The Swann's Swimmings

Hello, hello!

My brother Dave came to visit for a couple nights and we sure had fun
with him!  The boys all went paintballing.  Sarah played with a
neighbor friend meanwhile.  I tried to watch them but it isn't too
entertaining for a spectator sport.  So I read for awhile and then
curled up in the warm sun on the pickup bench and took a nap. 
Evidently, Dave's camp has quite a few more rules than our games out
here in Herreid.

On Good Friday, I just about had to sell a kidney to buy and fire
roast a leg of lamb.  I can't believe how expensive it was but I
guess sometimes memories cost money.  So I prepared a traditional,
well significantly modified traditional Passover Seder meal.  I
finally used my cool wood stove outside to sear the lamb before slow
roasting it in the indoors oven.  Unfortunately, we found out in the
little book that Steven read during supper that Jews no longer eat
lamb at Passover because the second temple was destroyed in 70 AD. 
THat doesn't exactly make sense since the command to eat lamb was
given to the Jews long before the temple was even built, but
whatever.  Anyways, so we also had water crackers, bitter root
(horseradish), bitter herbs (our store had none so I served broccoli
and red kale which at least looked weird), and roasted eggs
(remarkably similar to deviled eggs to the untrained eye :), and of
course our lamb.  This little booklet also called for a desert called
Afikolomen or something like that.  I figured that must be Jewish for
our local dessert favorite called Cottage Cheese Kuchen.

 It was all progressing solemnly until we had to eat the bitter root
on crackers.  The purpose is to remind us of the tears of the
Israelites while they were slaves.  At the meal, the kids just did
whatever I did.  Unfortunately, I forgot how very strong horseradish
can be.  This jar definitely hadn't been made by Kraft.  I spread it
on thick, like you would put a cheese spread on a cracker.  We all
took a bite, except STeven who just put the whole thing in his mouth
so he could keep reading from the booklet, and then just about died. 
The kids were both in tears and ended up running to the bathroom to
spit it out (politely).  Amazingly, it was quite easy to remember the
tears of the Israelites!

After all of the extra EAster services and work, we took off camping
for a couple days but got winded and almost rained out the second
night and went home earlier than planned.  Nevertheless, it proved to
be relaxing and recharging before this week of preparations for the
Ordination that will need all the battery strength we can muster.

We are so looking forward to seeing many of you and sharing this
special time together as the church lays their hands on Steven to
publicly ordain him for ministry.

Blessings,

Marcia for the Swann's

P.S.  ANd no, I still haven't taken the time to figure out how to
hook up the camera to this new operating system on my computer. 
Sorry.