Daughterly Adventures

It's Photograph Friday!

As part of my New Year's resolution, I am doing my best to take more pictures. And so far, it seems most of my snap shots involve me tagging along with my daughters. Here's what we've been up to the past few weeks...

Mackenzie is the lighting designer for the Canyon Theatre Guild's production of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare - Abridged." This is a shot during one of the rehearsals...and this is what the stage looked like on Opening Night...

My girls have been martial artists since they were very little. That means that for nearly ten years I have lived with children's whose hands should be registered as deadly weapons. It can be very frightening at times. Here's Emily practicing her bow staff.

Mackenzie graduates high school this year -- but that almost seems inconsequential at this point since she has already taken a ton of college classes already. I know it sounds like I am Dad-Bragging, and perhaps I am a little, but the truth is this kid works her butt off. And she also puts up with bureaucracy. Every semester we have to go through a whole bunch of paper work just so she can register in college as a high school student. It seems like I always forget crossing some "T" or dotting an "i." 

Here's Mackenzie bravely facing a typical batch of red tape: 

(Perhaps this doesn't seem as thrilling as the karate stuff -- but it's adventurous nonetheless.)

After facing the perils of registration, it was time to feast... 

Last weekend, our Orange County friends came for a visit. In the past, I have usually been the one that the little kids want to play with. However, now I am old and out of fashion. The popular Bradford is none other than Emily. The kids love playing with her! 

In the above photo she's taking them on an expedition through the jungle... 

And here they are enjoying a homemade mud bath! 

Hey... this might be a good time to plug my new book! 

Many seasoned parents will warn you about how fast your children grow up. That's simultaneously true and false. When your children are little -- the size that needs to be fed, bathed, burped, and tucked into bed -- time moves by so slowly. Every day is exciting and exhausting at the same time. I call it the Fog of Early Parenthood. I remember being in that fog for what seemed like an endless eternity of diaper changes. 

Yet somehow, here we are now. Mackenzie is waiting to hear from a variety of Universities, and Emily is less than a year away from Driving Lessons. Yesterday doesn't seem so faraway. Yet, there's no train that will take us back there. We can only glimpse the past through window called a photograph.