I’ve been lax in keeping up with my writing lately.  It’s a combination of no weekends free, a flood of paper work, not feeling well, and just a general sense of yuck.

However, I’m writing today about my daughters because they continue to amaze me.  This last weekend, they were part of our high school’s production of “The Music Man”.  Our oldest tried out, just to be a town’s person, but ended up with a recall and our youngest daughter ended up on the recall list without trying out.  The fact that both of my daughters had any kind of roles (the play was dominated by seniors) makes me smile.  They love to sing, to be part of acting groups, and the individual talents each has in the fine arts helps me know we’ve been doing the right thing as parents.

But it’s more than that.  Our oldest is going into engineering, having spent time with women engineering students and job shadowed two systems engineers at Rockwell Collins.  I asked her if all this was having a positive or negative impact in terms of what she wanted to do, she smiled and said “very positive”.  By pure force of nature, she’s made herself into a decent breast stroker, finishing in the top 25% of the state in times.  Her freshman and junior years, she knocked 7 seconds each off her personal best (we won’t talk about her sophomore year, not good at all).  If she were to do this again, she’d be knocking at the door of qualifying as one of the top 24 breast strokers in the state.  Whoa!  On top of all these, she loves to read and loves word play and has this quiet confidence that people pick up on.

Our youngest is this compact little thing (5’1), but is a ball of fire for a freshman. She’s made herself into a tremendous cross country runner, moving herself into a varsity spot.  She didn’t do well in that position, but has all ready set the goal of being a varsity runner for next season.  She’s also running varsity for track, loving the 3000 and the 1500 (crazy child I know!).  She’s passionate about her friends to a fault and seems to attract drama where ever she goes! Ugg! 🙂  She’s developing this powerful singing and I see her with the female lead in the musical her senior year.  And to watch her sing, her face lights up and she looks like nothing in the world will stop her.  She struggles with her place because she doesn’t take a lot of crap and has a mouth that tends to get her in trouble. However, she will find that place, and when that happens, look out world! 🙂

So, my happy though for the day: my daughters’ passions.  I’m humbled to be their father and to watch as they continue to grow as young women.  Now, if I could just get them to do their chores!! 🙂