back that drive up

After the horrible experience I have had with my computer (hard drive crash - losing client pictures - losing original copy of 30 page lease and had to retype the whole thing - buying all new software/hardware - buying new version of photoshop - working for hours to get sewing software to comply with new everything - setting up iTunes again - setting up iPhone again - setting up Norton again - setting up EVERYTING again - losing all my favorite sites and bookmarks in my favorites folder - etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc)..... I am reminding everyone to

BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER!!!!!!

Thankfully, yes, I had recently backed it up - but really only backed up my pictures - which was GREAT, but it wasn't everything. (I had backed up our files a month before that, so any documents created in that last month were lost, but nothing too bad - although Word documents are a hassle now since we don't have Word anymore)

Did you know it will run us close to $700 to get files off our crashed hard drive?

And thank goodness, there's nothing we need that badly. Thank GOODNESS!!


Here is some advice:

Buy an external hard drive. They come in Terabytes now, which is even bigger than Gigabytes, which are big. Point being - One Terabyte will be enough. Ours was $100.

BUT: an external hard drive can fall and break or just stop working or you get robbed/house fire and it's flat out gone... SO...

Back up your pictures online. I use flickr. I paid $25 for an unlimited annual private account. It took days and days to get all my pics on there, but now they are safe. :) My pics are sorted by month. So at the end of the month, I do a quick transfer to flickr.

Back up the rest of your stuff online. I use Norton. We already have them for securtiy, and it was $70 to buy extra storage. They check my computer regularly and back it up for me. We have very important files on our computer that we simply can't lose... court documents, lease paperwork, tax documents, and of course, our budget info - which is like gold around here...ha!

Make CDs. We have a safe and put burned CDs in there. You can do it by month or week or whatever is easier. Burn a quick copy of your folders and put it somewhere safe. Dude. CDs are cheap and it takes all of 10 seconds to burn something. Set aside an hour of your day and just do it.

All in all - our back up cost a little over $200/year. This is SO worth it. With all the headaches and hassle I have had the past couple of weeks, it would have been so much worse had we not done these things. My only worry was to reconstruct the computer. Had we been faced with recovery issues - oh my!!

Please do this.

The only reason I did was because I read a nightmare story from someone else. On a whim, we backed everything up, with NO CLUE we were about to have a hard drive crash.

Why are you still reading this? I've given you tools - go get to work!! :)

You know what day it is?!

It's Phone Photo Ph-riday!!!

This Ph-riday (or Monday, as the case may be), I have 24 pictures that I need to get off my phone and into our little corner of the web. :)



This is when we had Make-Your-Own-Pizza night at our house. Otherwise known as Mommy-doesn't-want-to-cook night. ZZ loved making his own pizza dough and creating his pizza masterpiece. You can see Daddy in the background finishing his off. YUM!


This is when I made the little dresses for that baby shower. They turned out cute!

This is Zac's little red spot. It reappears every once in a while and we don't know what it is.

Anyone?

This is me feeding Selah Grace a banana. She totally hearts bananas.
Actually, she'll pretty much eat anything.

This is when we had a friend over and they made a tent. Complete with a fountain (aka: Elefun).

This is me reading ZZ a bedtime story. I love him so much!!!

This is ZZ vacuuming his room. He loves to vacuum! And don't think we take advantage of that or anything.

Selah Grace loves her aquarium!

This is the end of the year gift I made for Zac's teachers. I took all the kiddos thumbprints and turned them into little bumblebees. :)

ME: Zac, what do you want to give Ms. Racher for a gift?

ZAC: Um... blueberry pomegranate ice cream.

ME: Excuse me?

ZAC: She told us one time that it was her favorite.

(You should have seen her face when she got it... she was shocked that he remembered that. LOL!)

This is Selah Grace at Walmart. Yes, we have a cute little shopping cart cover. Yes, we have cute little sanitized toys that clip onto it. But sometimes, you're just in a hurry and the keys kept her quiet. :)

This is Selah Grace at the playground. I wish I could get a pic of ZZ, but he was with a friend, and way too cool for me!

These are the kiddos with their new snack holders. They love them!!

This is Zac at the gym again. HILARIOUS.

This is our little spiderman. Every couple of months, he finds his way out of the toybox and into a bowl of water where he stays for several days and we watch him grow bigger and bigger.

Zac loves this spiderman.

This is Zac at a garage sale. He really wants that $3 robot. But he only has $2. (and yeah, he dressed himself)

And he SCORES the robot for $2!!!! That boy is learning from his mama!!

This is a push-up contest that I got to witness. 30 pushups. And guess who struggled to finish?!

This is Zac with a new water gun. Only at the grandparents can you have a water gun inside.

This is when I painted my fingernails black. My mom was horrified. Brian didn't like them either. But I was too busy channeling Lauren Conrad to mind what they thought.

This is Selah Grace eating an apple. We are doing a bit of Baby Led Weaning. (Why am I so weird?) She loves it, so we'll keep doing it while it works.

This is when Zac was trying to dress like his action figures.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Baby! LOL

The Rodeo and some Munchkin Videos

Rodeo Time!!



Sweet Selah Grace with her Nana!



Oh Lordy.... We finally convinced him to get on this thing. He wouldn't let the guy throw him off, though.

SG likes horses as much as I do. Which is not that much.

Texas Rodeos have what they call the Critter Scramble. It's where they pull a trailer onto the rodeo field, and let out about 25 baby "critters" including, but not limited to bunnies, ducklings, baby hens, etc.

So, the under-6 kiddos run out and chase these critters around. If you catch one, you get to keep it.

Which now means, we are owners of this little ducky. Zachariah is THRILLED.

So is my dad....with two ducks. And the news that he gets to keep them at his house!

This is Selah Grace crawling! What a big girl!!

This is Selah Grace laughing. We love it!!! And, of course, she is laughing hysterically at her big brother. :)

This is Zachariah on the bull. He is terrified. LOL!

Flashback Friday

I can't believe that this little 4 year old on his first day of preschool....

... is now this BIG five year old, ready for Kindergarten!!!!

What? How did that happen so fast?

nothing is safe

(Nevermind the pile of shoes/hats/socks on the floor. At any given time, there is a pile of things that need to be put away.)

Focus on the cute naked baby instead!


So, there I am, playing with SG after a nap/diaper change. And all of a sudden, she starts crawling towards me!

I grab my phone and start the picture taking

She stops every once in a while to smile at how cool she is

Then starts back up again!

More smiling and self-adoration... and she finally reaches my knee!

She left that laundry pile in the dust!

She puts herself in a sitting position, too. And finds it very easy to grab anything within (and sometimes not within!) reach.

I move to the other side of the laundry pile.

She decides to climb right through Shoe Mountain.

Focused. Determined.

Perhaps going around the shoes is a better idea

Almost to Mommy!

Actually I think this time, she spotted a paperclip.... time to babyproof!

New again

Selah Grace started crawling yesterday. Her left arm reaches wildly for her destination, and her body drags along behind her. Usually laughing as she goes somewhere she shouldn't, after something dangerously non-edible.

Flashing back, I see Zachariah crawling towards me. Same bald head. Same big eyes. Same little body.

Sometimes, when she lets me, I will sway in the darkness of Selah Grace's night-night routine... her sweet tiny body in my arms, my eyes blurry with love. And I will think that it is Zachariah's head resting on my shoulder. And sometimes the flashbacks aren't pleasant. It was a hard time, holding that little baby boy. Holding him tight. My eyes blurry with pain.

Selah Grace's precious milestones sometimes bring tough memories, even for just a fleeting second. Deep down, the wounds, hidden in my heart. Not to ruin her moment, I ask for peace to rise above it.

He carried me.

My broken mess. Laid before the Lord. An offering.

A reminder of God's redemption. His grace. All things old, made new again.

Phone Photo Ph-riday!

Yeah, I know... it's Sunday today. But that's the ph-un part!

Why have I gotten into such a habit of taking pics with my phone? Well, because it's an iPhone, of course. The best phone on the planet.

Did you know Brian used to have one? Then his work replaced the iPhone with another brand. It has been so sad. All the things that used to be so easy... now so frustratingly tedious and difficult.

Once you go iPhone, you never go back.

Want to know what cool apps I have?

Let's see, I have all free ones:
Prestonwood and Watermark (to listen to sermons),
USAA (we even deposit our checks with our iPhone app. no joke.),
Fox News, USA Today, and all the local nbc/cbs/abc news stations,
Groupon,
E! Online (I can watch Soup!),
My Fitness Pal (logs fitness, calories, etc),
Words Free (addicting scrabble game to play with other iPhone users),
Ebay,
Cheap Gas (finds the closest gas stations and lists them by price),
Blogger,
Redbox (can reserve online and pick up quickly),
RunKeeper and iMapMyRun (can calculate how far I've run by GPS),
Kayak and Southwest Airlines (great deals!!),
AccuTipFree (calculates how much to tip your waiter), and
WhiteNoise (for SG if we are somewhere when she needs to sleep)

iPhone, iLoveU.



Okay, back to Phone Photos...

This is when I took Selah Grace to Target. We are dangerous there. And when she saw these shoes, she just had to have them!







This is when we stopped at Daddy's office. She looks terribly busy.




This is when we bought her a new playpen. Can't you tell how much she loves it? (haha)




This is a little outfit I have been waiting for her to fit into! It's a one-piece shorts outfit, of which I have several - and this day, we matched! (minus the bow) Anyways, we are slowly working to move out of 3-6 month outfits and into 6-9 month. :) On a side note, I just want to kiss all over those chubby legs!!!




This is when we let Zachariah's frogs go. It was so sad with lots of tears. :( And then, OMG, a bird swooped down (I kid you not) and took one of the frogs. Zac looked horrified, but we assured him that birds don't eat frogs and that the frog was probably really enjoying his "plane" ride. Brian and I were dying. One of those parenting moments where you are truly on the spot and you cannot laugh.

We live really close to this cute park and pond, and often walk/run/bike with the kiddos. The ducks are so used to people, that they will walk right up to you ready for some bread!

Here's my root canal!! Just thought I'd document that. Nice hole in my tooth, eh?

A root canal is actually a very interesting procedure. I won't bore you, and I don't recommend actually getting one, but the process is pretty neat.

This is at the kids' doctor, re-checking SG because she had another UTI.

Notice the shoes keep re-appearing? It's because they match everything! :) I want a pair in every size! Er... I mean she wants a pair in every size... Plus they look like Lelly Kelly shoes, which I would LOVE to buy, but I think Brian would absolutely die of a heart attack on the spot if I spent that much on SG's shoes. *sigh*

This is when Zachariah and his buddy were racing around making skid marks on the street. They are crazy boys out there! (see his skid marks?!)

This is when we were waiting at Zac's preschool for his class to get out. I love this dress!

This is at Brian's softball game. Go Daddy!!!

This is when she found out Daddy's team lost. :(

This is our hungry little cheerio muncher!! She also eats bananas, avocados, and sweet potatoes.

This is Zac working out with me. He LOVES going to the gym with us. He uses every piece of equipment, including the treadmill, elliptical, bike, and all the weight training machines. Ha! (He takes his work out very seriously, too.)

This is when Zac and Selah Grace were playing in their "fort." Lots of giggling in there.

This is when Brian was on a cleaning spree. He does this when he is stressed. I may or may not have been the cause of the stress at this particular time. If so, then I am also responsible for a very sparkly shower.

This is Selah Grace's new church dress I made this morning before we left. It got wrinkly at church, but she was still so cute! Although, we are getting jealous of our little friends who are already doing pigtails, like Kiersten and Lyla. No fair!! ;)

That's all for this edition of Phone Photo Ph-friday. The pictures are happy to be off my phone and in cyberspace. Have a great day!