Ramblings of a crazy person!

In the past, Sam and I have either been in a marching band, or teaching one, for the past 12 or thirteen years. That means that between the two of us, we have a combination of about 20 years experience! Craziness! Anyhow...this year, neither one of us are involved in marching band. We just didn't pursue it this year, thinking that it would be nice to be less busy for one more year before the possibility of starting a family comes to fruition. That being said, we certainly don't want to lose touch with what is happening in the marching realm because eventually Sam WILL be teaching high school if we have it our way, so staying up-to-date is very important. Tomorrow night we are going to go brave the wind and rain and cold to see finals for the Spokane show. It will be fun to see all of the local high schools we have been involved with out there battling it out for the evening's awards. It will also be really fun for me to see my brother Josh, as he is not only the drum line instructor, but also a first time drill writer for a local high school.

In keeping with theme of not being busy, I just changed that. Yesterday I interviewed with Sears to have an evening/weekend extra job through the holidays as a seasonal employee. Apparently, they thought I was great and hired me on as a regular instead of seasonal! Who know how long I will last, but life just got busier.

To take it one step further, Sam and I will be heading up music for the 8 am Mass from now on, as paid church staff. Not great pay, but pay. The music has been...well...less than desirable lately and there have been complaints to our Priest, so he asked us if we would take on the task of fixing it. We agreed, so I am now holding down a teaching job and two part time jobs and Sam is holding down his teaching job and a part time job. We might be crazy. BUT, in keeping with Dave Ramsey's saying: "If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else." We are making a moderate effort to pay off some of student loans faster than we are seeing them dissipate. It is so disheartening to see more of our monthly bills go to interest than to the principal. SO...extra jobs = extra principal = more fun for us later...but sooner! :)

Then, to answer the burning question (I think Marisa just addressed this in her blog, too): we can start thinking about a family. We would LOVE to have kids now. Really we would. And, it COULD happen. But, in the meantime, please be patient with us as you await any little one's arrival. We want it, and it will happen. Just probably not yet!

So, while we work and keep ourselves super busy (I think the last time I was as busy as I am going to be now was high school senior year!), we will make progress and continue working toward our future. Yay!

Cheers!
Heather

Catch up!

Oh my goodness! We haven’t posted on here since the end of June?! Boy did summer go fast!

The Schlaich’s have been busy bees since then…I’ll recap:

At the beginning of July, shortly after our first anniversary, we went to Austin and Dallas to visit Sam’s Aunt Jane and Uncle Jim and my friend Amanda. We had a blast! Austin is an awesome city! One of the highlights was spending time with our cousins and Aunt and Uncle on their boat on Lake Austin both days we were there. While with Amanda and her boyfriend Jon, we toured Dallas and got to see the JFK memorial, several music halls, and Jon’s college (the highlight of THAT was the music library! It was huge!!!). Texas is hot, hot, HOT! We definitely would not recommend going in July during record high temperatures, but we had a lot of fun and look forward to our next visit, whenever that might be.

After Texas, the plan was to do a lot of camping but, as life usually goes, plans changed because I still hadn’t heard back on whether or not I was hired back to my job. It closed at the end of June, and I ended up not hearing anything until I got called to interview at the beginning of August. So, instead of camping, we worked on the backyard. The fence is done, but not the side fences. We have a temporary fence up until probably next spring, as building a fence cost more than we had anticipated. We still have a pile of dirt and some larger river rock, but Sam’s parents will be taking that off our hands and lining THEIR fence will it next week. We have a forest of weeds to pull and then some leveling to do before winter hits (it’s on its way folks!). It really bummed us out that we couldn’t do as much camping as we hadn’t wanted to, but we are happy to report that…

I got my job back! After interviewing in the beginning of August and waiting another 3 weeks to find out I was a finalist and had to do a one-on-one interview with the new superintendant, I was FINALLY hired and started “teacher week” on my birthday. So far, I am loving having my own classroom, love that I already know and get along with the staff and my principal, and LOVE the kids! I feel like I can finally settle in somewhere and make a home for myself in my career. And Sam is happy that I am not complaining about subbing anymore! And we are both thrilled that we can finally start being more financially stable and get back on our Dave Ramsey plan since we will actually be able to budget.

Once I knew I had a job and didn’t have to wait for a phone call, we were able to go camping. Our first camping trip was with the Schlaich family (Jim and Barb, Matt, Bri, their foreign exchange student Daow, and baby on board, Riss and Danny, Steph, Greg, Aidan, and baby Jacob, ourselves, and 3 dogs later…) over Labor Day Weekend to Ike Kinswa state park on the west side of the state. It was nice to continue the tradition from the year before! Our second trip was this last weekend. We tried to go camping up north at a very off the beaten path lake, but our phone gps stopped working (of COURSE…the car gps machines work off of satellites…cell phone work off of cell towers…grrr) so we had to turn back and try plan b. Plan b also failed, as the bridge that would have taken us directly to the campground on the other side of a river was under construction and we would have had to drive 40 miles around get to it. So we set off looking for ANY campground and found a great one about 15 miles south of the Canadian border. We did a lot of resting, which was wonderful after our first week back at school.

We are into the second month of school now and I realized yesterday that I only have seven more choir rehearsals until our winter concert!!! Ridiculous. The next couple of weeks will be a whirlwind of getting the house ready for winter with gutter install, getting rid of the rest of the dirt and rock in the backyard, and winterizing outside faucets/sprinklers, etc., digging deep into school, and then beginning the inside projects.

To wrap up the post…Sam is doing great and is doing well at school. I am loving having my job back. And, more exciting than us…Dawg is such a wonderful addition to our little family. He is so loyal and we love him SO much. We couldn’t imagine our lives without him (thank you Leslie!!!)!

We hope all is well with everyone! I will try and be more regular in our posting now that we have INTERNET!!! YAY!!!

Cheers!

Heather (and Sam)

Stayed tuned...

We are having a computer built for us by my brother that will hopefully be complete this weekend and we are supposed to get Internet by Monday, or a week from that at latest. That means a ridiculously long blog post to catch everyone up on the summer/early fall Schlaich happenings!!!

-Heather