Welcome home & goodbye

Well, we got our dog back! He was coming back to our friend's house, but wouldn't come close enough for them to grab him. Then the other night, they heard him out on their back deck and were able to catch him and crate him.

So we got him back home, gave him a good bath and he seemed to be much relieved...and then tonight we had to say good bye. We had run out of options for people to watch him, so I had emailed some of the local rescue groups. One of them forwarded our info to the Golden Retriever Rescue out of Memphis and they said they would take him. We met with them last night, and they said they could pick him up tonight to take him to Memphis. I didn't think I was going to be that upset. I thought surely my little drama queen would be the one to get all emotional about it, but nope...as soon as I went to say goodbye to him for the last time, the waterworks started. I'm glad that they took him though. They are very picky about who they allow to adopt their dogs, and he'll be in a nice foster home until they find someone good enough for him.

I realized this afternoon that somehow I lost a whole week. I could have swore that we had almost 4 weeks left. But it was brought to my attention that it's less than 3. Holy cow! How did this happen? We are not even close to being ready.

Things we still have to do:

• finish putting up the baseboards (from when DH replaced the floors 3 years ago)
• redo the shower in the master bath
• paint bedrooms and baseboards
• replace the sink and stove in the kitchen
• clean the whole house really really well
• get all that we have left in storage
• finish selling of the things we don't want to store or give them away
• get a renter for our house (we do have prospective renters but we can't show it until we (i.e. DH)finishes the bathroom and baseboards
• pack

How are we possibly going to get this done in LESS THAN 3 WEEKS???

Good Sales and Bad Dogs

We only have a month before we leave! Wow...time is flying. So we just finished up our sale yesterday and it went so much better than we could have even imagined. We were so blessed with tons of people wanting to buy our stuff! As we were getting ready for the sale, we had been tossing around numbers trying to guess what we might end up making and we kept tossing around the number $3,000. It would be a nice chunk of change but J kept thinking "is everything we own really only worth 3k?". Well, apparently not because we ended up making $8,000 instead! Some friends of ours told us they were praying for our sale to do well, and it looks like God gave us a hand. None of us could believe that we did that well. It was such a huge relief, too. We were starting to think that we were only going to be able to stay about 3 months or so, but with the extra sale money and if we can sell some cars, then we should be able to do at least 6 months, if not more.

We still have a few things to get rid of...some will go to Ebay, some in another sale, and we'll probably send a sizable amount to Goodwill or some other charity. We also still have cars that we need to sell...ugh, too much to do!

Then there's the dogs...Okay so we thought we had someone willing to watch our dogs for us while we were gone, right? Well she wanted to do a trial to see how our dogs did with hers. So we take them over and the whole time we were there, I think she said about 3 sentences. It was sooo awkward! Anyway, we finally say "So, do you want to see how they do tonight?". She replies, "well...I think the cats seem a little nervous". The cats seem nervous? Seriously? Did she really think her cats were going to excited to have 2 strange dogs in the house?

At that point we were back to square one trying to find a home for the dogs. Then it came time for the sale, and we had to have them out of the house for it. A friend, who was also watching our kids, offered to let them hang out in her back yard. Friday after the sale was over, I headed over to pick them all up. I went around the back of the house and even before I got to the fence, I could see a nice big hole had been dug under the gate. Fergus, our Pyrenees mix, was gone. I looked around the neighborhood and my friend's family did as well. It's been 3 days now, and they haven't seen any sign of him. We kept Nala (our pug) at the sale with us the next 2 days and actually had a couple of people asking about keeping her...one couple had a Pug and had dealt with all the typical medical issues that they have. I think they would be a good family for her to go to, but I just hope she won't miss her big brother too much.

It's almost sale time

We've got a week and a half to get ready for our estate sale! Our house is totally trashed right now...we've spent the past week sorting through what to keep and what to sell. Our goal is to fit everything we are keeping into our bedroom so we can have it shut off during the sale.

How great will that be? All our possessions will fit in one room! And I'm so proud of our little girl...she is being so great about getting rid of things. We sorted through her doll clothes today and she easily set aside over half of them to go. We're saving the big toy sort until just before the sale. It seemed pointless to do it now or they would all just get mixed back up anyway. I've been reminding her that it's coming.

Oh, and we may have our pet situation figured out. We originally thought my uncle was going to watch our dogs, but after he ran away during the trial week we did, we decided that wasn't going to work. We had finally decided that we were going to have to find a new home for them, so I put a post on Freecycle. I love Freecycle people! I got 3 emails from people offering to watch them while we were gone!

Everything seemed to become so real right after Christmas was over. I think up until then I couldn't focus on the trip and the holiday, but now the countdown is on til we leave. It's only about 6 weeks! I still have to get a place lined up for us in England for the first couple of weeks. After that it looks like we'll head to France in March.

I'm so excited and so stressed!

We've got a date!

Well we took the plunge...we bought tickets! So I guess that means there's no turning back, right? I feel like we needed this to really get us going. It's nice having a deadline sometimes to give you something to work towards rather than some indefinite point in the future.

February 21st. That's when our adventure begins. We are flying into London (because it was the cheapest) and we'll explore from there. I've been busy contacting hosts to try to line things up, so we'll know where we're going and when. If it was just me and hubby, we wouldn't be doing so much planning, but with 2 kids in tow, we have to be a little more certain about having a place to sleep. We've received several positive responses and as of now, it looks like we'll definitely be going to France and Belgium. One family in France even has kids the same age as ours, which I think is so great!

So needless to say, I'm quite excited, but also, overwhelmed. There is so much to do. We have all of our stuff to sell and/or store. There's house repairs that have to be done before we will be able to rent our house. Not to mention lots more money to save so that this trip will even be possible.

We've got just a little over 3 months to get everything ready...here's hoping we can do it!

Do we take the leap?

Okay, it's decision time. I got an email about European fare sale and checked the prices on tickets. Turns out we could get 4 tickets to London for about $2500 right now! I really don't think we are going to be able to do any better than that, but of course, that means we would have to decide on a departure date now.

So we're weighing the pros and cons of buying the tickets...
Pros: they're cheap!, we set a date and have a definte goal
Cons: we have a deadline we have to meet or be out $1000 to change our tickets.

So hopefully I will have a departure date very soon!

One step forward, several steps back.

So things were rolling along pretty good, but we realized we had to reevaluate our timeline. I just didn't think that a) we would be able to get our estate sale ready in 3 weeks time or b) we will have enough saved and be ready to leave by January. As a result, we're postponing the sale until my brother returns from his trip. I am officially bummed.

But on a brighter note, it looks like we are going to go to a cob workshop early next month! It will be a week long, and they will be covering all aspects of building a house out of cob. So we're excited about that anyway. Looks like my mother might tag along to watch the kids for us, so I'll actually be able to learn something as well!

At this point, I'm not sure when we will be able to get away, and that has me down. I want a plan, a departure date, and TICKETS so we can't back out! I guess it will all come in due time. My brother will be back in December, so January would be a good time for the sale. We will just have to see how much we have saved at that point to see when we'll be able to go. If we don't leave until late February or March, then I could sell more stuff at the spring consignment sales which could possibly bring in another $500-$800 or more.

Oh well, it will all come in time. I'm not good at waiting (maybe someone is trying to teach me something), but I am going to do my best to hold off until we are in the best position to go.

Progress!

Well, I feel like we're finally getting somewhere. When we first came up with this idea, we had about $12,000 in CC debt that needed paid off before we could even start saving for the actual trip. So I just paid off another credit card this month and our total is now under $4,000!!!

We also have been super lucky so far (fingers and toes crossed) in that we haven't had to replace the a/c yet. We got another opinion from a very nice guy named "Bubba"...seriously, the guy's business card says Bubba. But we now LOVE Bubba because he was willing to try to fix our leak. We figured it was a long shot, but we really didn't have anything to lose if we tried letting him run some StopLeak through our system. It's been close to a month and the a/c is still running nice and cold!

So my brother is leaving in a few weeks on his trip to France...he got the idea from me, but he didn't have all the technicalities to deal with that are holding us back. I had been thinking that we would just have our "estate sale" in January before we go (did I mention January is our new goal?), but yesterday, I started having second thoughts. I didn't like the idea of trying to sell everything at the last minute - what would we do with the stuff we couldn't sell and didn't want to keep? It would also help with planning if we knew how much money we would have from selling off our stuff. After talking it over with my brother (he does estate sales for a living and was planning on doing ours when he got back from his trip) and with J last night, I think we are going to have the sale in........3 WEEKS! I still don't know for sure if it's going to work out, but at the moment, that's the plan.

We've got a ton to do in the next 3 weeks to get ready, but I really can't wait. I was talking to a friend today about selling everything, and I think she was surprised how excited I was to be selling all my stuff. I just think it is going to be liberating. You know the old saying about how you don't own your stuff, it owns you? That's exactly how I feel...we've been owned by our stuff for too long and I'm ready to be free. But like J was saying last night, we don't want to be stupid about deciding what to keep and what to sell. I told him my plan: anything that we either wouldn't replace if we sold it or would replace with something different or better, we sell. I don't see a point in selling something that we know we would have to buy when we come back. That just doesn't make any sense. Consequently, we'll be keeping a fair amount of kitchen stuff - it would be super expensive to have to come back and buy a whole kitchen's worth of stuff. But do we need 2 sets of mixing bowls? 2 sets of glasses? 4 pie plates? When was the last time I baked a pie anyway? (I wish I could say I bake all the time, but I actually can't remember the last pie I made) And how did I end up with so many casserole dishes anyway? Do I really need to be able to make 6 different casseroles at the same time?

Some things will be easy to get rid of, but some of the family items are a little harder to let go. For a long time, I had this attachment to all my "family" items, but I've really reached a point where there is very very little that I wouldn't part with...for the right price. I don't want to give the stuff away, but I'm tired of holding on to stuff just because it belonged to my grandmother, aunt, dad, etc... I want to keep a few momentos that will remind me of those family members and let the rest go. It's just stuff. All of it is just stuff and I'm tired of having too much stuff.