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)