Check these out!

I have had a passion for photography for quite some time. As long as I can remember I have always loved taking pictures and capturing the world around me in new and creative ways. I recently dived back into my passion with the purchase of a new digital camera. Photography has kind of been put on the back burner since getting married nearly four years ago, so having the ability to continue that passion has been pretty awesome the last few weeks. These are a couple of photos I have taken recently. I love taking pictures of my daughter, she loves the camera!

Daddy

This is what I saw when I stepped out of the airport outside of baggage claim. I almost started to cry. What an amazing site to see! My beautiful wife knowing what would warm my heart; seeing Molly and Riley there waiting for me! I had missed them so much and though I was able to talk to them over the phone in the limited way a child can talk, my heart still longed to hold and kiss them over and over again. Its an amazing thing that happens to your heart when you become a parent. Suddenly its like a key unlocks some mysterious passage way in your heart to a more sensitive and emotional part of yourself. On one hand its a perilous road and on the other hand its is entirely the way we were created to live. Being gone for so long away from my family was extremely difficult. It made me question a lot of things about my profession and my goals. I have seen so many before me in my profession who for 20 years or so experience great success but then they awaken to find their family in shambles and their kids are off to college having no idea who their father is. I am vowing for this not to happen to me and more importantly I want to be committed to being present in my family's life. These past several weeks I missed my son rolling over for the first time. My wife mentioned it to me over the phone and my heart fell like a ton of bricks. I know he will roll over several thousand more times and I will see most of them but for some reason missing the first brought about a great fear in me. So when the moment came that I walked out to the car where my family was waiting, my emotions ran high and my heart was filled with joy! There was no greater satisfaction than to know their love in that moment. The funny thing that I forget so frequently is that as large as my love is for my kids it doesn't even come close to the love my Heavenly Father has for me! Words sometimes can not even come close to express that kind of love and in fact foolishness often times surfaces when I try to understand how Christ can love me that much. I guess thats the beauty of the Gospel!