May 2021 Recap -- baby stuff, lots of weddings, and podcast breaks
Whew! Another month down? Wow, things are flying by. I can’t believe that in 3 short months we will have a newborn. There’s so much to do and so little time. My wedding schedule during the month of May consumed me and felt like it took up all of my time (which weddings typically do). There’s the planning for a wedding, prepping for the big day, working all day on my feet, being exhausted the following day, and then spending the next day catching up before I have to do it all over again. If I were to describe my May that’s what I would tell you it felt like—exhausting.
Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I love that I have the freedom to work my own schedule and only have particularly busy seasons of life while also allowing down time when I need it. I love that I get to capture precious memories and connect with people on some of their most important days of their lives. I wouldn’t trade it for the world! But I’m currently in a busy season, so things just seem a bit crazy around here.
And, to top it all off… I’m growing a human! It’s exhausting. This little boy inside me is growing so big and getting so strong (trust me, I can tell by the kicks). But I am also growing outwardly too. My belly is definitely getting in the way. This makes working weddings even more tiring. I find myself wanting to sit more often, needing to catch my breath just when I’m talking, and feeling even more drained the following day after a wedding than I’ve ever felt before.
So anyways, let’s start recapping May:
It’s a boy! & Pregnancy Update
Earlier this month we hosted a small get together with family and a few friends at my parents house for a gender reveal party. You may have seen me post about it in this blog post here. The plan was to have everyone over for a late lunch/dinner and share the sex of our baby. We chose to do the reveal kind of like we were high school recruits picking a college team. We placed a pink and a blue hat in front of each of us, then after opening the envelope and having our moment together, we then turned to our family and waved our hands over the hats before picking the color that corresponded to the stereotypical blue boy or pink girl. While Trevor and I were ecstatic to know the sex of our baby, we also were just really happy to know that our little one was doing well and appeared happy and healthy.
I had a good friend of mine, Katie from Katie Osborn Photography, come over to take photos of the event. Katie is also one of my best friends, so of course I just wanted her there at the gender reveal anyways too! I love that Katie was there to document the reveal, but I also enjoyed that we were able to take some fun announcement photos afterwards too. We stepped outside for a few quick photos of us together.
I think I said this a million times in the blog post, but we are so excited to be having a boy. We now know the name of our baby and sometimes call him that at home. But we are not sharing the name until little boy is born! If you want to see more updates and hear first about when he makes an appearance into this world then be sure to follow me on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel because these are the places where we will be posting first. Baby Lang is a boy!! And he is expected September 2021.
Also, in case you missed it… I posted a pregnancy update. Be sure to check out the blog post by clicking the button below to see a consolidation of all of the updates I’ve given so far.
P.S. I was recently diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes :( I’ll be writing a full blog post about this soon.
Behind the scenes of working a wedding while pregnant
So, in case you didn’t know, Trevor and I own a photography & videography business called LVP Studios that captures memories primarily for weddings and families. From time to time I like to try to show you a little behind the scenes of what that looks like… so, in a vlog this month I took you with me as the videographer for a wedding.
Like I mentioned at the beginning on this blog post, working weddings while pregnant is hard. If you’re not part of the wedding industry, you might look at what we do and say “it’s one wedding, one Saturday, how hard can it be?” But to be a good vendor there’s often so much more than that. For me, I truly value the relationships that I build with my couples, so I work hard to be a key part of the entire wedding planning process. So, there’s the planning for a wedding, and then I personally need to prep for the big day (charging gear, double checking my lists, etc.). Then I’m working all day on my feet for usually over 10 hours. This makes me super exhausted the following day which means I get absolutely nothing done—it’s kind of like having a wedding hang over. But once the wedding is over, there’s the backing up of the footage, the editing, the delivery, and so much more in between.
I typically spend 2 days just recovering from working a wedding now that I’m pregnant, then spend the next two days after that going through and working on all of the wedding things, before I then have to do it all over again for another wedding coming up the following weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I love that I have the freedom to work my own schedule and only have particularly busy seasons of life while also allowing down time when I need it. I love that I get to capture precious memories and connect with people on some of their most important days of their lives. I wouldn’t trade it for the world! But I’m currently in a busy season, so things just seem a bit crazy around here.
I figured out my planner system
But, speaking of crazy, I have found a planner/organization system that works for me… FINALLY! I feel like it’s been forever since I felt decently organized in my life. As far as to-dos, staying on top of tasks, etc. that has been hard for me up until recently. I’ve have found a planner system that works for me though, and I am so happy about it!
Here’s what my planner looks like right now on my desk. It makes me so happy!
I think I could write an entire blog post just about my planner system. Actually, would you enjoy that? Let me know! Anyways, I posted a few videos about it on my DigidaniCo Youtube channel. DigidaniCo is the name of my Etsy shop where I sell digital planners and planning goods meant for planning on things like iPads and PDF Readers. Most of my stickers are hand drawn. They're intended to be quirky and cute because I like to keep things fun, decorative, but also extremely functional.
Recently I needed to do an entire overhaul of my personal planner system because I was too focused on creating “spreads” and not focused enough on just creating a “get-shit-done” type of system. My current planner system is a functional planning method using a B6 Stalogy with a Moterm cover as my every day carry. This is where I write my daily to-dos, keep my scratch note paper, as well as do some daily journaling. Then I have my Digital Goodnotes Planner on my iPad, and iCloud Calendar. These are used for future planning, project planning, and planning out weekly/daily tasks (but not actually referencing or crossing them off). I love that my new planner system is digital while still having a paper every day carry.
Our Podcast took a break
My podcast that I host with my friend Katie (who I mentioned earlier) is called The Memories Podcast. It’s a podcast dedicated to helping busy families learn how to document their everyday lives using easy and consistent methods. We planned to teach you the tried and true methods that we’ve picked up over the years of how to document your everyday moments when life just seems way too busy. We completed NINE podcasts so far where we talk about our personal lives, the lessons we’ve learned, and all of the mistakes we may have made along the way.
However, we needed to put the podcast on hold. Katie and I are both wedding and family photographers, so our busy seasons fall at the same time. Needless to say, we are both very unavailable right now. On top of all of that, Katie has some changes happening in her life while I’m also growing and prepping for a little human to be joining our family. We decided that it would be best to put the podcast on hold for the time being.
I’m not sure what this means exactly for the future of the podcast, but I do want to continue to post again some day. Katie and I both need to figure out a more sustainable method for regularly recording and sharing these helpful tips while not letting this be another thing that consumes our daily lives. We loved the idea of just chatting with all of you about memory keeping, but it somehow evolved into something that was more rigid and structured which I did not like.
The podcast will be back, I promise! I just can’t say whether it will be in a few weeks, a few months, or even maybe in the next year. We’ll do our best to keep you posted. In the meantime, you can catch up on all of our past podcast episodes here.
And things just keep going…
Other than our podcast put on hold, everything else just keeps on going. It’s so wild how life continues to move around you even when you feel like it’s not moving at all. So much changes every single month! Can you imagine these words out of my mouth when I’m doing monthly recaps about our baby?
I mentioned in last month’s recap blog post how “it’s a constant battle of not wanting to wish the days, weeks, months away as I wait for our baby to arrive, but also being so excited for the future too. These posts make me realize how much we accomplish in a month and allow me to recap those feelings without giving up the idea of wanting to look forward to the future.”
A look at my camera roll:
