More than halfway cleared!

The past several days have been a whirlwind.  Today is the first day we've had to actually take a breath for a half day.  We went grocery shopping this morning to have a good hearty breakfast.  We were then greeted by a party of the dachshunds at the dog park in our backyard...but I'll get to that later.

This week started with us finally selling the Polo to a young couple that just arrived a few days ago.  It was a good way to start the week.  It did take roughly a half a day to fill out all of the paperwork and get our rental, but it went as smoothly as one could expect.  Having that cash was nice too, knowing that it would all evaporate into other expenses for moving out in the next two weeks.

We managed to schedule and pay a private company to move our temporary furniture back to the military warehouse.  While many we spoke to were angered by hearing this, as removing temporary furniture is supposed to be a provided service, we noticed that all other people returning temporary furniture at the same time were also private companies.  Clearly, there is a disconnect between what is expected and what is possible.  If nothing else, it gave us a piece of mind.  The very next thing we had to do was start deep-cleaning the townhouse so that we could terminate our lease.

We did have a baby checkup before then.  All is well with the little one.  J got a hip strap as her hips were widening in a way that were causing sciatica issues.  The strap works like a charm.  She doesn't even need to use it anymore, but we keep it handy just in case.  We've also had problems trying to connect to the medical facility at Fort Leonard Wood, but fortunately one of the doctors in the clinic that day just came from there.  He gave us a number that hopefully works.  We really want to have an appointment scheduled before we get over there.

In the meantime, we were deep-cleaning the house now that the furniture was gone.  We did such an exceptional job that our landlord voiced surprise.  Not long after, she raised issue with something else.  I won't go into details, but we have a different issue we now have to resolve.  Once the dust has settled, I mention how it all played out.

We have spent the past three days moving our remaining items into and out of our rental car into various places and attending going-away parties.  While J was at a farewell gathering, I managed to pay all of our final bills except cell phones, which we will try to do today.  We did pretty well overall, owing 6 euro to one utility company, getting 5 euro from another, and then owing around 100 euro for a third.  Considering that some spend over 1000 euros in final bills, I'd say we've been doing pretty well thus far.

We now are spending our remaining days in Germany on military temporary housing until our flight out.

Etsy is showcasing our home for the next few days.

One nice thing about our temporary housing is that right in our "backyard" is a dog park.  There is occasionally a few dogs there, but today a party of 5 dachshunds were running around and barking.  Since we live in the pet-friendly portion of temporary housing (hence, the dog park), several other neighbors including myself took our dogs to the park to make a party out of it.  Needless to say, Etsy was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Dachshunds.

Here, the terriers come to join in.  The Coon Hound didn't join until later.  While it doesn't look like a lot of dogs, imagine this space being completely empty for 23 hours each day.  It was quite the spectacle :)

After roughly an hour, a tenant came over to complain about the nearly incessant barking, so we all parted ways after that.  The dogs that came were a total of 6 dachshunds, Etsy, a Coon Hound, a Shetland sheepdog, and two terrier crosses.  It was a fun time.