To say 2017 has been a beautiful, chaotic mess is an understatement.
We started off with a bang with the birth of our baby girl, Hayat, in January. And she would be destined to travel A LOT in her first year of life with wide-eyed parents like hers! We took Hayat, at age 4 months, to Cape Town, South Africa. To Dubai. Then to Canada for a few months. Then to Qatar for another few more. Then to Oman in the mountains at age 11 months. She took most of it in with lots of smiles and excitement exploring new places and experiences with her crazy parents.
- We moved in and out, several times again! But this time, in and out of countries! I really hope this is the last time though. I’m itching to settle down and decorate a place we can call home. Sending lots of positive vibes for a more calm 2018.
- We slowly grew our business to one that we are so proud of. With the coolest, kindest, laid-back clients to make us love our job more than ever! We are almost fully booked for 2018. What!?! Never thought we’d say that. We have lots of fun projects that we’re working on for next year: a print shop of our travels, experimentation with brand photography and videos, doing more cryptocurrency stuff (ask Ali about that - I don’t understand this whole phenomenon at all), more mountain explorations (because when you’ve done it once, you can never stop).
- We are working on upgrading our photography skill set - both technically and artistically. Workshops and new equipment are on the cue, and we are pretty excited to be delving in so that we can better serve our 2018 couples.
- Lots of personal development and in depth discussions of what we want our lives to look like in the short, medium and long-term. Who we are and how to make ourselves better in all aspects of our lives: as life-partners to one another, as entrepreneurs and colleagues to our wedding industry friends, and as parents to Hayat, etc. With the constant busy-ness of our lives, we haven’t made enough time to read and write as much as we’d like this year, but it’s a work in progress that we hope to improve. I think these discussions and action plans that follow are always a great part of our accomplishments every year, and 2017 is no exception.
Well, I didn’t expect to write all that out in this one sitting (I had 3 ice cream bowls while collecting my thoughts for this blog post!), so I’ll end it off here with some of our favourite Behind the Scene images of us working it! Thanks to Emma and Jessi who filled in when Ali was absent to get those less-than-flattering shots of me somewhat disheveled but smiling nonetheless.
