I'm honoured to be here. Right in this very spot – in this life.

Everything seems to be layed out before us. Opportunities just waiting to be taken. Risks, chances, hard work, wings.

The only thing that stands between achieving our dreams, as they currently stand, is time and effort.

As long as we are blessed with more time, I know we will repay with the greatest of effort.

And along the way, we will feel the pressure of that effort. Exhaustion will bear down, testing our resolve to get up and keep going. But we will. Because the stakes are high and the rewards are sweet. 

Along the way, we will stop and notice the little curls at the nape of our youngest son's neck. I won't be able to help myself from twirling them around my fingers until he bats my hand away in annoyance.

We will catch one anothers eye when our eldest son is playing, silently sharing the joy of watching his imagination catch fire. What goes on in that mind of his? Always so busy.

We will pay bills and drink a glass of wine and watch an episode of Dexter and change another nappy and it will all be a blessing. All of it.

And soon enough we will hold another newborn in our arms and we will marvel at her tiny fingers, her little, pink toes and we'll wonder what the hell we did to deserve this. To deserve all of this.

And we'll spend far too long breathing her in, so aware that this is the last time the newborn baby smell will be ours to indulge in. 

We'll take a million photos of our three children.

We'll lose our temper a million times.

And we'll apologise a million times, too.

And then we will high five each other. Because we are living this stuff and it's real and it's messy and holy shit, it's beautiful.

Photo by the extraordinary Angie Baxter

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Treat yourself to a last minute Christmas gift and book your family in for a 2012 session with Angie. She is a Melbourne-based photographer who holds sessions interstate. Find out when she will next be near you. Click!

Budding photographers should check out the Love Your Camera workshops. I am signing up for a session next year – I have a DSLR and use it in auto….the shame!

When booking in for a Love Your Camera II workshop, please use discount code XMAS at the checkout for $30 off!