Christmas spirit

Hey everyone,

We've had quite an adventure the last few days. We had a fantastic weekend up until late Sunday night. Sunday morning we had brunch with Somer and James at the very classy La Paloma resort, and Sunday night we did a 5k fun run with friends (and Winston) through Winterhaven's Festival of Lights where the houses completely deck out their houses for the holidays. Ben was even brave enough to wear a sparkly Christmas vest, which turned out to be a great way for us walkers to know where the runners in our pack were.

After having some snacks and drinks at Ben and Kara's house after the run, we got back home to find out we were burglarized sometime in the 4 hours we were gone...the front door totally kicked in. Fortunately, they didn't take everything....just things that could fit into my Jansport backpack. This included John's laptop (with all of his research), my Ipod, the Metamorph key from UNC (you science geeks will know how painful that is), and every single piece of jewelry I own(ed). The jewelry part stings a lot, partly because there were some very valuable pieces from John ever since we first started dating, and partly because all of Mom's jewelry was in there too....nice stuff as well as sterling/costume stuff that I would wear to channel Mom's good taste. Grandma's crystal necklace is gone too...fortunately, I got to wear that out on the town not too long ago. I'm devastated about the jewelry, and even more devastated about feeling so violated. These jerk-faces were in our home, snooping, touching everything.

The Tucson Police were fantastic, and given the dollar value of things stolen reached a certain limit, the Crime Scene Unit came out and were fingerprinting the whole house until 1:30 in the morning. They were terrific, and humored me every time I pointed to something and said, "They had to touch that! I didn't put that there." If you know me at all, you won't be surprised to know that when the Crime Scene Unit people commented on how spotless our house was underneath the mess of the burglars, I had a little moment of celebration inside. As mentioned before, Winston was with us while the burglars were here, so he was neither hurt physically or traumatized.

So, we've spent the day cleaning from the burglars and the fingerprinting dust that's everywhere, and dealing with police and insurance report stuff. We are totally spooked, and it will take me a glass of wine (or two) before bed to settle down, but I know that soon we'll be more confident about our safety. I should also say that our landlord has been super....he stayed with us the entire time cops were here, and was here again at 7am with a contractor to discuss the best options for a new front door, and he's now considering a security system. He's owned this house since 1971 and lived in the house the majority of the time since then, and this is the first break-in. Between those comfortable 36 years and the fact that we live on a busy, well-lit road in a house with a well-lit exterior, he's a bit shocked about this incident too....which means he is taking it very seriously.

I also want to mention that Ben and Kara have been so generous....when we told them what happened, within 15 minutes they called and insisted on bringing dinner for us tonight. So, Kara made her family's classic pasta comfort food (with extra for leftovers) and brought a bottle of wine for the four of us to enjoy together. I am so thankful that we have such terrific friends, and hope that they know how much it meant to us.

Here is our bedroom, where most of the mess was:

Sniff, sniff:
Fingerprint dust on cabinets: