What To Do With 1,000 Baby Pictures...??

I had a scare this morning where Shutterfly had apparently accidentally DELETED all of my albums. When I logged on to my account, it treated me like a new user and said "You currently have no pictures uploaded."

*GASP*

It took a minute for me to realize the potential worst-case scenario.

All of the full-resolution pictures from my pregnancy, sonograms, Ben's birth and the last 7 months are stored on Shutterfly. I have a few here and there on my computer and hard copies of some... but for the most part, they ALL LIVE ON SHUTTERFLY.

I was ready to go postal on someone. Problem was that their customer service number didn't open until 9a.m. PACIFIC TIME. Great. That left me two hours to wander around the house aimlessly thinking I had lost all of the pictures of my firstborn.

By the time noon rolled around, my albums had mysteriously resurfaced. Two hours of them being gone though was plenty of time for me to think about the fact that I probably need a new system, lest this happen again and not have a happy ending. I think I'm going to break down and pay the $40 for the archive cd they offer with all the full-res pics on it. I was hoping to wait until his first birthday to do it, but now I'm thinking I can't take that risk.

I always thought my pictures were safer being stored digitally OFF of my computer. Then if my computer died or something happened to any prints I had made, I could always get them back. Well, now I'm pretty sure I need a backup plan, so I guess the archive cd it is. I'd hate to think Shutterfly did this on purpose just so I'd start thinking about shelling out the bucks for their cd. They wouldn't do that, would they? If so, NOT NICE. But they win.

In other news, Tom's mom sent us home yesterday with a box of his stuff. Ohmygosh, I have never seen such organization in my life. We spent an hour and a half last night combing through it... all meticulously organized baby and school pictures, every report card, every certificate, every teacher's note, school papers, projects, directions from the pediatrician (more on that another day but WOW has peditrician advice changed since 1977)... it was AMAZING. It's all great stuff to have! I can't wait to start scanning in some of the baby pictures... I've been waiting for Tom's baby pictures forever! Anyway, thumbs up to Tom's mom for such organization. I'm inspired now! Gotta get Ben a rubber maid container at Target asap!