did most of the set-up and cleaning all day Thursday and then Keziah stayed home from gymnastics on Friday to finish up. It is a huge production to create AND it is absolutely worth it. I assigned out almost all of the food to my students (and I hope they made it, not their mothers, but I don’t know what really happened there), so setting up the ceremonial plates after people arrived took quite a bit of time and effort by everyone. The pictures are grainy, but they are all I have, so I am posting them anyway.

Fisher took over a new role this year as the “youngest child” who asks the Four Questions. He did a great job – I was SO proud of him for speaking loudly enough that our large group could hear him. It takes him quite a bit of courage to speak in front of people and he worked hard to be ready for his special job.

Annesley and her little friend, Elijah, sat by each other and whispered non-stop the whole night about matzah, juice, eggs, salt water, Elijah the prophet, boils, darkness, frogs, and Jesus. It was so precious to hear them jabbering away so excitedly for hours on end.

Excuse the blurriness…

Blythe took over my role as the woman of the house who lights the festival candles. She did a great job for her first time. In her own eventual family, she will play this role many times. I loved catching a glimpse of her future.

Keziah was the lucky child who found the afikomen! I think this is the first time one of our children has found the hidden matzah. Our hider was so sneaky it took a loooonnnnggggg time for them to find it and unfortunately Fisher banged his eye on a cinder block under our specially built Passover table and cried his eyes out for ages.

I brought a cheese (wedge-shaped mat) home from gym and laid on it during our three hour meal. It worked out perfectly! Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of me on it.

I am so thankful to our guests for bringing the food and to my girls for setting everything up. A few weeks into this injury, I realized I was not going to be able to do Passover. It about broke my heart, so I started brainstorming how to make it happen in spite of the pain and need to be off my feet. When I proposed my food and set-up plan, everyone jumped at the chance to be involved and through many hands and hearts, we did it!

Richard breaking the matzah

A few of my students…how I love these boys!

A few of my girls…love them too!

More of the crowd

Five of them…missing three of them

Our guests loving on the puppies

Brother Jones getting the Fruit of the Vine ready…master filler! If you look carefully you can see my black skirt and grey legs in the bottom right of the picture laying down on my cheese.

Brother Lamoreaux topping off the pitchers

Somehow, we didn’t get a complete group photo like we usually do! Where is my brain sometimes? We had 25 people at our Seder Table, plus a place set for Elijah in case he showed up. As a side note, the part of our Seder about Elijah really touched me this year. I cried as I thought about the mission of Elijah to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers to the children. I am experiencing some pretty amazing miracles right now with Elijah’s role in bringing families together and last night I was overcome with the reality of it all. Such a tender mercy.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen! We were thrilled to be able to share it with you!

Here are some past Passover memories and some explanations of why we celebrate Passover: 2011, 2010.