It’s the middle of February!

I realise I’ve been incredibly quiet the last while and even as I type this, I’ve been thinking about typing this blog post for the last 2 weeks and then life seems to get in the way…

2013 was an incredible year for me, not only in my personal life but also in my business. I decided to only work half day at my regular day job so that I could focus more on my business (thankfully I have the kind of job where I can do that!) and it was definitely a worthwhile move. I launched my website as well as my Facebook page, attended workshops, bought new gear and started assisting other photographers. For the first time I was confident enough to put myself and my work out there and see what happened. The result was meeting a bunch of awesome photographers, making new friends along the way, as well as booking some incredible clients and building my portfolio to a point where I feel I actually have something worthwhile to show.
Somehow I felt like 2014 would blow 2013 out of the water! So at the end of 2013 I took some time to decide what I wanted from 2014 and wrote down some goals…
1) Keep growing my business and keep learning about how to better it
2) Buy new gear (I could only afford a new camera body in 2013 so I still have a way to go 🙂 )
3) Buy a bigger house
4) Blog more!
Haha! That last one is always a struggle coz sometimes I don’t know what to blog about… So I decided that the first thing I’d do is be more open on my blog about who I am and what was going on in my life.
Okay no big deal… Point being 2014 was going to be an awesome year and I was excited to see how my business would grow after the growth it had seen in 2013. Then… We found out we were pregnant!
Suddenly my business goals for 2014 took a backseat and my mind was filled with : should we get a better medical aid? We should definitely move. What’s going to happen to my business? Should I work full time again…?

But let me back up a bit…
Wihan and I are highschool sweethearts and celebrated 8 years together and 2 years married in 2013. Even before we’d gotten married we’d spoken about when we’d like to have kids and decided that we’d wait at least 2 years to settle in to being married and just enjoying each other for a while before we started having kids. My mom always says that I was born broody so although I can’t imagine a time in my life when I DIDN’t want kids, it made sense to me to wait at least 2 years before we started having any. But at the beginning of 2013, the longing in my heart grew stronger and stronger. I spoke to Wihan about it and we spoke about everything we still wanted to do : travel together, build my business, make a home… So we decided we’d wait another 2 years.
Then in the middle of the year I felt that I should go off birth control, assuring Wihan that it took at least a few months for my hormones to settle and my body’s routine to get back to normal. September I went off the pill and October I was late. I got so excited that I rushed out and bought a pregnancy test, only to have it test negative. Then in November I was late again – I figured it was just my hormones adjusting etc etc and didn’t think much of it. Then I started getting some other symptoms… I couldn’t keep my eyes open for more than 2 hours at a time and thought I was coming down with a bug coz I was nauseas quite a lot. I chalked it all up to it just being the end of the year and having a busy few months and that my body was probably just telling me it needed some well deserved rest. Especially since from November I was doing 2 shoots a weekend and working all week so I figured it was a reasonable explanation. I think I was trying to convince myself that I might not be pregnant coz I didn’t want to get excited again and find out that I wasn’t… Then one morning I had my breakfast and ran to the bathroom, grabbing the toilet and losing my breakfast. That was mid-Dec. By then Wihan and I suspected that I might be pregnant but I said I’d wait a little longer just to make sure. On the 24th of December I woke up at 5am to go to the bathroom (which had also not become unusual) and decided to do the test. Wihan woke up as well and within seconds the test turned positive. Me : “Okay well let’s go back to bed…” 5min later we were both sitting in bed, wide awake, haha! We spoke about what steps we had to take to prepare for the baby and I assured Wihan that we didn’t have to figure it all out at once and that we had 9 months to prepare. Later that day we found out that I was already just over 2 months pregnant! We decided we wouldn’t tell anyone until we saw his parents that evening for Christmas Eve – imagine keeping that a secret ALL DAY! I almost died!
We went to his parents’ house for supper and as soon as we got there his dad said “so what’s new?” and then we told them. First there was a moment of silence and then more than 30 minutes of crying and laughing and jumping ensued… We thought Wihan’s mom had lost it, she was so excited! I devised a plan to tell my family over Skype as they were at the beach house in Gourits. So I told my sister at around 6 and said that when they’d done opening up gifts to say there was one last present… We finally Skyped with my family at around 9:30! I can’t say that I’ve ever seen my dad cry, but he was in tears, my grandfather was in tears… And apparently just that evening the subject of when we were having kids had come up around the dinner table…

The last week of our 2013 was spent doing research on whether or not to go on a better medical aid, we started looking online at houses, we spoke about our budget and whether or not I should work full time again during 2014… After realising that we only had about 7 months left before the baby would arrive, we each had our little freak out sessions and then decided to take it easy and tackle it day-by-day.

So anyway… My 2014 started off with house hunting (which is still ongoing), and although my mind has been furiously busy still thinking of my business and working on it here and there, I’ve been far more focused on eating healthy, getting into a good exercise routine, and spending as much time with hubby as I can before our family of 2 becomes 3 😀

During 2014, I’m hoping that my goal of posting more on the blog will definitely become more of a reality as I plan to share more of my life with you and in that way document moments that I hope to never forget.
Here’s to an incredible year, one that will change our lives forever!

And because a photo blog is nothing without a photo, here’s my favourite photo of the year (so far)