Camera Disappointment

I was a little disappointed to find that all of the video footage that I took of Jiliang on T.J.'s camera came out with no sound. There were just a few videos in China on Gotcha Day where she is blowing bubbles. The other videos at home when she still spoke Chinese. She was singing Chinese lullabies and I captured them on video. I am thankful, however, that I took my Gotcha Video on MY camera, with complete sound. :) The memories, however, are still in tact. I will just never know what songs she was saying.
The other dissappointment was that I erased an email from a very kind man that helped me at the Guangzhou Airport. He took a picture of Jiliang and I at the airport, and promised to send it to me, which he did around the time of Jili's surgery. I had always intended to go back and thank him and give him an update on her. It was just a very hectic time. I remembered clearing out over 10,000 Yahoo emails back in Sept. I had so much old mail and Spam mail. Of course, it was the one thing that I neglected to save.
In general, they are only small things, compared to the thousands of photos and videos I have from our China trip and homecoming photos. I guess every little part of her story is just so important, because there was so much of her history that has already been lost.
Back in November, I was backing up all of my photos from China, and from 2010 in general. As I was doing, my son asked to look something up on my computer, so I took a break. Coincidently, he accidently bumped it and it dropped, and I lost everything on my hard drive. Staples told me the hard drive was unsalvageable, but fortunately, one of my preschool students' father was a computer data recovery man. He salvaged everything for me. It was a huge gift and lesson to back everything up sooner.
Cherish those memories and back up your data. As for technical failures, make sure your cameras and video footage is operable on Gotcha Day. I am so thankful that I have that cherished memory!
I know that I will probably never be able to thank that kind man in the airport. I just hope that he knew how much his random act of kindness helped me that day.
Jill