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- What a week. I don’t usually feel this way, but I am SO thankful for it to be Saturday and this week to be over. (I’ll explain, I promise.)
- Poor Leander has been struggling with sickness all week again. He seemed to be doing fine – he had a dentist appointment on Monday morning (which he did GREAT at – he’s come such a long way from the first time he saw the dentist and wouldn’t even attempt to sit up in the chair! Now, he hops right up, talks and laughs with the dentist, opens his mouth on command – it’s amazing!) and then we went to the grocery store on our way home, and he just crumpled at the store. I honestly was worried we would have to abandon our cart half way through. But we rallied and I got my shopping done faster than ever and we made it home. He laid on the couch for the rest of the afternoon, but seemed okay around dinner.
Tuesday was a good day – he felt fine all day Tuesday.
Both Wednesday and Thursday, he woke up feeling great, acting totally normal, but by lunch time he was feeling icky, crying, laying on the couch, and not feeling good. He kept crying that his head hurt. I figured it was just a version of what Derrick had been sick with over the weekend (he had flu-like symptoms: very achy, headache, felt awful.) But then at dinner Thursday night, Derrick said something about “sinus pressure” and a lightbulb went off in my head: maybe he didn’t have a headache, maybe he had an EARache! After all, his nose was stuffed up! So, I grabbed the Melaleuca oil and put drops behind both of his ears and literally within 5 minutes, he was feeling so much better! He pretty much went back to normal! He ate his dinner, ran around playing with Braelynn, was talking and laughing, took his bath – he was obviously feeling so much better!
I literally can’t believe that I didn’t think of that before – duh.
Thankfully, ever since then, he’s been feeling much better. He’s still a little stuffed up, but no more aches, no more laying on the couch, no more crying. I’m so thankful. - So yes, our week of “sickness” has been brought to you in part by, the Aladdin movies. We watched the original Aladdin two Sunday nights ago with our pizza (our kids had never seen it before), then this past Sunday we watched The Return of Jafar, and after that, Braelynn and Leander became obsessed. They watched the 3rd Aladdin the next day, and the three movies have been on repeat all week long.
- Braelynn had a doctor’s appointment this week – just a well-visit. She was so anxious to go and get measured, because she wanted to see if she’d hit 54″ tall yet. That’s pretty much the last “roller coaster” height milestone she needs to reach – and then she’ll be able to ride just about everything! And she’s SO close!! She’s less than half an inch away (and they measured her without her shoes on – I bet a a park (with her shoes on) she’d measure 54″!) This summer is going to be a BIG one for our girl!!
- Leander crawled into bed with us in the middle of the night, Wednesday night, and said: “Mom?” and I mumbled: “Mhmm?” and he responded: “You’re the best Mom in the whole wide world.”
- Derrick hit a BIG milestone on his YouTube channel this week: 20,000 subscribers!! I feel like, he’s been flirting with that line for so, so, SO long, and he FINALLY hit it!
- Last night, Braelynn and I took dinner over to my sister and her family and Braelynn finally got to meet her new little birthday-buddy!! My sweet new niece was born ON Braelynn’s birthday, and Braelynn was just over-the-moon to meet her! She had the biggest smile on her face all evening and couldn’t stop talking about how “tiny” and “cute” she is! I know there is a 9 year age-difference between then, but I feel like they’re going to have the sweetest connection and relationship for the rest of their lives – because they share the exact same birthday.
- Okay, but do you really want to know what REALLY made this an awful, long (slightly stressful) week?
It’s a long story, and since I specialize in long stories: I’m going to tell it ALL. Buckle up.
Earlier this week, I had an idea for a new series of short-form videos I wanted to make. (I won’t spoil the subject matter, but I’m pretty excited about it!) In order to create these videos (the way I envision them in my head), I need to do a “green-screen effect”. I know I can achieve this effect directly in the Instagram reels editor, but since I hate (loathe) editing anything in that editor, I wanted to do it on my computer within Final Cut Pro. I started doing some research, and found a bunch of tutorials for creating that exact effect. Amazing!
So, I opened up my Final Cut Pro, and attempted to find the effect, but it isn’t listed in my panel. I assumed this must be because I need to update my Final Cut Pro (I don’t let my computer automatically update anything, I do it all manually.) So, I went digging for the update, and sure enough – found a BUNCH of updates I was missing! However, it wouldn’t let me update any further than the version I currently have, because (a few minutes of research later) I needed to update my entire OS in order to get the newest versions.
UGH. I hate updating my OS. It’s always so terrifying. But, if it will get me what I need in Final Cut Pro (plus a bunch of other new fancy features I really want to play with), I will do it.
BUT FIRST: I needed to double-check that everything I have is backed up in the cloud and on my hard drives. (Safety first, people.)
My working hard drive from 2023 was getting very full, so I had already purchased a new hard drive for the end of 2023 and 2024. I just needed to set it up and move stuff onto it (which I hadn’t sat down to do yet.) Since this was the kick in the pants I needed, I began to go through the process of setting that hard drive up. It’s not like it’s hard, it just takes time.
Because I’m crazy careful about these things: I unplugged ALL of my other hard drives before re-formatting my new hard drive.
But then, for who knows WHY?! I decided to plug back in my 2023 drive (I had the thought: That way, when I’m putting files on my 2024 drive, I can make sure I’m not duplicating anything.)
Let’s just say: that was the STUPIDEST thought I’ve ever had in my life.
BECAUSE, when I pulled up my Disk Utility, and selected the drive to re-format (and added all the options I needed) – ONE CLICK and a full TWO SECONDS later – I had completely and thoroughly ERASED my ENTIRE 2023 hard drive.
EVERYTHING was on that drive: my personal photos, my personal videos, my wedding photos, engagement photos, mini session photos, videos of us at parks (including videos that I haven’t finished vlogging yet). It was all GONE.
I literally lost my mind in panic. How in the world had I done that?! How in the world was that so easy?! How in the world was that so fast?!
Pure panic.
My mind instantly went to all of my other back-ups: everything I’d taken on my iPhone for 2023 was still on my desktop, so all of my photos videos (personal and amusement park) are still there. Everything I’d taken with my “real” camera and edited, have been updated to my gallery service, so all of those completed photos are still there. All of my iPhone photos are backed up in Amazon Photos – so all of those photos are still there. So, at the very very worst: I’d lost all of my RAW files, and all of the working videos files I’d created over the year.
I was shaking SO BAD as I tried to log into my cloud back-up service. I had to re-type my password about 5 times. All I could think was: my entire 2023 hard drive should be backed up FULLY to the cloud – please let it be fully backed up!
I finally successfully logged in and pulled up my list of back-ups, and it said my 2023 hard drive was FULLY backed up as of “1 day ago.”
Talk about a clash of terrifying panic and instant relief.
All of my files were SAFE.
ALL of my files were safe.
Words cannot express how I was feeling in that moment.
And how I still feel to this day.
Needless to say: I have been downloading my files out of the cloud (to put back on my hard drive) ever since. I had almost 5TB worth of data stored on that drive, so it’s quite the downloading process. I’ve been downloading files 24/7 for the past 4 days – and I’ve still got about 700GB left to download. (In other words, I’m actually making really good progress.)
I still can’t believe how easy it was to re-format my drive. No warning pop-up, no “Are you sure you want to do this?” question – just one click and it was done. Needless to say, I’m now TERRIFIED of formatting anything (I still need to format my brand new drive – the one I was trying to format in the first place.) I’m waiting until EVERYTHING from my 2023 hard drive is back though before I re-attempt that process – AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE, I’ll be unplugging EVERYTHING (and probably moving it to another room) before I attempt to format that new drive again.
