Thank you all....it will take some time for me to get over this. You are all right, one would assume that a parent would feed the babies well enough before fledging for them to make it through the process or surly see that they were failing and needed to be fed a few more times to make it up to the sky. I have been over and over this in my head, I have so many questions that I know nobody will have the answers to. The first being how does a Tres get hit by a car on a nearly no traffice rural road, then it all snowballs from there. I am sure everybody feels this way wether it be a HOSP a HOWR, a racoon, ants, snake, poisioning or cat, it HURTS to lose one of our birds and to know it suffered and to think there MAY have been something more you could have done. I guess I should consider myself very lucky to have this be my first loss in 5 years. Thank you all again, nobody but you guys would really understand this heartache.

IDrive: NEVER EVER BUY A WD IDRIVE! Heres my story. Two doors, each purchased directly from WD local store (company owned). First installer shows up, its her 2nd job since being hired! I ordered IDrive ( HUGE MISTAKE) She had never installed an IDrive before, or a Wayne Dalton system. She had worked for other door companies. After 3 hours a 2nd installer arrived. He was to be with her orginally, but overslept (or somthing to that effect). Ok so by 3:00 pm the have the tracks in and the door panels installed. Inform me that the next day the opener guy will be here to install IDrives! Two days pass...still no installer. Finally, after rearranging my schedule they guarantee me he will be there. Since I have a garage full of tools ( more on that later) I make arragnements to have someone at my home. Again a no-show. Finally I call WD corporate. Within an hour I get a call from the local store: He will be there first thing in the morning. Another day lost, as I am unable to have someone at my home to cover for me. Well at least he shows up. Within 15 minutes he askes me who installed the doors? WD , I say, and he begins to argue with me! Turns out the install was so far out of plumb and that the I drives, he said, would not work. Mostly it turns out the overhead tracks needed to be fine tuned and raised/lowered. How do I know this? Heres where it gets fun. I tell the guy how upset I am about the service and he goes banannas on me. Ranting and raving, complaining about his drunk manager and on and on. I finally tell him he has to leave. I take pictures of the install and the subsequent repairs. I then redo the install myself. I complain to WD headquarters but to no avail - its a local issue and they will have a district manager call me. After about four hours I have the door tracks perfect. I have the openers still sitting there so since no cooperation from WD I go ahead and install them. Not that difficult to do and overall I'm pretty satisfied. Now about the refund for WD failure to install. Make a long story short: Small claims court, pictures are invaluable! Local WD must pay me for my time etc.! Corporate has to cut the check. I get a call from the office asking why they were cutting me a check for a court ordered settlement? Check you own phone records and complaints. To say they were rude isn't even coming close. They send the check ( yes it cleared). Three months later the west door IDrive acts up. I call customer service and a very knowledgeable lady walks me through the set up and viola - works perfect. Two months later the east door acts up. I call again (since I hadn't written down the entire sequence). Again the door works but she asks what part number on the circuit boards I have. Turns out WD knew that an entire production lot was faulty and I have the faulty circuit boards. They agree to replace one. This means I must use the orginal installer -their own company store. Guy shows up, muttering about IDrive crap and POS they are. Within 40 minutes he has the board installed and its working OK. He then trys to collect a service call fee from me. 20 minutes of arguing he learns this was under warranty. And he is ticked at me! Two months later...yep you guess it; the other door fails. I call WD. This time its entirley different. They have my phone number attached to technical service calls. And due to my sucsessful small claims action against they, they bar me from any help! Even their technician was stunned. So much so, he told me, once again what to do and sends me a new circuit board, under warrnaty. He tells me that they have nothing but problems with IDdrives etc. He was sorry that I had been treated so shabbily. He actually apologized for his coporate bosses actions! I install the board upon its arriveal (took about 20 minutes) and for a year both doors worked fine. Then, once again the west Idrive fails. I call tech service ( why bother with the local store?) and they tell me they are not allowed to provode me with any help (phone number). OK..I say - no problem. I wait a week and call from my neighbors house, and with the information taken from the 2nd circuit boards I am able to talk with a service tech. I am told that lot of boards was defective and that I could get a new board under warranty from the local company owned store. I had to chuckle, as the tech had no idea what I had been through. Of course I tried to get the borad from the local store and they refused. Oh I am still, as of this writing under warranty. For the past year one IDrive does not work. I am having the same reocurring problems with the second unit. Fortunately, I only need 1 side of my garage to open. Recently I called the local store and talked with the secretary. She knew who I was and I asked if there was any way I could get the door repaired. She informed that the manager had been fired, and she would figure a way for me to get it serviced as she knew how screwed I had been. She said aI would have to pay a $75 service call though. I described the problem: the motor is running but no engagement: thus no opening or closing. Local gal is qutie familiar with this problem too - motor shaft most likely has broken. "Happens all the time". Oh and before someone says the door is out of balance... its not. I have held off as I am planning on remodeling my home and will address the issue by going with another brand. Now the kicker: I am a licensed General Contractor in two states, Florida and California. I have over 30 years experience in all phases of construction. I have never had to take any supplier to court - ever! In fact, I have never had a lein filed on me, or been sued, and only once have I fired a subcontractor during the course of a project (drinking on the job). 30 years of business! The way I was treated by Wayne Dalton was disgusting. I urge you not to buy the IDrive - it is a piece of junk - even their own employees know this, and for that matter any Wayne Daltin product - period. To this day I am unable to get customer service to assist me via phone; a clear violation of their own warranty and guarantee. Despite WD firing the manager (who was resposnible for the faulty install) and the subsequent small claims suit - they hold me responsible. Remember their corporate philosophy that Wayne Dalton has for its customers. Thanks for reading this. Oh and by the way, our company no longer uses Wayne Dalton products, and I have convinced several other builders ( the local builders assocation) to not use their products. That wasn't all that hard to do --thanks WD. Somewhere in Florida.... As for what we've been installing: Liftmaster. No customer complaints or call backs. Average home value of install: 3.2 mil. Way to go Wayne Dalton!

When we had to move to Atlanta for Dh to go to school he drove the huge moving truck with my car towed behind. He loaded the cat, german shephard and our goldfish. He got about 2miles down the road when he decided to return home. He handed me the cat, in her carrier, and told me there was no way she was going with him. He stopped to potty the dog, and himself, and get gas/food. The goldfish did not survive the Tehachapi mountains in so cal and is buried somewhere in the Mojavi desert. I flew with my 4mo baby in her carseat and the cat in carrier under seat. That was horrible because I had a carryon, baby in carseat and cat in carrier. I had to walk 20' at a time in the terminal carrying the bag and baby while shuffling the cat carrier on the floor. People just sat and watched me, no one offered to even open a door for me. It was a nightmare. Upon returning to CA 2.5yrs later my dh again drove the huge truck with our dog but this time he towed his truck on the flatbed. I drove my car with my cat in carrier and my 2.5yr old in carseat. We got her some fries and she kept poking them into the cat carrier because she thought the cat would eat them. We stopped in Shamrock Texas for the night and managed to sneak the pets in the motel with us. We got separated somewhere in Barstow and it was late and foggy when we got to Fresno. I decided to stop at a motel because it was something like 2am. Dh continued to our home in No Cal. He can drive and drive. I would not recommend doing a cross country trip in two days with three kids but I managed with a 2.5 and a cat just fine. But I think you could have a good time with your kids as long as they had activities and breaks. A stop at a fastfood with a play area is always good. They can play while you order the food. Also, with the older kids you can pick landmarks for them to keep track of where you are on the trip. On one of our trips to Utah my 11yr old dd was really getting on my nerves so I had her count the various flowers we passed. That kept her occupied for many miles. When my dd was 15mo we drove from Atlanta to Florida. She decided that was the time to be potty trained. We tried to put a diaper on her for in the carseat and she would not have it. At one point she started saying "poo poo" but the next rest stop was about 25miles. She held it to our amazement. But it did make things stressful for a bit. Any trip can be fun but always plan for disaster.

Stacy, do yourself a favor and get yourself an external hard drive. I got one at Wal Mart at Christmas time. For about $100, it will back everything up that's on your computer. It comes with the usb cord. stick one end in the external drive. Stick one end into the computer. It does what it has to do without any help from you. When it's done, you unplug it. Next time you feel compelled to "clean" and screw up the pictures, or anything else, everything will be safe and sound on the external drive and you can put it back on the computer yourself.