We are alive and well. Tucked safely in my in-laws house surrounded by what can only be defined as a "winter wonderland." The mountains loom large and serve as a constant reminder of how beautiful the world is and how small I am in comparison (although at times I swear my muffin top could give them a run for their money...). Aaron, Grace, and Christian are all taking naps. We're all recovering from a cold Grace caught right before Thanksgiving that has spread like wildfire through our whole family. We have loved our time here, have witnessed the marriage and sealing of Rachel and Jake, played in the snow, spent time with family, and have loved on our friends. More details, hopefully, will come in the later days and weeks. And in case you were wondering, my kids are still adorable and Christian has basically doubled in size.
But, despite all of the glorious and wonderful things that we have taken part in, the big reason for my absence has to do with the untimely death of my computer.
I asked Aaron to bring my computer with him when he flew out to Utah after his finals were over. Coupled with other important things I left behind (like a jacket and all of my jewelry) the man delivered. I was happy to be reunited with my computer. I promptly uploaded my new photos and clicked "Install" when my computer asked if I wanted to install my new updates. Then everything tanked pretty fast. My computer went from normal speed to "slower than a sloth in a pool of molasses." It took 20 minutes for my computer to turn on, at least 10 minutes to pull up anything I clicked on, and navigating the internet lead to eyeball-gauging and hair pulling. Something was wrong. I thought it might be the pictures or the updates. We scheduled an appointment, ran some tests, and learned two things. 1.) My hard-drive was toast. 2.) I had three days left on my extended warranty. Bless my parents for that extended warranty. Aaron spent 3 days (yes 3) driving 45 minutes both ways to the Mac store getting the hard-drive taken care of. The tricky part of the hard-drive being toast was the fact that I had not run a back-up on my computer since before Christian was born. I didn't want to lose all of the pictures and videos of him as a tiny baby. During Aaron's 3 day hard-drive adventure he was able to figure out a way to get all of my information off of my computer and onto his computer. Once my information was safe-the hard-drive was replaced and my software was completely updated.
Despite the older shell my computer was brand-spakin' new. She was running like a dream. Aaron then followed the advice of the Genius Bar employee and attempted to transfer all of my information back onto the computer. It was a quick and simple procedure (or so we thought). My information, when on my computer was at a certain updated level, when transferred to Aaron's computer it needed to be updated to operate on his operating system. The brand new update on my computer when it was fixed was different and none of my transferred applications would work. (Please note that I am translating computer speak into "I'm a huge idiot with computers" speak because the latter is the language I understand.) Aaron and two of my brother-in-laws spent days trying any (and every) little thing they could get to bring my computer back into normal operation mode. Aaron's 3 day adventure had now turned into a week long confusion fest mixed with multiple computers and far too many online opinions. Every time I turned my computer on the screen would be blue. After the wedding, the help Aaron had, needed to head back home and get back to their normal non-totally-confused lives.
As of right now my computer is still a hot hot mess. We've set up another appointment to get some much needed help, but in the meantime I don't have a lot of computer access and although I haven been dying to blog and update I haven't been able to.
Keep your fingers crossed for something to make sense, or I'm probably just going to chuck my computer out a window.
