Give. Rest. Repeat.

Have you ever been so tired you couldn’t keep your eyes open? Have you ever been so overwhelmed with work that you woke up at 4am on the couch and had no idea when you had actually fallen asleep? Have you ever reached the point where no matter how many 5 minute intervals you set your alarm for you just can’t seem to get up? Have you ever had so much coffee that you don’t even like the taste of it anymore but you drink it anyway because that’s the only way to stay awake? Have you ever fallen asleep face down on your desk in the middle of working?

That’s a pretty good description of us these days. Surely you have been there at one time or another! We all have. Maybe it was during high school or college. Or maybe it was during your job’s busy season. Or maybe you just had a baby (or two). Whatever your situation is, we have all felt that feeling of total and utter exhaustion. Like you’re not sure you can lift your arms anymore. That tired. And that’s how we feel this week. We miss spending time together. We SO miss being at church as much as we want to be there. Our feet have been moving like Fred Flintstone just trying to keep the car that is our life moving for the last 2 months. We have had at least one wedding every weekend since April 25th! In fact, since April 25th, we have shot 12 weddings. 12 WEDDINGS!! And the crazy thing? We are just now realizing this fact. Why? Because, in the moment, it has been all we can do to keep up. It has taken everything we have in us to bring it every. single. day. It’s like Ryan learned when he worked as a camp counselor. “For you, it might be week #10 of camp. For for them, it’s week #1.” And the same goes for weddings. It may be wedding #15 of this year. But for them, it’s THE wedding. This is the only day that matters to them, and so the same goes for us.

But that’s not easy to do day in and day out. Just go with us here for a minute. Imagine if you walked into work every day and put the pressure on yourself to treat that day like it was the only day of your life that mattered. Or that your work for the whole year would be judged by the person paying you based on what you did just that one day. Woah. That’s a lot of pressure right? But for us, there is no other option. Ok. So, real situation here. What if you were one of our amazing couples and your wedding was the third wedding we had in one weekend? What if we had just given everything we had on Friday and Saturday and your wedding was on Sunday? Would you want us to give you “our third wedding this weekend” pictures? Or would you want us to give you “our only wedding we will shoot all year and we are SO excited to be here” pictures? Pretty easy answer. So that’s what we give. We give until there is nothing left. We give because we love people. We love our couples. And because we love them, we would do anything for them.

We absolutely love what we do. You can’t read 3 posts on our blog without knowing how much we love our couples and how much we love what we are doing every single day. But next week, we are taking a break. We will still put in plenty of work time. We will still respond to emails and design albums. We will still blog and have consultations. But we will be taking some time for us. No, we are not going on vacation. But we don’t really need an actual vacation to feel like we are on one. We just some time to be together, go swimming, play tennis, take a walk with Mia, curl up on the couch with a good Netflix movie, pop some popcorn and just be Ryan & Alyssa. We need to take some time to just be husband and wife.

We all have crazy times in our lives, but let’s not forget to spend time with those we love! Those of you who are married, give your spouse a kiss today. Go for a walk and just talk about life. Curl up on the couch for a good movie. We will never get to the end of our days and wish we had spent less time enjoying each other. We love you friends!

If you found this post interesting or encouraging, you might also enjoy reading Finger Posts On The Road To Success or 3 Huge Lessons We Have Learned This Year!