You should probably feel sorry for me....(JK...sort of)

I've been so MIA - this summer has given me one swift kick in the you-know-what, I've been so busy! The good news is, I lost 5 pounds without even trying (but that was before I made 2 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies last week, so that may not be true anymore....)

Anyway we've had lots of great visitors, and still have more visitors heading their way to us this weekend. It's turned our lives upside down - for the better....but still way way upside down. So here's what's been going on:

Natalie is on the move. I.E. she crawls everywhere. She crawls fast, she's constantly busy, constantly moving OH!...and she basically sounds like she's being murdered any time I leave her alone in a room. This makes going to the bathroom, showering, or getting a glass of water extra fun...*sarcasm*......

Demolition has started on our new house and the renovation/addition is underway (Did I ever even really talk about this??!!) I'll explain all this in more detail later on. But this means I have to spend time picking out things like windows, fireplaces, tile, faucets, lights, doors, door handles, flooring, kitchen, etc. etc. etc. Basically every single thing that goes into a house....It's exciting, but daunting and the little pieces of my day that used to go to blogging, reading, showering, eating, general living, is now going to house stuff.

As you know I take a LOT of pictures. a LOT. Mostly on my phone, but oftentimes with my really good canon dslr camera. I had been really good about backing up my photos to both my computer and an external hard drive every 3 weeks for the past year. Well, I slacked off this summer. With vacation, visitors, craziness, I hadn't backed up my pictures since the end of June. So yesterday I took an hour to really organize, and take all the photos from my phone and camera and do a backup. I had 5 videos left on my phone to move over to my hard drive before doing a full system back-up. All of a sudden Natalie, who was sitting very contently in my lap, moved her feet, got them tangled in the wire and caused the hard drive to drop on our tile floor. I really didn't think anything of it at first, but then I plugged it in and it didn't work. As I type this, Chris is trying very hard to recover the data, and has already asked our IT friend to take a look at it this weekend - but I think the photos are gone. Everything I've taken with my good camera this summer: Natalie's Baptism, two baby showers, the wedding we were at this past weekend, and house demolition progress is gone. Just. Gone. Cue tears, mental breakdown, panic attack, pretty much full-throttle meltdown for the past 3 hours - total hormonal teenager style type of thing....it's been a night.

Sooooo that's been great. In other news: I did a guest post for I Guess I'm Due last week! Here's the link where I talk about what I'll do differently the Next Time Around.

I think I will be taking the rest of the month off from blogging. I need a few weeks where the blog isn't hanging over my head, making me feel guilty every night when I don't have a post ready. I will hopefully be back at it again after Labor Day. I still have to do an 8 month update, that is, if I can recover the photos...sigh...

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and if you've learned anything here today: Always back-up your photos!