the aftermath...

LOVED the majority of the long weekend!! the sleeping in kicked a$$! being w/family was pretty awesome too :)

NOW if ONLY I Had more than 6 of my own photos to show for it... long story short--hopefully for your sake. during the pre-gift photo shoot @ my mom's Christmas evening my camera threw up a 'card needs formatted' error... WHAT THE HE&&?? so I take the card out, turn camera off, take battery out & reinsert everything .. same result.. starting to freak out.. traded cards w/mom got no issues w/hers but her cam threw up the same message BAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH nooooooooooooooooooo so I threw a bit of tantrum refusing to use anyone else's camera, insisting the opening go on while I chilled myself out & recovered... keep in mind that card has the Christmas eve photos from Sarah's where we all tried to help the boys build gingerbread houses & opened gifts AND Christmas day at MIL's where all 6 siblings agreeably took group shots AND all the pre-gift photos I had taken at my mom's.. 300+ in all .. inaccessible! :( whaaaaaaaaa

when we got home I emailed transcend.com (name on the card), tossed & turned all night barely slept during the night then slept till 11 on Friday LOL while talking to Kodak & then later on hold w/lexar I cleaned house. all upstairs rooms picked up, living & dining rooms vac'd, dining room shampooed even. Laundry sorted & even started. went online when I couldn't get a real live voice on the phone & bought their recommended image recovery program 3.0 only for it to not be able to find the card inserted into the computer EITHER. so I resigned to them being lost. went out to drinks w/Jeff & Bethany later to drown my sorrows.. I think Tim was happy someone got me to shower & put real clothes on instead of my flannels I had depressingly hung out in all day LOL

Saturday I called Christian Photo in Des Moines, to my surprise found their hours odd.. 10-5 on Saturday rather than the traditional & popular 8-noon Saturday hours. The guy I talked to said they'd try to recover it & if they were able it was $40 & if not it was free. So off we went!!! dropped it off along w/the house burn tapes to be made to DVDs finally & a shopping we went.

we used a GC to O'Charley's YUMMMM for lunch, I got some sale goodies @ Archivers, wandered around a Walmart & a Best Buy, checked out a kitten in a pet store, then on our way to Target I called to check only to find out that they were able to recover SIX IMAGES *sigh* so no charge but *sigh* 6 of 300 is NOT good odds.. granted if they are 2 from each gathering I'll be happy but I am sad to have lost the other 294 *sigh* sad ... so sad... since we are going back up in the next 2 weeks to get the tapes/DVDs I had them just put them in that bundle & we'd get it all @ the same time *sigh* so sad. on the phone shortly there after to get the other photographers to get their photos online for me to see SOON PLEASE.

Any answer was better than none at that point so I was over it .. sorta .. as much as I could be I suppose! so across town we fly to capture the all elusive Wii game 'Cabela's Legendary Adventures' that I couldn't for-the-life-of-me track down BEFORE Christmas. OYE . he got it & its HARD lol figures

today I finally put a different card in & started using my camera again. I will never go w/o saving photos from card again! ever. arg!

other than that I think we did pretty good this year... we used our money from MIL toward 2 new tires on the van :), tim used his cash for the game, I used mine for bits & pieces here & there thru the day, we have brownie mix to use(like a mix-in-a-jar), a shopping gc, 2 restaurant gcs, Wii Fit & multi-game accessory pack, and of course the traditional candy, peanuts, scarf, candle, and cash :) I still owe Gpa his gc b/c I totally forgot to get it LOL MY bad!!!!

back to work tomorrow.. *sigh* but at least its just another 3 day week :) yay!!