Hard Drive Woes & 33 Weeks

My posts are few and far between these days, and I have no photos with which to make this one more colorful. For those of you who are not subscribed to my Facebook sob stories, my hard drive crashed last week. We have something called a Time Machine that is supposed to have everything backed up on it, but of course it wasn't functioning, so I had nothing saved.

I already had a new hard drive, so I took it to Micro Center (an hour away, with three kids) to see how much it would cost for them to swap everything out and transfer the files from my old drive. They wanted $300 IF there were no problems, and my first born child if there were problems. I probably should have just choked it down and gotten it over with, but being the cheap people we are, we decided to try to do it ourselves.

JP is amazing. He did a little research and printed out step-by-step instructions on how to swap out a hard drive, then did it himself without any trouble. I then went to install the operating system, only to remember that my CD drive is also broken. I had to drive down to Elk River to buy an external CD drive, then successfully installed the OS.

While I was at Micro Center, I spent $17 on a hard drive to USB adapter which was supposed to allow me to plug in my old hard drive and transfer over all of my stuff. Unfortunately, my hard drive was too far gone to be able to do that myself, so now my old hard drive is at a computer repair shop here in Princeton as they attempt to recover all of my data.

The whole thing has been extremely stressful for me, especially since I was in the middle of three different photo shoots I needed to edit with two more coming up in the next couple of weeks. I am now way behind, and now that we've started homeschooling for the year, my time to edit is even more limited. Thankfully, all of the people who are waiting for photos have been extremely understanding and patient.

If you think of it, please be praying that our little computer repair shop is successful at recovering my files. The thought of all of that stuff being lost makes my hair fall out.

_____________________________________________________

In baby news, I am now 33 weeks along. There has been some confusion about when my due date is, but today my doctor confirmed October 30th based on my first ultrasound.

The baby is fine, although my doc says he is measuring quite big; perhaps 2-4 weeks bigger than normal. That scares me since JP was over 9 pounds! It's not pushing him out I'm worried about, it's carrying that big of a baby around for the next six weeks! I'm already swollen and experiencing several other crappy late pregnancy symptoms; I have a feeling this last month and a half could be pretty tough.

The other day I told Rae I needed to get off my feet because my ankles were swelling up. She looked at my feet for a minute and then said, "Where are your ankles? I can't see them?" Exactly.

It's still strange to me that JP and I still haven't settled on a name yet. I almost wonder if he will remain nameless until it's time to fill out the birth certificate.

_____________________________________________________

The girls are doing great. Rae is doing My Father's World Kindergarten this year. So far it is very easy for her. I knew it would be, but I also decided I didn't want to try to skip over Kindergarten and jump right in to first grade, especially with a newborn on the way. She loves school and doesn't like taking two whole days off on the weekends. We studied the sun in her first unit, so we took a little field trip to the Planetarium at St. Cloud State University for a presentation on the solar system. She loved it.

Ruby is doing a preschool curriculum called "Little Hands to Heaven" by Heart of Dakota Publishing. I can already notice the major strides she is taking in just two weeks. The program is full of fun crafts, songs, finger-plays, and hands-on activities to make learning fun and engaging. Even Rosie is picking up on basic concepts.

Rosie started potty training a couple weeks ago, and while she hasn't perfected it, she's definitely doing awesome. She hardy ever has accidents with #1, but is more hesitant when it comes to #2, which is normal. She is very reward driven, and if I slack of on giving her some sort of treat or reward, she loses interest quickly. Ruby is night trained now, too, so with the exception of Rosie wearing a diaper at night and nap time, we are diaper and pull-up free in this house for about a month and a half! :)

_____________________________________________________

Time to elevate my cankles. Have a great night, y'all!