WE'RE BACK!!!!

If you're not on facebook and haven't been keeping up with my posts, you were probably totally unaware of the events that of the past 4 days.  

For me, it all started Sunday after church.  I had a voicemail from Mom saying she couldn't get to my blog. It said "blog has been removed."  I told Drew and he said, "Which account was it tied to?"  The next thing out of my mouth, "you didn't?"  He did!  He had deleted his old Gmail account (which the blog was tied to).  So just like that....Poof, gone, no more blog!  I almost threw up!  Because without a google ID you can't sign in to the blog.  I was devastated!  I cried.  This blog is like my baby.  I've been writing for about 4 years.  That's a lot of memories to lose.  

We got online and immediately started searching the help forums.  We found a link to a form for "account recovery."  I immediately filled it out.  However, it's harder than it sounds.  They wanted to know when Drew started his gmail account, who invited him, the URL from the invitation, as well as the start dates to all the accounts we used (blogger, picasa, gmail, adsense).  It was merely impossible.  The first was almost an immediate rejection.  "We're sorry to inform you that Google cannot restore your account at this time." (due to lack of information, therefore lack of proof that we owned the account)  

Luckily for us, Drew's friend that invited him to Gmail still had the email from 2005! (Thanks Tim) So there was some more information to add to the form.  Once again, we were rejected.  No luck.   In the meantime, my friend Danielle, emailed me texts from 409 of my posts that were still visible in her reader.  LIFE-SAVER!  So, had I been locked out of my blog forever, forcing me to start over completely with a new URL and all, I at least had 409 of my old posts!  (That made me feel TONS better)  I filled out that form a total of 5 times.  The situation seemed hopeless, but I wasn't giving up yet.

Drew posted questions in the forums and a few of the "top contributors" gave us some advice and one told us that he would get google to look into our account.  That sounded promising!  We never got an email saying that it had been restored, only a text from Danielle telling me that the blog was back!  I almost did a backflip and I almost can't believe that I'm actually typing a new post right now!

We had been told in a forum that all the pictures would be gone, but hallelujah and praise the Lord, they're all still there!  So THANK YOU GOOGLE and THANK YOU top contributors that helped us out!  I can now let out a sigh of relief that all is well.  I still have my blog and I can get back to posting!

Here's my advice to fellow bloggers:  DON'T DELETE YOUR GMAIL!  If you get a new email address and want to transfer your blog, there are numerous articles in the help forums.  Blogger has stated that your blog is forever and that's what I had always thought, but if you delete your account and don't get it restored, it's locked forever in cyberspace.  Luckily for us, we got it restored.  So all is well that ends well!  *it was just a rough 4 days of waiting and thinking I was going to have to start over*