A BUSY MONTH FOR THIS MAMA

October came and went like a flash. It was month full of celebrations...

K turned two. We celebrated with two parties - one on her birthday with grandparents and our friends and the second the Saturday after with all of her little friends and their parents. It was a celebratory couple of days.

We are grateful that she is so happy and healthy. Her days are full of songs, dancing, piano playing, trips to the park, story hours, metro rides, and playing with her little friends. At her two year check-up, she got a clean bill of health and she gained four pounds (in six months). She's currently weighing in at 24 pounds and is 33 inches tall.

This month was also monumental for me... I completed my dissertation proposal and set a proposal defense date (Dec 20). Three cheers for being that much closer to being done with school. I'm currently working on a paper for publication and applying for jobs. I plan to defend my dissertation in June 2011.

On October 30 during a 20 mile run with D, I surpassed my goal of running 1,000 miles this year. I'm really proud of myself and really excited about the Philly Marathon. I've trained so stinking hard this year and am excited about running a great marathon (and enjoying running another with D). It is hard to believe that the marathon is less than three weeks away now. I only have two medium-long runs left in this training cycle. On Thanksgiving, D and I are planning to run a 5k Turkey Trot together and I'm toying with the idea of running another marathon or the half at Rohobeth Beach in mid-December. We'll see how I feel after Philly...

As fun-filled and celebratory as this past month has been, it has also been hard. Two weeks ago our house was broken into IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. Thankfully no one was home and a neighbor was able to call the police as the "bad guys" were breaking in. We had some big ticket items stolen, but the police and our insurance company have been great. Post-break-in, I've been spending my time trying to be comfortable in our house, worrying about coming home at night, and researching security systems. We've also had to deal with our insurance company, order/buy items that were stolen, and have repairs made to the house. It's been hard, but we (read: I) am starting to feel better about being here.

Several lessons learned from our break-in to share:

1. be sure all of your pictures are backed-up - either online or on an external hard drive. Our laptop where I download all of our pictures was taken and we could have lost everything. We did lose a few pictures, but thankfully have most of the big moments from the past few years saved online and on a separate hard drive.

2. be sure your homeowners/renters insurance covers replacement costs for stolen items. We were lucky and found out after our break-in that we had replacement insurance. Our deductible was high, but we got new everything.

3. write down the serial numbers of all your home electronics and store them some place safe. If you are robbed, having this information will be invaluable.

All in all it was a great month. Halloween pictures are forthcoming. And we're looking forward to a great November - full of birthdays, marathons, Thanksgiving, and Advent.