The Payoff

Since April, I’ve been looking forward to July. Well, before that, even. I knew by the end of 2011 that we didn’t want to book many weddings in July. It’s just too dadgum hot. In fact, my goal was to book NONE, but then we fell in love with our sweet July 14 bride and couldn’t imagine missing her wedding, and one of our June clients moved their event back to July 21. Soooo… “none” turned into “two”. To my credit, though, it stayed that way. It’s pretty rare that I stick to my guns when it comes to bookings, so Mack was very proud of me.

And here it is… July! Month of only two portrait sessions and two weddings, but also month of Two Vacations! Month of Harry Potter Movie Marathon Day and wearing PJs. Month of the rejuvenation of our spirits.

Unfortunately, making a daily effort to create memories as a family doesn’t always give pretty blog opportunities, so things will be a little slower this month. Not completely slow… after all, we’ve got an engagement session to share tomorrow, and soon I’ll be sharing lots of favorites from a steamy-wonderful bride & groom session we shot recently. All in all, I think there’s only a day or two when I won’t have a blog post up at 6 a.m., just like regular… I mean, we’ve got a schedule to stick to.

But really, my priority in July is going to be US. Our little unit of four, and sometimes the more important unit of two. Does that sound selfish? If it does, I’m not concerned. Mack and I are husband & wife FIRST, parents second, friends third, business owners fourth. It’s a very important fourth… but we consider our personal relationships to be the glue that holds our crazy life together. Without our relationship with each other in perfect sync, our relationship with our children is off. And if our family life isn’t rockin’ smoothly, all the other relationships and responsibilities just start to wobble around us. We won’t let that happen… and that means setting aside time to do NOTHING but cultivate those bonds.

After all, that’s the payoff. It’s the carrot on the end of the stick. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel of months-upon-months of 80 hour weeks. And when we launch into our next crazy season… August through November of zoom-zoom-zoom… we’ll be able to look back on the month of July and breathe deeply, remembering that it was awesome, and another one is coming up soon.

Speaking of things that are awesome… yeah. This session was. More of it is coming soon, I promise!

Be sure to check out the McGowan Images Facebook page today, where we announced the winner of our “First Sight” canvas contest. We’ll share some of our favorite entries on the blog soon… it was TORTURE to choose a favorite of all the beautiful entries we received. We appreciate all the participation!

Above all… happy summer, blogstalkers.