Where Does The Time Go?

Okay, I know... BAD Kealie :::slapping hand::: I forgot the hottie on Saturday. My only explanation is that we had a huge emtional upset in our family and as the oldest it was kind of on me to sort of figure out how to deal with it. That's done, and I'm back and life goes on. But, where does the time go?

I am especially thinking on this today as I look through some discs. About two years ago our desktop PC crashed and we lost TONS of information, photos and videos of our kids. I lost research I had done on Ireland and the Gaelic language (LOTS OF RESEARCH!) and was devastated. At the time, we had (and still have) a friend who fixes computers in his "spare" time, and he's pretty good. He took the harddrive and later told us that there was no saving it. So we bought a new computer (and my laptop) and moved on.

Yesterday, he gave my husband THREE discs of information he'd managed to salvage off of our harddrive. He said that he knew how upset I was at losing all that information and had been working in his spare time going through each part of the drive that he could. The result was three discs of info. I didn't want to get my hopes up and didn't know what to expect but last night I popped in the first disc and am STILL going through all that he managed to pull. I still have two more discs to look through.

There is video of my third son's birth and his first Christmas. There is video of my husband's Grandparents with the boys (and while they are still alive and in their 90s, some of these videos were precious and thought to be lost forever), and some of the breakthroughs we had with our oldest child and his disorder are on here as well. I'm so excited and was so happy that I sat down last night and just cried!

But, as I sit here and look through these videos I wonder... where did the time go? There are pictures of my oldest when he was a "little boy". I know, he's only 9 now, but he seems so big and so grown up and these pictures and videos are of him as the oldest of my babies. Pictures of my second child with his curly blond hair before he got old enough to realize that if he had me keep it short it didn't get so curly (dangit). There are pictures and video of my third baby as a baby before he could talk back and charm the heck out of anyone with just a smile and a flash of those dimples. I got my babies back!

There are reams of research that I vaguely remembered and wondered if I made up but couldn't find and now I see that I didn't make it up. There are scenes and thoughts on characters that I had constantly running through my head and once I finally wrote them down they disappeared from my memory and I see them here again. It's like running into an old friend you weren't sure you'd ever seen again and the joy you find at getting to know them again. I'm so excited and grateful for all of it!

So, I ask you: Do you ever stop and wonder where the time went? Do you ever stop and just revel in the fact that your kids are growing and if we blink we'll miss it? Do you ever find something that you've written (for those of you who are authors) after thinking it's gone and find an old friend in the process?