We had a very full day today…and I guess our next few Saturdays may be just as full. But hopefully we won’t need to drive all over Frankfurt on the upcoming Saturdays like we did today.

After our walk with Ayla this morning, we headed over to Hornbach (home improvement store) and picked up a few things that we needed…and probably a few we didn’t really need either. We wanted to get some satellite cable in hopes that we could extend the cable currently in our bedroom down into the living room where we have the TV. Ideally we will drill through the floor in the bedroom and run the cable down through there but that’s another story for later…We also picked up a lamp for the entry hall which we think will look really nice in there (project for tomorrow).

After that stop, we headed over to our rental house to do the final cleaning stages and pack up a few more things in the Defender. Seems like we may never get everything out of there. When we were doing the walk through with the landlord, we found another 3 boxes that we’d almost entirely forgotten about. But the meeting with the landlord was good in general. We think we should be able to get most if not all of our deposit back although some of it will have to go to cover heating oil and things like that. They didn’t make any comments about the freshly painted room and even said we are the best tenants they’ve ever had…so that hopefully means very good things for us.

We ended up leaving almost an apartment full of furniture there because we just don’t have the space for it here. I know that sounds crazy since we have a huge barn and all that but nothing is there is totally protected from the weather and still gets exposed to a bit of moisture and definitely temperature changes. So one of the things we left behind were our closet units from our first apartment here. They won’t fit in the house here because the ceilings aren’t tall enough for them. We thought about using them in the climbing room in the barn but they aren’t really optimal for that either…But hopefully anything the landlord may think we should have taken care of before he will counter balance with the furniture we’ve left behind.

We also included a visit to Fresnapf in all of this and got some cool new stuff for Ayla which you can read about on her blog. Once we’d gone over everything with the landlord, we headed back to the farm to unload everything we still had over there. We’ll still need to make one or two more trips to pick up plants and the latest boxes we’ve found but then that’s everything. It will be quite nice to not need to drive over there every few days to check on things and finish things and all that.

Then, because we hadn’t punished ourselves enough already, we made a trip to IKEA. Normally I’m excited about trips to IKEA but lately they don’t have what we’re looking for which makes the whole experience much less enjoyable for me. Plus, IKEA on a Saturday afternoon is a nightmare and a half! You would think there are no other stores open in the world! Everyone is there shopping and their kids are running around screaming, people are fighting over parking and others are trying to figure out just how they’re going to get their new furniture home…never a dull moment. Anyway, we were told that they have the cabinet which fits under and holds up our sink for the new bathroom. Unfortunately that was not the case. But they did have the two doors which were still missing from the kitchen which was a very good thing anyway. That means that I can finally finish putting everything away in the kitchen (aside from what goes under the sink which they still have to work on to lay the new shut off for the dishwasher).

So I guess we’ll work on a few small things now and see what other projects we can get get done. We have several things lined up for tomorrow as well so hopefully we will get a lot accomplished before it’s time to go back to work.