Family

Parents & Siblings

I’m the first of the eight children born to John and Laura Cowan. My dad has been the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Sacramento for over a quarter of a century, but recently moved to Utah and serves as an Associate Pastor (among many, many other roles) at Calvary Chapel of Salt Lake City. With eight kids, my mom’s career has mostly centered around, well, mothering—but somehow she found time to be a childbirth educator in the past (for which she was immensely qualified, naturally); and she is currently pursuing the possibility of writing as a profession (for which she is also obviously qualified, judging from newsletters and the like that she has written in the past).

Both of my parents are very musical: my dad plays several instruments (though he strongly favors guitar), and my mother has a great singing voice. This has resulted in a very musical family overall. I’ve built a fair amount of skill as a pianist (which was my university major), and have a decent singing voice. My brother, Johnny, is in a very good alternative group, Thin December. Another brother, Chris, was in a band, Frankly Scarlet, which has recently disbanded. My brother Joshua, who has been hoping to move into graphic arts, but has recently shifted to tattoo artistry, developed their awesome album covers. He’s also a good musician, who developed some serious skill with the guitar, but has not been musically active in some time. My sister, Anna, isn’t in a band, but I’ve heard some recordings of her singing to some songs that she wrote. It sent chills down my spine: she sounds an awful lot like Jennifer Knapp.

Wife & Kids

In the summer of 1999, I married Sara Louise Roloff, the love of my life. We have three children: Joy Lorraine, age 7, David Nathaniel, age 4, and baby Kamberly LaVene.

Sara

Sara loves art, and dabbles in drawing, painting, sculpting, and various other visual arts. Her current obsession is beadwork. She also has a beautiful singing voice, which she uses frequently as she’s working on things around the house. The very sight of her fills me with happiness, appreciation, and the inexplicable desire to remove all of her clothing :-) .

I am very, very happy to have such a wonderful, sexy, and creative wife (who’s also a good mother, to boot!).

Joy

Joy also shows a great aptitude for music and, especially, visual arts. When she was younger (3 or 4), she spent nearly all of her time on her favorite plaything, the MagnaDoodle. She very quickly acquired solid skill in drawing. She still frequently amazes Sara and I with her expressive abilities.

She also has an aptitude for music. She needs only to hear a melody once to sing it back. Sometimes I’ve heard her sing something that she heard in passing a few days before. She amazed Sara and I when she wasn’t even a day old, by perfectly matching a pitch she was hearing from a leaf-blower outside.

Joy has also inherited her father’s obsession with video games. In fact, she may be even more obsessed than I am. She particularly enjoys playing Sonic the Hedgehog and Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, on her (my?) portable plug-n’-play Sega Genesis systems.

David

Well, David’s only four, and his hidden talents haven’t really emerged yet. He’s an energetic little monkey, though. I wish we had a jungle gym in our back yard, because he’s always substituting with people’s bodies, furniture…

He has a peculiar fascination with orderliness: he frequently organizes his stuffed animals or trucks into rows. But he also creates collossal messes. He particularly likes to take every pillow in the house and pile it up.

He also has a knack for finding obscure tight-corner hiding places and squeezing himself into them. Such as shelves in our linen closet, or the little space between our couch and our piano (suitably covered with a comforter or something).

Kamberly

Kamberly is a quite-new addition to our family. She doesn’t do much except eat, poop and sleep–but boy is she cute!