Christmas Day 2008

Sometimes when I am having a rough day, I turn my attention to a happy memory -- lately, I have been remembering how much fun I had taking pictures of Elliott and Rosemary on Christmas Day 2008. An outsider might think I am a nut when I start snapping photos of my kids. But it's pure joy to me to click, click, click the camera and capture adorable expressions!

I believe every shot of my children is precious; I even keep the blurry shots. Recently, we experienced something out of our worst nightmares: our external harddrive crashed! We could not open a single file or photo. The drive was dead.

First, we tried a local hard drive recovery company in Chicago... they couldn't do anything. Next, we tried a different place in Chicago... nothing. At this point, I was still in shock regarding the loss of the drive and had begun mourning the loss of the photos. Steve found one last place to try: OnTrack, located in Minneapolis. When he called and told OnTrack we had already taken the drive to two other places and could not recover anything, the OnTrack rep said confidently "We hear that alot!".

Miraculously, OnTrack recovered 99% of our photos including the two on this page. I learned a very valuable lesson. Although losing those photos felt like losing a child... I did not lose my children. Photos are only material things! We were lucky to have our photos returned to us. I will always love taking photos of my kids! But it's really the kids which bring me the utmost joy.

My final thought to any who read this: make sure you back up your digital photos because you just never know what might happen!