It’s been a hot minute since we’ve shared a personal update, so we thought we’d let everyone know what exactly we’ve been up to in these slower months!

Adoption

Definitely the biggest things we’ve been up to is adopting our son.  We can’t share a picture just yet, but you can watch our video below if you haven’t seen it!

 

We just finished our home study and are waiting for the final draft to be completed.  Over the past two months we’ve spent countless hours at the doctor office, on the phone, signing paperwork, getting it notarized, and meeting with the social worker to tell her our life stories.  We’ve also done a lot of fundraising and have been so thankful for our tribe!  Between donations, t-shirt sales, raffle items (like a Tieks gift card!), our Etsy shop, and personal funds, we’ve put over $12,000 towards the adoption so far.  That’s a lot of money, but we’re only 34% of the way there.  We have a few more awesome fundraisers up our sleeves (a yard sale this weekend, a block party next month, and raffling items like a Jo Totes camera bag!) and we’ll be applying for grants, and of course paying as much as we can ourselves as well.  We don’t know when we’ll get him, but it’s looking like maybe December… or February… it’s hard to tell!

Work

What kind of work do we do when it isn’t wedding season?  Family photos, corporate headshots, real estate photos, and promo videos.  Okay, so those are actually all the things we do during wedding season as well, but as much as possible, we really ramp them up during the winter months!  Today, Josh is filming in Atlanta with DMCAtlanta– where we both used to work 7 years ago!  We love how things come full circle sometimes.  We’re also spending time focusing on how to make things better and flow smoother during the busy season!

Relaxing

This is something we haven’t done in awhile, but knew it was crucial to focus on during this slower season.  We’ve been married for almost 10 years and have never really slowed down.  At any given time, we’ve had 3-5 jobs between us.  Even when our jobs required 50 hours a week, we would still deliver pizza or do photo sessions on the weekends.  All that work has certainly paid off, and it’s nice now to relax a little and enjoy time as a family.  It’s especially nice that we can relax at 2pm on a Tuesday if we please, since we work such weird, flexible hours.  We realized this year that January-March may be our only slow months for awhile.  In April wedding/engagement season kicks off again and by the time it slows down, we’ll be traveling to Eastern Europe to bring our son home.  Once he’s home, he needs surgery, will be learning English, and there will be a million different obstacles to overcome.  When we start to hit our groove, busy season will kick back up and… yes the cycle never ends!  So we’re really soaking up these extra moments, planning for the future so we have more of them, and excited about where this year takes us!

God

We’re still attending and volunteering at the church where Josh used to work.  In fact, they hire him out as a worship leader on most Sundays, which is awesome!  Josh loves leading worship and it’s definitely a calling, so it’s nice that he still gets to flex that muscle.  It’s not weird at all that he’s not on staff anymore– if anything, our relationships with everyone have grown stronger, and I love that.  It’s wonderful that he could leave a job and it not be considered a bad or awful thing.  And it’s amazing to know we’re exactly where God wants us to be right now.  I can’t even tell you how many people have walked through our house since October.  It’s always been our goal for it to be a place of comfort and a safe haven– the kind of place where you can put your feet on the furniture.

We’re also digging into one of our passions- the homeless.  We’ve felt for a year now that we’re supposed to make a documentary on the homeless, but we’re not sure what direction we’re supposed to take.  We’re exploring the culture, asking around within our friends to see who has been homeless and what their story is, and just generally seeing what direction that leads us.  It’s messy, and we love it.