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Another trip down South

When we went to Lusiana for a visit after New Year, we brought Sapphire with us and Ate Malou liked it. Mon did her a favor by buying her her own laptop and setting it up. Since we were quite busy lately, we were not able to give Ate Malou her laptop as soon as Mon was done with the setup until last Saturday.

We all got up early for the trip. Of course our little one was all excited to leave. She was the first one to be ready, thus she was somewhat cranky already when after almost an hour, we’re still home. My mom slept over in our place and had fun taking pictures of our cranky little angel. She’d throw tantrums whenever my mom would take her a picture and would grab the camera. Tsk! Here are some pictures I’d like to share with you.

Patiently waiting for everybody else.

Happy that we finally left but refuses to smile for the picture. Now that Ayex is bigger, I find it harder to take her pictures, either she take the camera from my hand or she would refuse to smile just like this. But when she’s in the mood, there’s no need to tell her what do you, she’ll simply strike a pose!

Tinkering with hubby’s new 5 megapixels phonecam.

After a few hours of traveling and we’re still far away from our destination, Ayex fell asleep. She woke up when we’re just an hour away from Lusiana. Too bad she threw up, probably because she got dizzy due to the zigzag road we’re passing through. This is her picture after she puked. Poor little girl. From then on, we decided that we have to put her to sleep every time we’re going to Lusiana because she gets dizzy already.

Ayex, who has recovered from the long trip, enjoying the cold mountain breeze outside with her cousins. We call them batchmates as they were born just a few months apart.

From Left to right: JC (20-months old), Ayex (24-months old), and Anica (18-months old).

Ayex and A New Favorite

I’ve always been a fan of mac and cheese since I tasted it from Kenny Rogers. Not sure where else this is being offered here in Manila.

Even though it’s a personal favorite, I didn’t bother cooking one for myself nor for my family. Then one time when we were doing the grocery, I found a mac and cheese recipe in a box! Since then, I’ve been telling my colleagues about it even if I haven’t tried it. Last week, I finally got two boxes to try.

When I woke up this morning (the real one because I also woke up at around 5AM, which I’ll tell you why later), I requested Ate Meriam (our super helper), to boil six cups of water for me. When I bought the boxes of mac and cheese, I also bought the other ingredients I’ll need namely: milk and butter. That’s it? Yes, that it!

When the water is already boiling, I put in the pasta (included in the box) and let it cook for about 6-8 minutes. When done, I drained the water. Then in the same container, I put in the 3 tablespoons of butter; 4 tablespoons of milk; and the powdered cheese pack (also included in the box). I mixed them and I was so amaze seeing the pasta swirls turn orange y! In a matter of 15 minutes, I have my homemade mac and cheese!

Therese and Beng tasted it and they said it’s good. I told them that given it’s price, it’s all worth it.

Now, what about Ayex? Well, she just fell of the bed at around 5AM when hubby woke up to pee. I was probably so sleepy that I didn’t hear hubby told me to watch over Ayex. Good thing she was not hurt because she fell on her play mats. That’s the third time in a span of two years.

I did it!

After days of agonizing and searching the world wide web for the perfect tool to recover the lost pictures I told you about in the earlier post, I finally found one!

Since Monday, I’ve been trying all my luck searching for a freeware to recover the precious pictures we lost. The reason why I feel so bad about it is that, these pictures are those taken since Christmas until Ayex’s 2nd birthday celebration. Imagine, we didn’t have a trace of Ayex’s birthday! How sad could that be?

I tried using the ever reliable restoration.exe file. This is the utility that I use whenever I accidentally deleted something using Shift+Delete then after doing so, I would realize that I still need that file. It was able to show me the files that we deleted from the memory card using the digital camera, but it was not able to restore those lost pictures due to quick format.

After failing on my first attempt, I started thinking about purchasing those expensive and “legitimate” file recovery tools. Some applications offer a preview of the file you’re looking for. If you found the file you need, you then purchase a license for you to be able to restore that file. I was told Mon about it. It seems to me that he’s not that affected. I’m probably too sentimental. Anyways, I was so close to downloading one of those tools. I thought that when it worked, I’ll ask hubby to pay for the license so I can recover all our lost pictures when today, a miracle happened!

I googled some keywords and it returned several web pages that contained a list of file recovery tools. One web page I opened list several freeware. I was having a hard time selecting which to view. After reading the snippet for PC Inspector, I gave it a shot and downloaded the file. I installed it and tried my luck once more. During the recovery process, I can see in its dialogue box that it found some files already! As the number of found files increase, my heart’s thumping increased as well. I feel so overwhelmed just by seeing that the tool is finding more files in our memory card than restoration.exe. When it finally stopped, it found nearly 200 files. I started recovering the files one by one even if there is an option for multiple recovery just to be sure I’m not wasting time my time on rubbish.

I checked every recovered file as soon as PC Inspector is finished recovering it. I was disappointed to see the first few files as black or maroon colored pictures only. I tried again. In one of the dialogue boxes that opens, there was an option that should be selected if the files were lost due to quick formatting. After selecting the right settings, I began to see clear pictures. Hoooooooray!

Recovering all the almost 200 pictures sure took some time specially when the tool had to rescan because it encountered an access violation error. But you know, seeing the pictures back again and safe definitely wipes out all the frustration and agony I had. I was not able to recover the videos we had but at least, I have all the pictures!

Thank you so much PC Inspector! I’ll definitely tell my friends and family about you!