Lately

Lately I've only been taking pictures of the kids (no surprise there) and I seem to be able to update their blogs a few times a month, but the family blog is probably lacking in our daily doings.

So far in 2012...

Justin has traveled to Toronto and is heading for California next week.  

I've been to a funeral.  One of my friends (since Kindergarten) step-father passed away after cancer.  I haven't been to a funeral for years where I haven't been in the family section.  I still became overwhelmed emotionally, but it had very little to do with the funeral and more to do with someone attending it.  I had no idea I felt so strongly about this person.  Turns out if you mess with one of my friends, I take it very personally.  

I've done church once on my own.  This is probably the hardest part of Justin being in the Navy. I'm sure I'll feel very different about that in 2013, but just having to do church on my own with 2 kids and having to play the organ in Sacrament meeting is pretty tough. 

Hyrum has spent at least 2 nights with the Lafeens, one with the Goughs and once or twice with my parents when I was there.  Kate went to the Lafeen's and Hardcastles.  They usually do really well on sleepovers.  But, since it's at the grandparents, they usually come home a little more tired than usual.  A small price to pay for a night off -usually.  

We visited a preschool that Hyrum will probably attend.  His cousin Laila went there and they loved it.  I wish I could find someone to carpool with, but probably won't -no matter where he goes, so we might as well go somewhere with high recommendations.

We went to the aquarium with Grandma Hardcastle.  They have a new sea otter exhibit.  They slept the whole time we were there.  Maybe we'll try again this week to see if we can see them playing in their cool new home.  

We found out they were able to recover all of our files from our media drive that crashed.  At least we'll get our money's worth.  And a new hard drive.  

We've attended 2 birthday parties, including a surprise party for my sister.  Hyrum is still talking about yelling "Surprise, Happy Birthday, Jodi"

We had a week of abnormally warm weather and made it to a park a couple of times.  

We had friends and cousins come over to play.

Lot's of time inside this month to play with trains.  

Lesson Learned

I briefly mentioned this in a previous post.  Justin and I thought we had this great idea (and it was) to have a media drive that basically synced our computers together without the networking headaches.  We save pretty much everything on the media drive, not on our computers.  Great idea right?  Computer's crash, and you lose information.  By not saving anything on our computers we could bypass all of those problems.

I did bring up the point that maybe we should make a few backup dvd's with the pictures and our businesses financials -you know, just in case.  Well, that takes a lot of time, and a bit of planning, something that both of us sometimes lack in.

Right before Christmas Justin told me he thought the media drive.  I didn't want to think about it.  I couldn't think about it, just the thought of thinking about it brought tears to my eyes.  Every single pictures I've ever taken digitally or scanned was on the drive.  Wedding pictures (which thankfully can be recovered, along with the last family pictures and the other professional ones taken by Terra at Magnifique) every picture of my kids, vacations, you get the idea.  It just makes me sick.  Justin not only has personal files on the drive, but also work stuff, including all the financials from 5 or 6 businesses.  We won't be able to do our taxes without it.

So, he sent it off to IOMEGA (after getting an estimate of $200 -$1,000) to recover our files.  This week we got the written estimate.  $1,800!  I can't believe it.  We are lucky and blessed that we can pay that.  And, in 5 years I would absolutely regret not paying the money to recover our family pictures.  That's obviously the most important thing to me, but as I mentioned, Justin is going to find his life getting very difficult and spending countless hours trying to recreate a lot of business paperwork.  Here's the worst part.  We still don't know if any or the files even CAN be recovered.  The estimate states that $1,800 is the price regardless of how much is recovered.  If they aren't able to recover ALL of the files, we can choose to accept the repair as is (for the full price) or not anything.

So, let's hope that our files can all be recovered and we've learned our lesson.  We are both already transferring the few files on our computers to dropbox.com .  It seems like a great service and we'll be able to access everything from anywhere -it even has an app.

Book Report

I think I want to start tracking the books I read somewhere.  And, I guess this will be the place for now.  I doubt I'll say much about each book, just a sentence or two, but you can always google it if you want more info.

Since Christmas I've finished:

Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien -the first one.  I read this like a real book.  My dad lent me his hardback copy, but it was all three novels and I couldn't hold the dang thing.  I ended up borrowing a paperback from Jodi.  We read it for my mom's book club.  Mostly because it was a book that we all had on our 'to-read' list and had never got around to it.  Since we didn't meet in December (so we had twice as long) we decided to read it.  It was okay.  I'm not sure it was as great as some reviews and best of book lists say it is, but I'm glad I read it.  And I think Peter Jackson did a great job with the movies.

This Much I Know Is True by Wally Lamb.  I started this in California with the audio book.  I had read another one of his, The Hour I First Believed and really liked it.  There is a bit of language in his books and he usually has at least one scene that might embarrass a few people.  I think he's a good writer and keeps his reader interested the entire length of the book (which is usually pretty long).  This one was about a set of twins, one with bipolar disease and how the other deals with it.

Never Let Me Go, Kasuo Ishiguro.  I listened to the audio book.  (I've really gotten into audio books since my one day California trip -thanks, dad).  This is another one that I had see the movie before I read the book.  I liked it a lot better than the last one I read from the same author.  Kind of like a dystopian story that was quite interesting.

Anthem by Ayn Rand.  I discovered the free app from the library and this was one of audio books on there.  It only took 2 hours to listen to.  This was a short one for Ayn Rand.  I've never read one of her books before -have you SEEN how big Fountainhead is?  I was curious about her writing, and probably wouldn't mind reading some of her other works.  I think this one in most releases is around 250 pages, pretty much a novella compared to her other novels.  It's another dystopian story.

The Litigators by John Grisham.  Another audio book.  My gym time is coming in handy getting extra books in.  I haven't read a John Grisham book for ages, they all started to get too familiar.  This one is much of the same but he is a good story teller and there were enough little turns at the end to keep it interesting.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  I read this in school, along with just about every other student in the country.  I've joined another book club, one where we will read books that had been banned or challenged at one point.  This is the first one we're reading.  I'll be honest, I sort of forgot most of the details near the end, so it made it a great read.  Not that this one isn't a great read anyway, no wonder it's read so often.  I actually purchased this book (haven't done that for ages, I'm a fan of the library).  I figured that one of our kids will eventually read this too and unless they start issuing iPads (which may happen, who knows) in junior high, we'll have a copy.

I'm currently reading:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.  This is another free one from the library.  I've seen the movie, years ago, probably also forgotten a lot of details so it's sort of new to me.  I noticed it mostly because it's one that was on our banned books list, so just in case we read it, I'll have it fresh on my mind.  I'm about half way through it, slightly disturbing but the language isn't horrible.  I can't remember why this one has been banned in the past, but I think it get's a bit more graphic later on.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.  This is the first book I'm reading on my new Nook Tablet.  Which is sort of why I'm reading it.  It's my turn to pick the book next month in our mom's book club, so I made sure no one had read this one and picked it.  I'm a little worried about being in two book clubs -hoping to get ahead a little on reading.  I didn't realize it was a memoir which follows the year following the authors husbands death.  It's an award winning book and so far I like it.

I usually don't have quite this long of a list, I was nearly done with Lord of the Rings and the Wally Lamb book by the time Christmas came along too, so that is probably why it's so long too.