Misty Watercolored Memories

(Sorry to put that song in your head, well not really because its been in mine for a while now.)

When we become new parents we take photo after photo of our children. We document their every move. Each new stage is greeted with a production worthy of a Hollywood movie. We need to record it. We want to preserve these moments for eternity.

Why do we do this? Is it so we can show our children, when they are older, what perfect angels they were? Is it so we can embarrass our children, when they are older, by showing their friends and dates all the cute bath pictures? Is it so we can, when they are older, remember that they were small and cute and loved us unconditionally, not just when they want the car? Is it so that we can, when we are older, remember that we were once young and had no clue what to do?

Whatever the reason we cherish these photos (and videos). But the advent of the digital camera has created a problem. Sure you can take tons more pictures and you don't have to wait a week to see them. You can download them to your computer and share them with friends (and virutal friends) around the world with just a click of a button.

But what about when the unthinkable happens? What if your computer hard drive crashes before you've had a chance to back up your photos? They are gone, gone, gone. Sure you could spend a few thousand dollars to try and recover the photos but there is no guarantee that it will work.

This horrible problem happened to me. My computer crashed last spring. I waited and waited to get it fixed thinking that someone could help me recover the photos. I had a year and a half worth of photos of Bunny there. My heart broke.

Sure I'd printed out a few, but not enough. I was also lucky that my father has taken a bazillionty photos of her since she's been home. So we do have a record of most of the major events. But I don't have that many pictures of our trip to China. The trip where we became a family. That killed me.

I blogged our trip in real time and posted a few pictures of each day there. Another family had sent us a disc with pictures of her. So that was something. But was it enough? Will she be upset or angry with me if I don't have a photographic record of the trip? Will the video, the blog recollections and the few pictures be enough? I just don't know.

So here I am still waiting to get the hard drive replaced. I am leaning more and more towards replacing it. We need to have that computer back. I know that is the right thing to do. But still I wonder, should I make another attempt to recover the photos?

What would you do in my situation?