I just thought I'd pass along a little "proud Daddy" note.  Most of you know that several years ago, I got a bonus I wasn't expecting and spent a large chunk of it on some camera gear and a photography class for me and the kids.  I'm pleased to report that my kids are easily surpassing my ability as a photographer, though not for a lack of trying on my part.  I have, lately, been riding the kids to grab the camera and take pictures every night when we're home and not busy as the sun sets.  Grace, yesterday, told me she had an idea for a window lit shoot, so as the sun dropped, I reminded her, and she sat four of us down at the window, in quick succession.  I think this is one of the best pictures anyone has ever taken of me.  Even my wife agreed, and she, in no uncertain terms, hates "that thing on your face".

She also got pics of Rebekah...

...and of one of my son's friends, who was over visiting at the time.

If you come into our house, you risk having your picture made, it just goes with the territory.

Sensitivity, from Once Upon a Mattress; Castle on a Cloud, from Les Mis; Far From the Home I Love, from Fiddler on the Roof; - over and over and over.

The week before auditions for the next musical at Church Hill Theater, and my house is full of Broadway music. One day I was at the hospital welcoming a new baby into the world, then another, then another, then I blinked and went out to haul some loads on the truck and all of a sudden my oldest are grown and my youngest are singing these beautiful ballads about grand and difficult and inconvenient moments, the exaggerated happy and sad and shameful ones upon which a successful Broadway show capitalizes to take us away from reality to the roller coaster of emotional turmoil with which we can identify because of our own less than perfect lives.

Now I sit, listening to my youngest girls, old enough to sing these songs, yet too young to understand them, but as a father, recently young, but quickly aging, seeing their lives stretched out before them, awaiting their own adventures of good and bad choices. Lives wonderful and hard and unknown.

Once the young adventurer, now with Reb Tevye, I see change coming as the world and my family, a world and family that once seemed manageable, grow in directions that are grand and exciting yet seem to be crumbling around us, realizing that only the little, but important things are in my grasp and the rest was always beyond my control.

"Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older..."