Personal Story: November
Oh November. It's a month that in my personal life it's one of my favorite times of year but in my professional life it is our busiest month of the year. The struggle is real! I continue to learn the ways to power through our busiest time of year and still stop and breathe in my favorite season. I'm not perfect at it, but I am trying! November brings me Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday, and we had lots of good time with our family and friends. It was such a busy month that there's not much else to say about it, so here we go...You can see my insta posts from each month in 2015 so far here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September and October.Commenting on these instagram posts, starting at the top, reading left to right…* I made it to my first Beehive Collective gathering called the Kick Ass Ladies Club - I mean hello, you can't go wrong in a room full of kick ass ladies! I jut recently learned about this awesome collective and I am so excited to get more involved in this group in the new year.* Motivating myself in my busiest season to step away from work and be good to myself is hard. Thank goodness I've got some amazing friends who like to walk with me around some beautiful trails in Raleigh. Real talk happens on these trails, people. Truths are shared. Secrets are spoken. It's sacred stuff.* It's somehow become a tradition that I look through Southern Living's huge holiday recipe issue on our way to see David's family for Thanksgiving. I don't know how it started but it's been a fun little thing to do every year since. Sometimes it's the little things like this that keep you grounded and appreciative of where you are at and what time of year it is.* Another woman in my tribe brought a new life into the world. She's a sweet little thing and we are so glad she's joined us! In my post for this picture I talked about a time in the past when I thought I didn't need girl friends, they seemed to complicated. Well that was silly. I had to find the right women and my goodness do I have some good ones in my circle!* There in the middle of the cube is me and David, about to get in the car after shooting our last wedding for 2015. It was weird not having a December wedding this year. It must have been a good wedding season because look, we're still smiling in this one!* There continued to be some stuff going on in our personal life that was taking up a lot of my brain space and you know, that happens. We just don't know what another person is experiencing that they aren't talking about and in this moment this self portrait did the expressing for me.* This third row of three pictures are all from our time with David's family during Thanksgiving. We are the only ones that don't live close by so we try to make an effort to be there as long as we can over Thanksgiving and to really soak up our time with his family. We continue to love this season of life being Aunt Ashley and Uncle David - here you can see I was getting my hair done.* We also got lots of good time with David's siblings, cousin and their spouses. There were lots of laughs shared over good food and drinks together. Plenty of back porch conversations, rocking each other's babies and truly enjoying our time together.* I had to end with this one... at Thanksgiving dinner we all took turns keeping babies happy while every ate and then putting babies to sleep. It's a sweet time with all these new little family members running and crawling around. Don't you love two handsome men making a baby laugh?! I do!