Bone Guy

I am always pretty surprised by how excited my kids are about Halloween. They LOVE to decorate the house with spookie decor, and they especially love the "Bone Guys". Skeletons are a hot commodity in our house. Aaron drags a "bone guy" everywhere he goes like a security blanket. Once while we were waiting outside of Connor's school for him to get out, another parent suggested that I teach him the bone names, while he was so into it. Good idea!

We had fun going to "Spookie Town" out at Bonnie springs again this year. Brian joined us, and the kids were not dissappointed with the "Bone guys" riding horses, carrying knives. I thought it was a bit overkill for a kids attraction, but they loved that they were passing out candy to them. I just don't get boys sometimes I guess. Only one close call in the Petting Zoo, with a deer eating Daddy's clothes. Besides that, we had a great time.



Halloween was a success this year to say the very least. According to Brian it was the most candy he had ever seen kids gather at Halloween time. We started out in our neighborhood, then we went to the church for trunk or treat. After that we ended up in a friend's neighborhood and that's where we hit the jackpot. Around 7:30 people start despirately passing out their candy to get rid of it. They start scooping candy into the kids bags by the handfuls. Good to know for future reference!

Happy Halloween!

BACK UP!!!!

Just a few weeks before Aaron's birthday I started working on his 3 year video. Things started as normal, I began shuffling through several folders trying to find good photos that I haven't used anywhere else. Highlighting all the special times of the year. Soon I find myself engrossed in the project, and I can't stop until it is finished. After a couple days, and hours worth of work poured into the video, it seemed to be complete. I pressed play on the preview, and that was the last mistake in a series that would lead to utter destruction of thousands of pictures.

Aaron heard one of his favorite songs blasting from the computer speakers so he ran as fast as he could to look at the screen. I had been working on it from Brian's Laptop, so instead of moving it to the desk where my hard drive was, I had strung it on the ground over to the table where it sat. This left a loose cord dangling like a zipline from the table to the floor where the hard drive sat. Aaron paid no attention and jammed right through the cord.

"BAM"

and that was all I heard before I watched the video come to a complete hault, and a clicking noice started coming from the drive. I crumbled to the ground beside the hard drive and became panicked. I turned it off and on, even gave it a couple knocks and blows (like you do with old nintendo games), but nothing worked. The clicking still continued.

Literally all the video and photos of my family were on that drive. Over 30,000 photos and 40 gigs of video were stored there in neat folders. I started to cry. I didnt' think about anything but that I had to get this drive fixed now. After stopping by my local computer "fixer" store, they informed me that the drive needed to be repaired so it would have to be sent to a company with a clean room.

The company they recommended said their prices started at $700! I began to cry again. I decided to call around and do my own research before sending out my drive. I found out there are two companies in town that do this sort of thing. The one I sent it to called me the next day and told me it would be $1250 to restore. And no guarantees. So I began to think:

I had just burned video up until Christmas of 2010.
I checked my video camera and it had video back until March 2010.

First discovery: I only lost 3 months of video completely.

I found my old hard drive that had broken a couple years ago.
I paid $60 to get the photos off of it, and it had up until April 2009.

Second discovery: 20,000 photos recovered, including ones of the boys birth.

I went on Shutterfly and was able to get photos from 2009 and 2010 that I used in my photo books.

Third discovery: 1,000 pictures from 2009-2010

Facebook and my blog have hundreds of more of my favorite missing pictures.

In conclusion: $1250 might be a little steep to pay when I have all this in backups thanks to modern technology!

After discussing it with the sales person, he informed me that a promotion was going on and they could do the same job for $625. If they had offered that to me first I might have said yes, but after analyzing the situation I decided I would hold off for now. I have the drive still, so I might do it someday, but that someday is not today!

Now I am going to burn a copy of everything and have Brian keep it at his work...just incase. I think I should start on that project soon! Like yesterday. I don't want to go through this again, that's for sure!

Rain, Rain, DON'T go away

It's a little strange sometimes when I realize that my boys, including Brian, have been living in the desert so long they don't experience the things that I had when I was a kid. For instance, it rained and got extremely cold all of a sudden a few weeks ago. It literally went from 100 degrees one day to 60 degrees the next. I threw open the windows, listened to the thunderstorms and tried to soak it all in like I'm sure desert plants do in this situation. Connor got extremely tired of the rain and cloudcover after only half a day. He kept asking where the sun was. I told him if we move to the rainforest this is how it would be. Didn't he like it? He said he likes the sun and the rain.

As a family we were walking to the West Fest down the street, and we were admiring our tree-lined streets. Brian starts complaining about a tree dieing, "Look, the landscapers haven't been taking care of our trees!". I pointed out that the tree wasn't dieing, but the leaves were changing color. It's fall! At least I live around some trees that aren't EVERGREEN!

It's going to be a challenge to give my children an education in different aspects of life, but isn't that what raising kids are all about! The excitement of the challenge!