Bittersweet

Yesterday I took these pics of the girls for my friend Not So Anonymous Michelle.

My very sweet bud sent me and the girls some GORGEOUS jewelry that she made, just because she lurves us and has an Emma Rose too. Plus I needed to get my aunt some pics of the girls with the stuff they got from her for Christmas. :)

Related to this post... John's boss has had a history of being quite generous in getting me computers and screens in the past as a way of kind of making up for the fact that John hasn't always gotten raises or promotions as planned, or sometimes not at all. Also, he just really likes John, which is nice. The older computers always go back to work for the most part. Recently, before Christmas John was told that he wasn't going to get bumped up like they had thought. I received my new computer, and just like 3 times before I have had to transfer files off the old one and onto the new one.

I know, new computers... poor me, right? The fact of the matter is that without this little bonus plan... I'd still be using an older Mac Power Book that was slowly falling apart (speakers and USB ports died on me), and I would never be able to do most of the things I do now on my computer because it's now about 8-10 years old and very slow compared to today's standards.

About a week ago, John tried to used my back up external hard drive that had our iTunes and backups of previous computer upgrades/ transfers, as well as my resume and other misc. stuff. Wouldn't you know it? It mysteriously died.

So this meant that he had to take my old computer into work to get the files off my old PC for me. When John plugged it in today at work, the computer actually caught fire and started to smoke, and the hard drive is so literally fried that it has scorch marks on it. John just called me to give me the news. All of my stuff... gone. This consisted of: all of the graphics I have ever made for myself and anyone else, blog templates I had hacked, all of my Photoshop plug ins, games, ideas for books... and almost 3 years of pictures and recent videos of the girls. Up in smoke, literally and figuratively.

I couldn't help myself, I started to sob. I care nothing about all of the other files and hard work that I have lost. I grew up an unwanted middle child, an unwanted daughter. My brothers have many, many pictures of themselves as babies and small children, and have professional photos of themselves from when they were infants. Even though we have't even come close to taking as many pictures of Emma as we did our first child, there are days when we announce to each other as a reminder, "We haven't taken pictures of Em lately, we better do that." I never want my kids to wonder why there is no record of their childhoods, and I certainly never want Emma to feel like we loved her big sister more by way of pictures, and we have failed miserably... but we were trying.

How do I explain to my sweet little booger that we have virtually nothing to show of her first 3 years? I so know how that feels, and God, it hurts. I just hope I can explain to her one day , and that it doesn't sound inadequate.

I am so saddened by this. I actually felt such a loss this morning, but as I collected myself I realized that most importantly we haven't lost her. We may have lost some precious memories that we can not ever show her physically in form of photographs, but we still have her here with us. There are people who actually lose their children to tragedy every day, and in comparison this is hardly a tragedy.

I'm still a weepy mess right now, but but looking at the bigger picture sure does help. AND I Just realized that I have THESE ( plus some) pictures of her on Photobucket! OK, now I am really a sobbing mess. ;)