Eight days.  That’s how many days we’ve had at home this summer as a family of three.  We knew this summer would be busy, but June 6 started a spiral of events that led to absolute insanity in our household.

While at a wedding, Josh got a call that his dad had been rushed to the hospital.  His dad lives in Atlanta, and Josh was rounding out hour 10 of a 12 hour wedding day, so we packed the next morning and headed out on what ended up being a 14 hour trip with a 3 year old.

That weekend we headed to Harrisonburg for the weekend for a wedding, then Josh went back to Atlanta for a week while Hazel & I stayed behind.  For the next 17 glorious days, my mom came to visit.  In the midst of chaos, she was our sanity.  She does all the magic mom stuff that I’m still struggling to figure out.  How does she get dishes done so quickly?  I’d leave for a session and come back two hours later to a sparkling clean house and a kid in the bed.  Magic, I tell you… mom magic.

Then came the 8 days to ourselves.  When I say ‘to ourselves,’ I mean we worked like crazy trying to catch up from this crazy summer.  Then Josh’s sister came for a week and Josh promptly got ill with a sickness that rivaled the bird flu he got several years back.  I went to pick him up at the doctors office (because he couldn’t drive home) and the doctor and nurses were all saying, Poor guy, he’s REALLY sick.  You need to get him home and not let anyone near him.  And that brings us to last week when we were in North Carolina for a wedding and a sunrise session, and snuck in some family time while we were there!

Wait… did I mention we bought a car and a refrigerator this summer, too?

But in the midst of all this craziness, life has been good.  Really good.  We’re healthy, we’re alive, and blessed enough to have the energy to keep up with everything (caffeine is certainly our friend these days).  We knew this summer would be busy, but we had no idea how busy it would end up being!

If you want to follow these crazy adventures, check us out on Instagram!  @fowlerstudios  I’ll warn you– it’s messy and not all beautiful, elegant photos.  It’s just real life.  🙂

Here’s some fun ones from this past Sunday.  I tried to not have my camera out much, but Sunday was a special day where I got to see most of my family all in one place, so I couldn’t resist!  These cuties are some (yes, just some) of my nieces and nephews.  🙂