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!