“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This, the opening line to Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, is packed full of meaning, and the rest of the book expounds in story form what he means.   We read of one miserable family owing its pain [...]

This past weekend was the big move.   We moved three whole blocks, but we might as well have been moving to a different state.  We still had to box everything up, and we hired movers because we’ve got some really heavy items.  In honor of our move, I thought I’d put together a top [...]

Two days ago my kids sneaked off with a box of strawberry cake batter mix from our pantry.  They ran to their room and opened it with the intention of eating the mix.  Not surprisingly, when they opened the bag some of the mix began to spill on the floor.  This became a game for [...]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Mary and I have decided to buy a house.  Neither of us have ever bought a house before, and it’s a big decision.  I’ve been struck by how little the church talks about what principles should guide our thinking when we are buying a house.  Where should you live?  How much [...]

Today is my wife’s birthday, so I thought I’d take a moment to honor her here with a list of top ten things I love about Mary:

She is a wonderful cook.  There is nothing like one of Mary’s homecooked Korean meals!
She is empathetic.  She has a tremendous capacity to feel the pain other people are [...]

Mary and I just got back from New York.  We spent the past three days visiting friends in New Jersey and New York.  Then On Sunday night, I officiated a wedding for a good college friend.  Here are some pictures.
The bottom pictures were taken from our hotel room of ground zero.  We were directly across [...]

We just got back from a great vacation down in Sanibel, FL.  My parents spend some time down their every year, and they invited us to join them for a little while.  Mary spent about a week down there, and I was down there for about three days.  Not as long as I would have [...]

A little while ago, I blogged about an unfortunate experience my wife had to go through (see here).  We decided that it was important for Mary to write a complaint letter.  We didn’t do it because we needed for it to happen in order to feel vindicated, but rather because we think that the best way [...]

Josiah is my three-year-old who is in preschool.  Today the teacher asked the kids in the class what they want to be when they grow up.  Some of the vocations that the kids wanted to be were:

Veterinarian 
Train conductor
Chef
Fireman
Mailman
Princess

These are all very exciting professions, especially in the eyes of three and four-year olds.  But my son [...]

Some of Mary’s closest friends spent the past few days visiting with us.  The girls were a part of a small group together while we were back in Boston on the seminary campus.  They have all since gotten married, and their husbands came with them on this visit.  There were four couples including Mary and [...]