Some Background

I met my husband in highschool when I was 15. We dated for 5 years, then got married. 5 years later, we have 4 children, all within 3 years. A couple of weeks before I found out that I was pregnant with my first child, I decided to start my own photography business. It has been a very hard go, trying to start a family and business at the same time. I mean, it’s not like I just had one child, within three years, I ended up with four. But it seems with the birth of my fourth, things are starting to click into place. I have a photography blog for work, and include posts every now and then on my children. However, there is a lot of things I leave out, trying to keep my blog professional. I am told all the time how much people enjoy reading my posts on my children, so I figured, why not do a personal blog as well.

I hear all the time….”I don’t know how you do it”. Well, read my blog and you’ll see! Some days it’s like living in a zoo, some days it’s the best time of my life. There is never a dull moment in our household. We learn new things every day, we make mistakes every day, we have ‘ah-hah’ moments every day, we laugh about something the children do every day….Maybe you can get some amusement as well out of this.

It’s not like I have it extremely hard. Think back when the norm was 8 or 10 children in the house. Now those mothers I look up to! However, we are finding that a lot of people think we are not the ‘norm’ to have 4 children. A lot of people stop at two, and if they have a third, there’s a good chance they were hoping for that girl or boy they didn’t yet have, or just maybe it was a happy ‘oops!’.  There are times I wonder about having more, but I want to make sure I can give the ones I have now the time and love they each deserve. For those that run their own business, you know what I mean. I don’t have a 9-5 job. I am constantly working. If I’m not at the studio, I’ve still got a computer, waiting for nap time to be able to finish a session, or put in an order. And then when the kids go to bed, that time to either clean the house or work some more. I don’t have a lot of free time. Getting to read a book is something I do not take forgranted. When I hear people complain about being tired, I often smile to myself (especially when they don’t have kids and they complain!). I’m not trying to say they don’t have a right to be tired, because they do, everyone has busy lives and lots to do. I think I just have a different tired then a lot of people I know. It’s something I have become used to, and it gets easier to deal with. But if you knew me as a child, you would know, that if I didn’t get my 10 hours a night, it was not good, I would end up getting sick. Now, 6 hours of sleep is a blessing, and would be even more wonderful if it was un-interrupted.  But right now, that just isn’t in the books for me. Instead, I crawl into bed most nights around midnight or a bit after, and crawl out again 6:30 (not to mention being up a few times through the night to feed the youngest, give back a soother, or scare away the monsters).

But I love my life, I am blessed.