I consider my life to be made up of concentric circles consisting of my family, my religion, professional activities, civic interests, and everything else.
My family consists of me (obviously), Laura (my wife), and our children – Savannah, Alyssa, Mariah, Isaac, Enoch, Noah, and Ezra. I have always known that my greatest desire in life was to be a good husband and father and that children were one of the greatest sources of joy and personal growth in life. Until I had children I could not have known how much of an understatement that was. Truly, if everything in my life were miserable but I still had my family I would consider myself to be a very lucky man. On the other hand, when everything in my life seems to be at it’s best, my greatest source of joy, by far, is still my family.
My church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have grown up in that faith, but I consider my own conversion to have taken place as a teenager. I have never been one to rely upon the declaration of other people. I always seek to understand and know things for myself. Therefore I can say that I have spent more than half my life already as a latter day saint by choice and not merely by descent or tradition. My faith informs and enriches all other aspects of my life.
One of my favorite interests in life centers around the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have enjoyed them from many angles. As a spectator from the academic realm I have studied the history surrounding them, and as a participant I have enjoyed working from every aspect of work surrounding the temple. On this site I have created pages discussing both of these perspectives. My interest in temples is merely a specific interest within a broader love for the Gospel of Jesus Christ which I am always trying to learn more about, and which I will always desire to live more fully.
Other interests that I enjoy are gardening and family history. One of the first things that I did after buying my first house was to remove the small garden patch (128 square feet) and replaced it with a larger garden (384 square feet). As for genealogy, I am trying to expand my genealogy information backwards, but I am very proud of the fact that I had a complete genealogy of the posterity of my grandmother at the time of her death – at that time her posterity consisted of 53 people including 5 children (plus 4 spouses), 24 grandchildren (plus 10 spouses), and 10 great-grandchildren. As I continue to go backward along my genealogical lines I hope that I can also maintain a complete list of genealogy for my living relatives.