choose adventure
We gave up our weekends some 15 years ago. That was the day we decided to become full-time wedding photographers. That was the day we decided Saturday and Sunday (and every other day, to be honest) were going to be our working days.
And it was awesome…for a while.
We started our business when our first son was born. I began shooting just a few weeks after his birth and continued right through my second pregnancy, the birth of my second child, massive health scares, surgeries, injuries, deaths and more.
When you are a wedding photographer and a wedding day rolls around everything, and I mean everything, else is pushed aside as we make that day our first priority.
And it was awesome…for a while.
One day I woke up, forced to acknowledge a nagging voice I had been ignoring for a long time. The voice began to scream at me “LOOK WHAT YOU ARE MISSING!!” (along with a number of other lovely things). It was so loud it stopped me in my tracks and for the first time in a long time I took a long hard look at what we were doing.
In choosing weddings we had made another choice – we chose to give up the weekends with our family and miss the events that were defining our children’s lives. Now that they were in school full time the weekends were our only full days together – weekends were when their lives were happening and we were sending others to witness it.
Our kids were at a place where their lives were happening away from us. And it wasn’t awesome…not even a little bit.
I walked out of our studio that day, literally and figuratively. Steve and I had a long overdue conversation where I shared my need to parent our children on weekends. I felt I could no longer document other people’s lives and miss out on those of my kids. I was done. DONE.
He agreed. It wasn’t long before he wanted to be there with me…with us. And the choice was made – we were going to take a sabbatical from weddings and try out this idea of “weekends” together. In February, 2014 we shot the last wedding on the books for Bebb Studios and waited to see what our weekends would bring.
In the past 6 months we have welcomed adventure into our lives. We have been there for everything that matters and everything that doesn’t. It has been incredible.
We have been to dozens of lacrosse tournaments, seen both our boys win gold at their provincial championships. We bought “IRV” (an RV) for lacrosse and he has taken us to dozens of places we would never have seen. Irv connected us in an unexpected ways and brought the 4 of us back together as an even tighter unit.
We have been on spontaneous adventures to Whistler and Tofino, learning to paddle board one weekend and barrelling down the side of a mountain on another.
Weekends are amazing. Living life with our family is amazing.
And now we are at the crossroads we dreaded – do we once again give up our weekends to document the adventures of others, or do we walk away from that chapter and focus on that which matters most – our own life.
Logan is almost 15. Ethan is 12. We don’t have a lot of time before their lives away from us begin. It isn’t really a choice, is it?
Adventure is waiting, and we are ready to discover it!
