Pesach

2.5 full days of cooking non-stop and Zelia's high fever made for some very busy Pesach preparations. She occupied herself part of the time with the zip lock bags) As always, Jacob was preparing a feast and I was working on the dessert (that part is not so usual). On the menu: homemade gefilte fish and maror, haroset, matzah ball soup, homemade chopped liver (with chicken fat that Jacob rendered himself) roasted lamb, chicken marbella, roasted potatoes, green beans, meringues, chocolate dipped macaroons, chocolate torte and with all the egg yolk left fro making those things Jacob whipped together a pot de creme which we topped with the left over ganache from the torte. We were finished in time to shower and dress and relax a moment. Here is Zelia in her Pesach dress. Ima made it for her and it has frogs on it - how perfect!!!!

We invited Henry, Tanja, Gerdur, Gisli, their children: Toman, Erlinger, Katrin Maria and Magnus, Lisbet and her three children (actually the baby is her nephew) for 5. I made a coloring book of the story of Moshe for the kids and we photocopied the short hagaddah so that almost everyone could have one. We sat down and began. It was so wonderful, it's hard to explain, but here we were with new friends, of which only one had been to a seder before, and they were joining, not just reading the English, but trying out the songs and eventually the transliteration of the Hebrew blessing - it was amazing. Of course we ate and ate and also spoke a little bit about Birchat Hachama that was so special this year. Zelia kep herself busy throughout most of the seder by eating Jacob's chopped liver.

After cleaning up most of the area we sat with Gisli, Gerdur, Tomas and Tanja, picked at the desserts some more and Gisli and Jacob were drinking rum!

On Thursday morning, after a bit of a rough sleep (Zelia was snoring so loudly that Jacob went to sleep on the couch!!!!!) But at least she only had a little fever at about 4 am and nothing more. Nothing like the 104.9 of the night before....

We mostly hung around, relaxing, eating matzah bri and went for a short walk to put Zelia to sleep. Tanja and Henry came over at noon and I taught a long yoga class - perfect after all the food, we did LOTS of spiraling through the spine.

We had our own short little seder that evening and no joke Zelia was eating the liver of a spoon like a lolly pop!!!! Not even the one meringue she had interested her as much:)

After dinner we packed Zelia up, made mulled wine and headed out into town to watch the snowboard jumping competition. This is part of the ski week festivities that began Wed. evening with a cross country race through the center of town. This time they built a snow jump on the hill (brekka) in front of the library. A good mount of people were there watching, a lot of teenagers. The funny thing was that in the pictures of the cars lined up - those are people sitting in their cars watching. We met Tanja, Henry, David and some of their friends and then headed home.