laughing and counting

Here are 2 short video clips that are super cute. The first one is of Brady laughing, and the second is of Addie counting. Enjoy!

cautionary tale

Last year Lee bought me an IMac for my birthday. I was very excited since everyone I know who has a Mac raves about them. We were told we will love having an Apple; that it's the best. In the past 11 months, I've saved thousands of pictures and videos to the iphoto program. And a few months after we got the computer, someone suggested we get an external hard drive to back everything up....just in case. So we got one and I do regular updates. At the time I thought, "What's the point? It's an Apple! A back up system is a waste of time and money." Well, I've since learned that was a naive and ignorant thought. I've had to call Apple support 3 times with problems. And just a few days ago, it crashed. After going through all the trouble-shooting, I called Apple support, again. They walked me through all they could do to help, but nothing would make the computer start up. So I took it to Best Buy to get it serviced, and they said it is most likely a problem with the disk drive and that there's a good chance that I'll lose everything on the hard drive....including everything I've saved in iphoto. Now this would be tragic (those who know me well can attest to that) if I hadn't JUST finished backing up all my pics and videos from 2008 to our external hard drive a few days before the computer crashed. Seriously, God was so gracious to remind and motivate me to do regular updates "just in case"....and I'm so thankful. Otherwise I might still be crying over the loss of 3-1/2 years worth of memories instead of the few pictures I've taken in the new year that I hadn't backed up yet.

Luckily we still have our Dell from before, so that's what we're using for now. We've actually been trying to sell it, so after we get our Apple back, let me know if you want it.

strange....

This was in our mail yesterday:

So if you know the Goulds, and didn't get their annual Christmas card, perhaps this is why! As you can see, we received their Christmas card--although not in its original form. Along with the singed remains was a letter from the USPS explaining what happened.