Thank you for teaching me to love life.

Most of my interests are directly inherited from my dad.  I've been realizing that recently. Thanks Dad, for teaching me to love life. You were passionate about what you did and about enjoying life, and that's why I am following in your footsteps. You taught me to love

-history

-self education, research, and obsessive buying of books and videos on any topic that I feel the need to know about

-children's and adult choirs

-a good bass line in the above

-The Pilgrim Academy

-spending more time with the fam than probably any other family on the East Coast

-apologetics

-my mom's marinara sauce

-Egg Harbor City

-adopting liturgical or ethnic traditions that are not necessarily ours and in a somewhat sloppy fashion, just because it makes us feel more connected to history.  I will spare you anecdotes but someday I will dress up on St. Lucia's day.

-jogging

-outdoors

-the Egg Harbor lake and Batsto

-the field of education

-the history of last names

-goal-setting

-smart men (now let me just pause here to say my dad did NOT like men, but I do; and I have definitely crushed on a 50 year old balding gay man before, thanks to the fact that my dad made me think smart was hot)

-visiting historic sites on vacation

-Renaissance/ancient music

-landscapes and the colors blue and green

-Calvinists ("ists" not "ism") My dad liked Machen, Rushdoony, Witherspoon, and Kuyper to name a few; and though I still have to read those guys I know I can partly blame my Calvinist-love on my dad.  By the way don't ask because I don't know.

-self-help (yes, my mom is not rid of diet books lying around and health food sitting in the refrigerator anytime soon)

-Leadbelly and a little bit of opera (yeah just throwing those in to make ya'll think, remember the days of Goodnight Irene, or the days of listening to Jose Carreras on the way back from swimming?)

-Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Custance, and I'll just stick Garrison Keillor into this list for fun even though he doesn't go with the apologist theme.

-this is not a passion for me now, but I hope to follow in his footsteps and someday garden

This list may come across as being somewhat nerdy, but I want to add the disclaimer that I am in no way defining Robert A. Peterson Jr.  My brothers could each come up with their own lists of the passions that were handed down to them.  But I think that this list, though not all-inclusive, is long enough that I can safely say I am my father's daughter.