suburban hobos

After a night in San Francisco we arrived home on Thursday afternoon.  All that remains of Taiwan is the jet lag.  And the good memories.  Anne Marie and Tony are exceptionally generous hosts and we had such a good time exploring parts of their world.

If you’re interested in a few additional photos you can view [...]

We continue to enjoy our time in Taiwan; it’s hard to believe that we begin our trip home on Wednesday.  Our friend Kate who currently lives in Hong Kong joined us for a few days.  We’ve explored, eaten a lot, and met many of Anne Marie and Tony’s friends.
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The past few days have been a jet-lagged blur.  We left Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, spent the night in San Francisco, and on Thursday afternoon began the long flight to Taiwan with my parents.  Hold your cursor over the photos for a short description and click for a larger view
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Is Eliot’s hair going to eventually be curly…

…or straight?

We sure don’t know.  We’re in the final few days before we take Eliot on his first trip out of the country.  On Wednesday we fly to San Francisco and then on to Taiwan with my parents on Thursday.  We’ll be spending about two weeks with my [...]

Last week Maggie and I spent a few days in Phoenix as part of our denomination’s church planters assessment center.  Basically, we were observed, questioned, poked, and prodded for 4 days to assess our ability to be church planters.  It was a long few days, though not without its good moments.  It was particularly difficult [...]

While this blog may show our lives as one fun vacation and adventure after another, I assure you that there is plenty of regular, mundane life that happens in the Swanson home.  Having said that, we just got back from a wonderful family vacation.  Some friends graciously lent us their vacation home near Princeton, IL [...]

We’ve been back for over a week, but I wanted to post a few photos from our time in California.  We had a really fun family reunion and got to spend time in some beautiful places.
For the record, Eliot is a great traveler.  More photos can be found at this web album.

We’ve been busy lately, so I’ve been slow to post anything from our trip to Brownsville a few weeks back.  This photos nicely captures Eliot’s popularity among his extended family.

You can see 55 more photos from this trip on this Picasa Album.
On Monday we said goodbye to Megs, who had flown down from Edmonton to [...]

To make a long story short… a few months ago we’d purchased tickets to a concert in Milwaukee.  A lot has happened since we got those tickets, making it tricky to know what to do about the concert last night.  We’re not ready to leave Eliot with a babysitter yet, so we weren’t sure what [...]

We’ve been enjoying our Memorial Day visit with the Draheims in Mason City.  Yesterday’s big event was Dave’s gradation party here at the house.  Tammy and Kelly had been working on the party for some time and it came together wonderfully.  Even the threatening thunderstorms cooperated.

This morning I preached at both services at First Covenant [...]