Well it’s more than a decade later as I write this but I dated the blog back to when it happened. I was going through pictures to update my photography blogs and at the beginning as a photographer all my sessions were blended in with my personal photos lol. I learned to be more organized real quick. 😆 But as I was skimming looking for photos I came across these pictures and it reminded me of what a leap we took into the unknown.

Bryce, my husband, was an engineering student. I was a year away from graduating college. We were just chugging along. But we went on a cruise for our first anniversary and after that things just weren’t the same. Bryce was struggling with feeling like engineering was the right fit for him still. So he dropped his classes. Yep. That was a crazy day but we both felt okay about it. He just worked during the spring and summer. And I remember when he was home he’d literally be scrolling through the degrees offered at Utah State University, where we were attending college, looking for something that sparked his interest.

I remember him throwing out the idea of being a pilot. He liked the hands-on aspect of engineering more than the design and theory. It’s something he felt like he’d be good at. We loved to travel. There was a lot of stigma around being a pilot and the crazy schedule I wasn’t sure about but we decided to start down the path, take some steps into the unknown and see what happened.

This is when we went on a discovery flight – just a quick flight with an instructor where they let you hold the controls for about 0.5 seconds haha. And since there was an extra seat of course we wanted to bring my brother along. We went on the flight and I didn’t think much of it.

During the summer was a roller coaster ride of having to do a bunch of testing and paperwork to get a medical certificate which all pilots have to have and we weren’t sure it’d get cleared in time for him to start in the fall semester. So he looked at other options and even met with advisors and had classes ready to go for going into Finance. But the paperwork cleared and I remember having this really long conversation weighing all the pros and cons. We knew it’d be hard but I wanted Bryce to enjoy what he was doing and sitting at a desk for 8 hours every day was not going to be it and we both knew that.

So we took the leap, into the unknown. By that time we had just found out we had our precious first baby on the way! With almost no money, no idea how we were going to pay for his degree, and draining our savings to pay for the first semester where he’d get his private pilot license – we went for it.

And a decade later? It all worked out. I’ve been the wife of an airline pilot for almost exactly 7 years now. Wow. It’s super cool to look back and see that even though we had no idea how things would come together, they did.

Maybe taking the leap when it’s unknown is kind of just what life is. We never really know how it’s going to work out but here we are on the other side having survived everything we’ve gone through to date. What a wild ride life is.

XO, Lauren