Carolinas trip, part 4

Saturday, we got up around 9:30 or so...I think. Maybe later. We went out for breakfast at IHOP. I got harvest and berry pancakes. Good stuff. We did some shopping for dinner, groceries, gas, some phone gadgets (blue tooth and ear piece, I think). That took the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon.

Back at the ranch we sat down to play Phase 10. Fun game. Frustrating at times when you don't get the phase you need and others do. But hey, for me, "the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing." We had to be ready to leave by 5:30 so our friend could be at the theater in time for make up and costumes at 6. The show was at 8:00. So, the wife got as far as Phase 9, I think and then we had to stop and prepare for the second first night seder. :)

So I chopped six apples for Charoset. The wife put together the cinnamon, sugar, grape juice, nuts, etc. Then there was chicken and broccoli to make for dinner. Thanks be to God I married a woman who knows how to cook.

Not having remembered to bring our Haggadahs (service books for the Seder.) Haggadah comes from the word aggadah, meaning story or legend. We went off the cuff. It helped having just done a seder the day before at my brother's house. So I went off of memory. And I'm pretty sure we got all the important details covered. We sang some songs. Had all four glasses of grape juice. Discussed the matza and egg and parsley and bitter herbs and salt water and paschal lamb and the redemption from slavery in Egypt. Speaking of the paschal lamb, traditionally, there's a lamb shank bone on the seder plate representing the paschal lamb that was slain and whose blood was put on the doorposts of the Israelites' houses so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their houses during the plague of the first born. Well, we didn't have a shankbone. So I told our friend that my family has a cardboard bone. So she drew a bone on a piece of paper and we used that instead. :D

The whole thing, start to finish from preparing the meal and getting everything ready, to doing the seder, to eating the meal, to concluding the seder, to clearing the table took less than an hour. Talk about fast. Phew! Good thing we were done that quickly too, because we had to get to her show.

To be continued...