Family members are arriving.
Last minute food needs to be cooked. matzo balls. roasted veggies.
Tables need to be set.
Formula needs to be bought.
Towels need to be picked up (certainly i don't have enough for all 10 of us that will be sleeping in my house!! it's actually 11, but i don't count Isabella) and beds need to be made.
Children need to be bathed. and dressed. and fed. and entertained.

and here i am.
at work.
until 3:15.

yikes. passover starts tonight.
my family usually takes the easy route. we all pack up. we don't clean a thing or cook a thing. instead we go to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to a hotel, where they make it for us. they cook our meals and clean our rooms. it's fantastic.
but this year, my mother decided, without so much as asking me, that EVERYONE was coming to me. well, it's not the entire family...but it's enough to make this undertaking a huge-ass ordeal for me.
she? got to show up last night. after most of the cooking and running around and arranging and shopping and cleaning was all finished.

i'm actually surprisingly still calm. it's probably because i'm not at home amidst the chaos. the husband has already called 6 times and it's only 12:40. but, i really, truly feel that somehow, we've got this all under control.

we are having three meals at our house.
seder #1 - tonight we are 9 (not including kids)
seder #2 - tomorow night we are 9 (supposed to be 11, but our friends mike and sarah went and had a baby boy on us this morning...)
lunch on saturday - we are 11 plus 6 kids (well...only 4 that eat)
yikes!

*thank god for my husband, who did the good bulk of the shopping. he took the kids every sunday for the last month and slowly stocked up on passover foods. i filled in the blanks with the utensils and serving platters and cutlery and perishables and all the other missing things.
*thank god for my nanny, who cleaned my house from top to bottom. i swear, it looks nicer than i've ever seen it.
*thank god for my children, who have been relatively well-behaved lately. last saturday afternoon, the two of them actually played together. because they wanted to. and didn't complain about it. and no one came out bleeding at the end.
*thank god for my mother, who funded this entire adventure. because, seriously, passover is fucking expensive. we're talking in the thousands, people.
*thank god for my mother in law, who not only bought me a cuisanart (7-cup, that i wanted to pay to upgrade, but the husband said no, but still i won't complain, it was the nicest gesture), she also agreed to make the seder plates for me, something i have ZERO experience with and didn't want to undertake.
*thank god for my sister, who is coming to save me from my mother. and to help me break in my brother's new girlfriend....he he. my baby brother has a girlfriend. he calls her "D", which is sweet in a better-get-a-bucket type of way. they've been together for about a year and my sister and i have yet to meet her. i fear for her a little bit, because when we met my older brother's now-wife for the first time, it was not pretty. but, i'm the lesser of the two evils, if i do say so myself. i promise to be nice, no matter how skanky she is (shoot...that was already mean...but, really, it's my BABY brother....is there anyone out there that my sister and i will think is good enough for him?)