FWEW!

Wow, so in the past hour, I have had many thoughts primarily focusing on Patrick's childhood memory regarding the condition of so many items in their six child family. He often reminds me in our household of this thought. He remembers his mom often saying, "Can't I have anything NICE?" Usually, this was in response to something being destroyed. And the answer, apparently, is/was no. I love my family, but let me explain why this thought was in my mind. Let me also say that I haven't uploaded pictures in quite some time due to being busy, on vacation, and having the office dismantled from our recent flooring project.

I took my card from my camera to upload pictures to the computer. My laptop doesn't have the right type of slot, so I typically use either of my picture printers (I used to have a card reader - it got broken...another example). I decided to use the newer printer that I bought in September of last year; a nice one that I hope to have for a while. I tried inserting the card - wouldn't fit or even come close to fitting. Then I peeked into the slot and had memories of Leyton & Nathaniel at the age of about 18 months and the reason why Patrick hasn't had a functioning CD player in his car since then. Curious boys, happy to see Dad come home from work, climb into driver's seat and...insert business card into interesting CD slot. It still doesn't work as it's not made it high enough on the priority list. Why did I think of this? Well, I saw a small plastic object inside the printer card slot. Hmm. Not supposed to be there. I dumped it out and tried the card again...still no luck. OK, so I'm now disappointed that the card slot is broken.

Next step, I tried the card back in my camera and figured I would connect my camera to my computer and get the pictures that way. When I put my card in the slot, I got a reading that typically means, guess what, the card is shot. At this, I was literally about to cry thinking of all the pictures I had taken and not uploaded. I started to beat myself up about why I didn't upload sooner...you never know what can happen and I never know who, what, where, and when I'll get some great pictures of my precious people! I thought about trips to Washington on there, vacation, funny pictures at home, and then of course today's wonderful Easter memories and seeing the kids dressed so nice. All the pictures believed to be unrecoverable.

I paced around thinking, of course, I was going to try & actually get to bed earlier tonight but now couldn't focus on sleep. I tried one last time on my other picture printer and connected that. Here comes the FWEW! It could still read them! Without a moment to spare, I uploaded them to make sure I didn't lose them after this. I'm so relieved I was able to get the pictures and now...I'm too tired to work on it anymore tonight.

I would say, though, that even though I was very sad in thinking of losing these pictures of my family that I can't get back, I do realize that it wouldn't have been the end of the world. I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful family and my great kids - unrecoverable pictures is one thing, but irreplaceable kids are just a whole other ballpark and I love them dearly. Even with this and some other recent property damage (will have to make a list for my own entertainment) - I think of their smiling faces and know that the things are all just things, it's the people that matter most and I couldn't do without them.

Good night.