Not erased!
We sent my external hard drive to some place in Ohio for last ditch effort recovery … THEY FOUND MY PHOTOS!!!
120 gigs worth of pure gold, if you ask me.
Now to buy a new hard drive and then back it up immediately. Awesome.
Jodi Michelle
Skip to ContentGoing on a Holiday - hooray!
We’re heading up to Grand Marais, MN for the holiday weekend. A friend is getting married up there and we’re using it as an excuse to have some fun.
We’ll be staying in a little studio for a few nights while we’re up there. We are driving our way - so we’ll take our time, and hotel it somewhere along the way - ideas? tips? things we must see???
We LOVE road trips and thankfully Aaron’s parents are letting us borrow their minivan for this one since our family has grown. We’re looking forward to the extra room to stretch. I’m so excited, too, because Jessica will probably remember some of this trip - some of the things we see and do and I can’t wait to make some of those memories.
The 4th of July is also my dad’s birthday - he’ll be 53 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!
Look out for some photos - I’ll try to put a few up as we go, although I’ll be without my computer since it, also, has taken a trip to the crapper. Yup. The external hard drive and now my laptop. Oh - on top of the over $6,000 we still have left in medical bills from Olivers birth. Yea - this has been an awesome month for us financially. Good thing we have a sense of humor, kind of.
Even better that we’re not drowning - God will provide. He always does.
Happy Independence day!!
Baby weight update - Weight Watchers
I lost 2.4 pounds this week!! How about you?
Dear Jessica,
I write to you often - on this website and in journals, but tonight I did something that I rarely do - I’ve been having this undeniable feeling that I just need to say a few things to you - important things. And I kept thinking, ok - I’ll write them down, but then this past few days happened to us … your dad is away for a little bit and it’s been you, me and Oliver. We’re doing really well, just the three of us and tonight you were crying about going to bed.
So I picked you up, put you on my belly and lie down with you while I massaged your leg for you - it was hurting, you said. Then I started to think about how I used to hold you like that all the time, like I do now with Oliver. How I would rock you to sleep and sing in your ear. How I could get love-drunk off the smell of your hair while you slept in my arms and sweat. So I started talking about it. I started telling you all these things about how I felt when we found out we were pregnant, how excited I was to have a baby and how I chose your name. I told you what it meant to me to have you as my baby and the thoughts that went through my head when I first laid eyes on you.
I told you little stories about your life so far - and what they meant to me along the way and then I told you that I think you’re going to be a strong woman, someone who takes chances and lives life to the fullest. I said “You’re going to be just right” and you know what you did? You smiled, and you nodded. Like you weren’t sure I knew that you knew, or that you weren’t sure I believed it.
Either way I was crying. I often underestimate your maturity, what you “get” and understand - what you pick up on. And then you know what you did? You thanked me for helping you with your leg. Which really meant - Thanks mom for filling my love tank, for seeing that I need you and for needing me back.
I have a lot of words - I’m rarely at a loss for them when I write - but there are absolutely none to explain the way you make me feel. How proud I am to be your mom, how sincerely I believe that you are going to be just right.
Love,
Mama
Erased
Brace yourself, I’m kind of hysterical right now.
Um. So about 2 weeks ago my external hard drive, which houses ALL of my photography - all the photos we’ve ever taken of Jessica, Oliver, our wedding, honeymoon - anything that I ever put to film, EVER was on it - and it … it stopped working. It gave me errors and I said - hey Aaron - fix this please.
He tried … couldn’t and then gave it to his server guru who put it through some type of recovery software for like 96 insane hours or something and um, did not recover a thing. It didn’t work.
As of right now we have lost absolutely all of those images, videos of baby Jessica - our entire life in film.
I. Am. Sobbing.
Since I haven’t had the external hard drive, I’ve just been housing all my recent photos on personal computer - which is running out of memory rapidly - oh - and it’s a PC, not a mac. (We’ll talk about that later)
There’s another option yet, we can send the drive away to experts who usually DO recover everything and at this point, I’ll send it to the devils front door if it means I get my photos of Jessica first smile back in my possession. The photos I have of my dad before he died - the look that was captured on Aaron’s face as I walked down the aisle to marry him, to take his name, to make a life with him. All the photos of my swollen belly, glowing with life of my future inside. The 57 pictures we took of Jessica first birthday - all the same, but to me - each one is very different. In one she’s looking at the camera smiling, the next she’s eying the cake, the next she’s working on the candle and so on and so on.
All these precious moments in time, hours and hours of work - life, love - my passions.
External Hard Drive? Can you hear me? PLEASE retain your memory and spit it back out to me. I won’t ever over load you - I’ll keep you in a dry, cool place. Please. I don’t know what else to say.
