Its been a while since I’ve blogged you guys! Like, a REALLY long time. I hate to use ‘busy’ as an excuse because lets face it, we’re ALL busy! But let me tell you, these last few months have been the most chaotic of my life! We moved twice, built a house, lived in a temporary house without ANY of our stuff other than our clothes, ran a full time business alone, AND my husband was deployed for all of it. Shew, I’m exhausted just thinking about what I went through but I’m so thankful that season of life is over, our family is back together again and God helped to see me through it — He is so good!

I’ll eventually get some photo’s on the blog of our NEW HOME!! I know some of you are dying to see it, but I just can’t share yet until I feel like its almost perfect, LOL!! We’re still swimming in boxes and I’m in no rush to get it done. I’m just soaking up family time and enjoying having my husband home again! I have my husband back, Aubree has her daddy back, we’re living in our forever/dream home we designed and built and life is pretty amazing right now.

You may or may not follow me on Instagram, but if you DO, then you know my family is my everything. You know my husband was deployed and you watched the progress of our home being built, you watched my crazy 2 year old blossom from a baby into a toddler and you watch all things motherhood go down on those happy (and sometimes crazy) little squares. You see some of my weaknesses, and a TON of happy moments. I try to keep it as real as possible and my hope is that everyone can see that and relate to me a little bit.

Right as the New Year hit, my husband and I were on FaceTime one night. Aubree was asleep and he and I were finally getting a chance to chat while he was on deployment. We talked about how much we missed each other…tears were shed and it ached to not be able to hug each other in that moment. He said “did you know I was gone for 220 days last year?” … I instantly started crying. Not the pretty cry either. The ugly cry with lots of snot and mascara running down my face. It wasn’t pretty. But it made me realize something:

My husband was only home for 4 broken up months last year. That’s 16 weekends that we got to spend together. And out of those 16 weekends, I had weddings or sessions on every single one of them. Yikes.

My family is my everything and I went into business for myself almost 4 years ago for a very important reason:

To get some of my life back. To be home with my children and to be home for my husband more.  And last year… that didn’t happen. I said ‘yes’ more than I said ‘no’ and those times I said ‘yes’ were times I was saying ‘no’ to my family. My heart aches so bad thinking about it. We get such little time together as a military family and we’re trying to find ways to get more of that time back.

So we made a decision:

Sundays are for FAMILY.

I will no longer be taking sessions or weddings on Sundays. I’ll have the occasional mini sessions on Sundays but they’ll be rare and far between. It seems like it would be a tough decision to make, but it really wasn’t. When my husband mentioned he was only home for 16 weekends last year and I was not present for those… Well, it just felt like someone kicked me in my gut and I felt so sad. We deserve to be together more. Our daughter deserves to have more family time with both of us and so do our future children. I owe it to this sweet little business of mine to have days off to serve both God and my family! To feel refreshed for my clients and to give both my family AND my clients the best of me!

I’m so thankful for every single client I have ever had and will continue to have. You help make my dreams come true, one photo at a time and I’m honored, thankful, blessed, amazed that I get to work with all of you! And I’m thankful for everyone who understands this decision :)

What will you say ‘no’ to, in order to give your best ‘yes’ to something else?

Photography by Shawna Bielat Photography