in preparation

To tell the whole story...finally...
So, as you folks know, when Chad bought my new camera on Ebay he bid on two of them and ended up winning both. It wasn't a big deal because we got such a great deal on both of them BUT we didn't need two obviously. We knew we could find someone who wanted the other one so we asked around. My fabulous friend Danielle said she wanted it but we never really worked out the details. I knew I could just take it to her when I went home for Christmas so I wasn't too worried...then one day I got a phone call from her mom (Hi Becky!!) that said she and Dani's dad wanted to just buy it for her for Christmas and didn't want her to know. We came up with this long story about how my camera got broken (bad drop in the woods!) and I wanted to keep the second one until I knew whether or not mine could be fixed (we also came up with this idea that there is a short, rarely noticed part of the Christmas story where the angels hark the birth of our Savior and then kindly excuse lying between December 1st and 25st...for gift giving's sake alone of course!). The rest of the story is that I had to avoid Danielle like the plague for the past two weeks or so...I mean SERIOUSLY...every time she texted or called I had to ignore it and it drove me CRAZY. I was so worried that I would tell her or somehow spoil the secret that I just decided it was best to pretend I didn't have a clue what was going on and that I was just really busy! Also, it meant I couldn't post any pictures with my new camera since it was "broken" (see the things I do for you Dani?!?!) In other words, be prepared for the onslaught folks...
I've been moving all my pictures onto my new portable hard drive (I had about 1,000 pictures from India alone...total about 5 GB of pictures on my computer and now I am freeing up all the space on my laptop, hoping to make it run a little faster). I might be able to get a cheap copy of Photoshop CS3 from a friend so cross your fingers for me...I would be eternally in his debt!
As soon as the camera battery charges and I can get some pictures off, I will commence picture loading immediately...