We've Gotta Gotta Try...

To find the reason why...

Mommy is obsessed with getting a digital camera.

Let's listen to what Mommy has to say:

"If I can't take a belly picture, then there is no way that I can catch up and get an equal amount of belly pictures for The Bean as I did for Baby Bug....I AM SLIGHTING MY YOUNGEST CHILD before she is even born! What kind of a mother am I?!" [Find the rest of that post here.]

Now let's look at Mommy's face. Do you think Mommy is happy...or sad?

Sad. I think so too!

[Yes, this moment of emotional "revelation" has been brought to you Kai-Lan style...]

But why is Mommy so sad about not having a digital camera? [Except for the one so generously loaned to her by Kirsty from Momedy to take pictures of the preggo belly and The Bean's birth. Which of course I will part with. Promise.]

Well here's the secret. I do my best to be as honest as possible on my blog. I really want everyone to know the real me, so that we can be real bloggy friends-but when something makes me absolutely 5-alarm-fire FURIOUS I don't blog about it. Once something is in cyberland you can't ever really take it back, you know? And someday I'd like the kids to be able to read this and not begin to see me as a head spinning rageaholic.

That is why I did not post before about the reason I am so obsessed with getting a digital camera-I want one, desperately, because we lost all of our family pictures and videos in our last move.

And by "lost" I mean left them with a "good friend" who was going to ship them to us (on our dime) but instead decided to throw them away without telling us when she herself decided to move.

I am not joking. She threw out every last picture Hubby and I had of when we were dating. Every picture of Monkey in the hospital the day he was born (we didn't have any digital camera then, so there were no digital pictures of that). The Christmas videos, and the videos we had of Monkey singing the ABC's for the first time. Every single physical picture and video we had of every single preciously special moment in our lives. In her dumpster. Because she didn't want to be inconvenienced by telling us that she was moving too and needed us to send her the shipping money. Thank God that we had some pictures hosted online and pictures that we could steal from the grandparents or I would have walked the 8 hours up there to beat her up.

As you can see, that's a pretty disturbing sentiment. That's why I didn't blog it.

The good news is that I have gotten past the blinding rage. I am still, however, very sad about our lost pictures/video and the large gaping holes on our walls and in our collections where those family mementos should be. I won't lie-I am crying at this very moment thinking about the things we will never get back.

This does however make me even more determined to be able to immortalize every new moment and lovingly crowd our walls and video libraries with them! Hence the quest for a new digital camera.

Problem?

$$

We're young parents on an extremely modest budget. [Read:Everyone eats, no body is naked, and we rent a nice home but we have to save up for tooth extractions.] This requires creativity. What does a person do who desperately wants something they can't afford at the moment?

Try to win it of course!

And that is why I am a giveaway fool~luckily for me, there are several fantastic blogs currently giving away digital cameras! I am done crying-now I'm doing an excited little jig. (Giveaways are exciting even if you don't win! Though winning is good too...)

The first one I saw was the giveaway going on over at Mom Start. Their Father's Day Fling giveaway (sponsored by Best Buy) is a Insignia™ 7.0-Megapixel Digital Camera. I know Hubby would be just as thrilled as me to get this cute but powerful little camera for our family for Father's Day!

The next one I ran across on my Google giveaway quest was the giveaway from Toni at A Daily Dose of Toni (by the way her blog is cute, so you should check it out...and I'm not just saying that to win a prize. Seriously, it's a random drawing-so stop by her place). She's giving away an Evario GZ-MG680 digital video camera. A video camera! And a seriously amazing one at that. It can record more than 28 hours of super excellent quality video. That means we will be able to see the boogers on the kids faces in charming clarity as we record their upcoming milestones (Monkey's first martial arts class, Baby Bug's first steps, The Bean's first...everything)! I am so in love with the idea of filming every waking moment of the kids with this fabulous gadget-I know if I win this we'll replace our lost footage and then some in no time!

Lastly, but absolutely not least in any way, is the amazing giveaway over at Life In A House of Blue. (Again-seriously cute blog. Randomized contest. Go visit!) She is giving away a Kodak Easyshare z1015 IS (courtesy of Kodak). Do you know what this is? It is only one of the best cameras ever! It's 10MP, it does pictures and video, it does HD format (not that we have anything HD to view it on), and it has a 15x zoom for snotty nose close ups! In short, it's the camera of my dreams.

I would be thrilled beyond words to win any of these fantastic giveaways, and be able to start blinding my children by stalking them at all hours of the day and night to get their every sweet blink digitally captured for all time. I can also thrill Hubby by packratting these records in multiple formats all over the house.

In short, I want to win so that I can torture my family into cherishing wonderful memories. If you would like to do the same, hop over to these great sites and sign up for their giveaways! I won't even be upset that you're decreasing my chances.