Precious Memories

About 3 weeks ago it was my husband's birthday. Just like a lot of other years, we don't do much to celebrate. Once you pass 21, it seems that the important milestones have already been reached. While we acknowledge adult birthdays, we're lucky to receive a few cards and a little cake. We save our money for other more important things-like the computer that just crashed and needed replacing. So we were going about as usual checking off items on our To-Do list. I sent Brian to pick up our old computer from the Geek Squad. They were going to wipe it clean of viruses and transfer files to our shiny new computer that we are learning how to operate. We didn't have a lot on there, we just wanted "My Documents" and our pictures.

I went about cleaning and tidying laundry. I thought it was taking a while, but then again I did send him to an electronics store by himself. I imagined he was staring at all the big screens and other items we can't afford. He finally returned and I noticed he had bloodshot eyes and his lower lip was trembling. I instantly thought the worst. Had someone died? Had he totaled our only car? It's scary how many horrible things you can think up in a few seconds. He blubbered out, "Honey, we've lost all our pictures of our girl!!!".  I knew then why he was crying. Back when we left the NICU with Amelia, we were given a pretty grim diagnosis. We were given all these statistics about children with Alagille Syndrome. So-Yay a diagnosis, but-wait...you mean she might not live to reach the age of 2?!!! We make a big deal about savoring every precious moment. What Brian was really thinking about is that if we ever lose our girl (which we pray about often)-we wouldn't be able to look back upon her sweet little face.

Ohh-kay. I pulled up www.shutterfly.com, logged in, and showed off all the pictures we'd ever taken of our Amelia. (Big sigh of relief!) One trip of a lifetime to Greece and every picture of our lovely girl were all there online organized neatly into folders. Thank God for a little place where I had managed to save them all.  While I had lacked the discipline to upload all of our pictures, we had the most important ones. Brian had yelled his lungs out and had security called on him for nothing. I felt so bad that his birthday felt ruined and while the pictures were indeed safe, he was still shaken for the rest of the day.

After we had calmed down, I began to wonder which pictures we had lost. Our first 12 years of marriage??? I dreaded how many pictures of my nieces were gone, but beyond that had no idea what I was missing. I began the search and found a few SD chips that had all our daughter's precious milestones-the same ones I had uploaded. It was good to know I was so thorough. I do tend to obsess over pictures. It's my Mom's fault. She is like a Photo Encyclopedia. She takes pictures of every birthday cake, reunion, church event, newborn baby, and/or special outing. I've even known her to take pictures of different headstones at local cemeteries-for family history she says. We joke about it and even get a little frustrated sometimes at her demands for photo ops and printed copies. Of course we all know why it's important, even if she does enjoy her hobby a bit too much for our taste. Her sentiment is because all of her possessions including her baby pictures burned to the ground in a house fire when she was a child. The smell of smoke, even from a candle, scares her to this day. I've never experienced it firsthand but I have had nightmares of snatching up all my picture albums before running out of a housefire.

Anyways, turns out I was even more OCD than I remembered. We've now found an old external hard drive we both forgot about. Brian says I used to nag him about backups all the time. So tonight I was able to upload over 5,000 images to my new computer. Here in our home we consider it a miracle. What would I have lost? Vivid memories of:



My first nephew's baby shower,






Or this favorite Christmas photo where my Dad tried our tea,



From my first cake class...

to my best culinary creation (800 handmade violets),

 



the simple beauties found on an old family farm,



and several good reminders of what we looked like before we entered Parenthood.

Of course we also would have lost vivid memories of our nieces, nephew, many Christmases, Halloween costumes, weddings, dear friends and much more. Please find a promising way to store your precious memories, AKA family photos before it's too late.