Oh, Joyous Joyfulness!

So, my hard-drive. I spent $65 for a guy to tell me that it would cost me $2500 for them to see if they could get anything off of it. That didn't include how much it would cost to actually GET stuff off of it. I was so bummed. Heartbroken, really. Everything was on there. Everything. Sure, most of my photos were backed up online, but hardly any of the videos were, and none of my documents! I mean, the documents themselves weren't really that big of a deal- I could re-do most of them... eventually. But the videos?! Oh, my precious videos! I can never re-create those moments, especially as Jack Jack has grown so fast!

Sadness. Mourning. Big ugly frown. Utter disappointment and depression.

And then a friend asked if I'd like her husband to take a look at it. Um, huh? YES, PLEASE! I wasn't holding out any hope for it, but if anything could be saved at all, I'd be thrilled! I'd already written it all off as a total loss and was trying to come to terms with it, so imagine how freaking excited I was when my friend (who happens to be the momma of these adorable boys, by the way) said that her husband was able to recover a lot of my files!

Celebration! Happiness! Huge cheesy grin! Elation and joyous joyfulness!

As is the nature of these things, I have a lot of work to do to organize the files. Almost none of them retained the same file name and so I have to go through and sort and figure out what each file is and where they go... pretty much one-by-one. I am excited, though, that I even have to do that as it means that I actually have something to sort! And as I'm sorting I'm going to be uploading so that I don't lose anything ever again! The reason I hadn't previously uploaded my videos was because in order to do so I have to change the formats... something that takes an average of 10 minutes per video, and I have a lot of videos! But trust me, I've realized through all of this that it's so not worth thinking "Oh, I can just do it later!" and from now on I will be uploading my movies to my smugmug the moment they are on my computer!

Seriously.

I mean, can you imagine if I had lost this video, taken in September of 2006?

Or this video, taken in December 2007?

Or how about this one?

I am so stinking excited that I want to post them all!!! But I won't ;) Please, though, join me in rejoicing at the marvelous wonderfulness that my data has been recovered!!!

WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!

And a HUGE Thank You to my friend and her husband for doing that for me! That can't have been easy, and you saved my life!!! Any time you guys are ready for another photo shoot, let me know... no charge! Seriously, I OWE YOU!!!!!