Hashgaha is a Wonderful Thing

I had been thinking about going to San Diego for an overnighter a week before Pesah. Crazy, huh? It would be a chance to attend my niece's birthday party and for the girls to visit with family. It would also force me to get stuff done early and relax just a bit. There were two things that I was waiting on. What was going on for the sederim. 

I needed to know how many to cook for so that I could shop and start with what I can freeze. I'm also a big list-maker so I needed to get my lists done. Then I could make the final call. But the family was running around in circles. This person needed to ask that one who wanted to ask another who had to talk to the first one. 

Then there was talk of a possible community seder at a great price. I was all for it thinking that I could then focus my energy on the girls' Hebrew birthday meals (the 7th night!) but we were still going in circles with the family. I was just beginning to think that we wouldn't make it to San Diego when we got an invite for the second night. That makes San Diego more manageable, but I couldn't get an answer about the first night. I was about to give up on San Diego. 

I was thinking about sitting down tonight to email my sister that we couldn't make it. I ran out to get lunch and when I came back the machine was blinking. "Hi Miriam! We wanted to invite you, Aba, Chaya, Shira and Batya to the seder on the first night. Let me know!" Can you guess what my answer was? 

So, instead of cooking 2 dinners for guests, 1 dinner and 3 lunches for family for the first half, I'm down to 1 dinner and 3 lunches all for family. Now, normally I would invite guests for those meals, but we are having large groups for the girls' birthday and I really want to take that overnight trip. 

So I'm going to make up for it by having some extra Shabbat guests during the Omer.