It's only been 13 months!

So on the 23rd of September I came home to a robbed house...again. We were robbed last August so it has only been 13 months.  It was just fantastic, let me tell you.
I opened the side door expecting for the alarm system to say, "beep, beep, beep, disarm system now" and I'll I got was, "beep, beep, beep, garage door". I thought, "Da** it! Not again!" and looked over at my kitchen cabinets, all wide open and stuff pulled out.
I walked into our bedroom as I threw my keys and swore up a storm, it was thrashed. Everything was missing (except the dogs). John's phone had died so I couldn't call him and he was planning on running errands after work so I knew he wouldn't be home for some time. I called the next person who came to mind, my dear father. Then I called the cops and calmly explained the situation. This time around there were no tears (until my dad came) and no worries, I was just furious that it happened again.

They broke a basement window to get in the house and at the time we had nothing monitoring the basement so they scurried up the stairs to the kitchen not setting off any alarms. When we first got the system we thought the key chain remote was a fabulous idea, but we never used it because I was always worried that it wouldn't set the alarm so we stashed it in a kitchen drawer. In hindsight that was a sh**y idea because that's how our system was disarmed (needless to say we no longer have a remote) and had their way with our house.

They stole a lot of valuable things and things that had a lot of memories. My engagement ring, all the jewelry John had bought me, our Brad Paisley tickets (that ends on a happy note though) and my laptop which wasn't even a year old. sucks, sucks sucks. Oh well, this time instead of just talking about making our house more safe we're actually doing something about it! But I can't tell you what because then it wouldn't be safe anymore.

Some of my tips so that this kind of crap won't happen to you:

• lock all your doors and windows, even if you're home.
• Charley Bar your sliding glass door, the lock alone won't help. (that's how they got in the first time)
• back up all pictures on a CD or USB drive and store them in a safe place or off the premises. Or put them on a free picture website. I have now lost most baby Sophi and Enna pictures. Luckily with my blog and facebook I still have quite a bit.
• Store valuable jewelry in a floor MOUNTED safe. Just having the safe isn't any good if it's not hard mounted somewhere, they'll just take the safe and crack it open later.
• Make copies of all important documents (taxes, social security cards, birth certificates etc.) and store the copies in the safe. Store originals off site in a safety deposit box. Never store any in just a filing cabinet.
• Shred all paperwork that can compromise information. John and I shred every paper that comes to our house with our name on it.

I wouldn't wish this on anyone...except maybe the guy who broke into our house...it sucks cleaning everything back up and trying to put a list together of what they took.

p.s. We REALLY amped up our security system now and have plans of getting a man eating dog so that this will never happen to us again.