A big part of my journey into photography was having kids with my wife, Laura. Our first child was born around the time I got my 1st digital camera so you can imagine she was photographed from all angles and every smile and funny face was captured. Unfortunately most of the photos were never actually printed and as a result of a failed hard drive we lost most of them.
I learned 2 lessons from this:

Backup all photos to multiple locations.
Print your photos.
Thankfully I now get the privilege as a Wedding & Family Photographer of capturing and recording family portraits and the system I have now built up helps keep the risk of loss of photos to a minimum & I will always encourage everyone to print your photos.