More to do, less time to do it. Bring it!

It has been a while since I last blogged and much has happened!

Heather and I have been trying to increase our income lately. We have become the music directors for our church, Heather is now working at Sears, takes serveys for money, and we both are keeping a small private studio for our respective instruments. In addition, Heather is the secretary for our HOA (unpaid). Things are really going to ramp up pretty soon I think. There won't be a lot of time for vacation, but we are going to try to pay down our student loans so we can do a lot of that later.

The house is good and such a nice investment! We are "house poor," but there is a bunch of low cost things to do around here; we just need to find the time and energy to do it all. We are STILL working on the furniture refurbishing, the garage needs some work and we are STILL moving dirt out of our back yard. This next week is going to be pshyco with work: concerts, lessons, choir rehearsal, and Heather will be working mostly through the week at Sears in the evenings. Needless to say, we won't be getting much done in the next week. We'll see how long we can keep this up. When we are busy, we tend to get more done. With Dawg, things are a little tricky, which is why I haven't gotten an extra part time job. There is so much to be done, I find myself making multiple to-do lists to get it all organized. That's just what I do...

We both just got done with our Veteran's Day concerts. Both went extremely well. Lots of people were happy with the program we put on. It is always nice to see our students do well. It is nice to get a concert out of the way. Now we are both concentrating on the upcoming winter concert. It is coming so fast! In just another week, Thanksgiving break will be coming up (although Heather doesn't get much of a break....I'll be doing all the housework and cleaning to help her out). After that, just a couple weeks later will be our concerts! It's alsways scary to think about the time line. The first half of the year always flies by.

We'll try to keep everyone updated with our lives. And we'll try not to wait months at a time:)

Cheers!
Sam

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

Reflections

Greetings, blog readers!

What a year it has been! I titled this blog "reflections" for several reasons. The first reason is much more obvious...as of Monday Sam and I will have been married for one year and I felt that it is a great time to reflect on all of the wonderful things that have happened for us this past year. The second is to look back at some of what we said we would accomplish and reflect on whether or not we actually did those things we said we would do! :)

This year we have accomplished so much. Obviously getting married was huge, and beyond that we had many other firsts, too! After much trouble and hassle, we purchased our first home together. Stressful doesn't even begin to describe the process, but the rewards of being homeowners have been amazing. We have been working HARD on our back yard and getting it fenced in and are so close to being done with that project. The late nights recently spent painting boards are actually really fun knowing that we are doing something to raise the value of the home, make it ours, and give Dawg somewhere to play freely.

At the end of May, Sam and I made another big purchase, a 2009 Ford Escape. We love it! And we finally sold his car last weekend! So we are down to two, functioning vehicles that we feel safe in and take pride in caring for.

We really wanted to get a dog, which was part of our motivation for getting a fence put up. Things happened a little faster than we originally planned, as a good family friend, Leslie, had the need to make space for more dogs-in-training. And so enters "Dawg!" Dawg was supposed to be a peanut allergy detection dog, but did not pass the training (he gets very skittish with loud sounds - ie gunfire, fireworks - and gets distracted from the search). So, instead of going to a family in need, he came to us, perfectly trained, too smart for his own good (and ours!), and SO loving and loyal. Dawg is the perfect first dog and has been an amazing addition to our little family. And great practice for (one day) having a child! Really...he is like a kid...we love it!

One of our goals has been to make sure to make a somewhat major trip each year. This year, we will be headed to Texas (next week in fact!) to visit Sam's Aunt, Jane, and my very good friend, Amanda. We are so excited and think we must be crazy for going to Texas in the middle of July...not to mention they are having record high temps right now...oye! We were also going to go to Colorado and visit a bunch of National Parks on the way, but that trip has fallen through. Sam was going to begin grad school through Alamosa State University, but, as the program is young, it got cancelled for the year because of lack of enrollment. This was kind of sad news, but will make it easier on our pocketbooks until next year.

Another big goal of ours this year was to get closer to being debt free. This is a mixed bag. As we reflect, we know that we have paid some things off. My car, a student loan, credit card, but we also know that we added debt...a car. We still use our debit card instead of living the cash only lifestyle, but we seem to spend less that way in general. We are no where near where we had hoped to be on everything at this point, but are hopeful that with me gaining fulltime employment (still saying our prayers in this department), things will move much quicker for us.

In the area of our health we are neither here nor there. With budgets getting tighter after the fence and trips, we think this will improve. We having taken a liking to riding our bikes and plan to do so for EVERYTHING (grocery trips, etc) for the remainder of summer to help us get in shape and save money. Legs of steel here we come!!!

In all, life is great. God has blessed us in so many ways and we are as happily married as we were one year ago! Thanks to all of our friends and family for a great year!!!

~Heather

We're grown ups now!

Well we did it. Sam and I took yet another leap into adulthood this weekend and made our first joint car purchase. After a TON of research and way too much shopping around, we purchased a 2009 Certified Preowned (restored to factory condition with a warranty) Ford Escape. Several things happened that we never thought would:

1. We bought a Ford. I am a Chevy girl. This is huge.
2. We bought a used car. I vowed never to buy used again, however the certified Preowned made it okay.
3. On Sam's side of things, he bought a newer car than he ever thought he would.

Crazy stuff! Last night we drive it around a bit for fun and feel so spoiled! It is a great car that will be much safer for us on our big trip this summer and also safer for future children. Now we have to decide whether or not to sell Sam's old car or keep it as a commuter. Well see.

The other funny part of all this is that last time Katie came to visit we got married and started looking at houses to buy. This time we bought a car. So Katie has decided that she has to come back again because the next major life event is having a baby! I suppose we will just have to see about that one! :)

But for now, we will enjoy our home and car and hopefully soon a dog. Cheers to adulthood!

Retaining Wall Status: Done:)

 The retaining wall is pretty much done! See those big boulders? First I had to expose them because they were covered with yards of dirt. The term "dirt" is used loosely, as it was mostly small rocks. After I exposed the first two rows, the top row had to be moved into place by hand. There are some good 300 pound+ rocks in there. Luckily I had some much needed help for that.

Behind the boulder retaining wall I left space for cinder blocks. I will sink 4x4 fence posts into the cinder blocks and ground to give the fence more support while giving the yard above us a mini retaining wall as well. Underneath the cinder blocks, Heather and I will put crushed basalt for draining and settling purposes.

At the base of the boulder retaining wall, we will put more crushed basalt for drainage.

The fence will be pressure treated 4x4's for the posts and treated 2x4 for the supports. We will use ceder planks to finish it up.

The hard work is done. Now the detail work begins: leveling off the ground, laying the basalt, putting up the posts and finishing the fence. We still have to do side fencing, but after this, that will be easy-peasy.

It is a lot of fun getting to be able to do this stuff. I am lucky to have a great family to help get the physical work done. Without them, at the very least, these boulders would not be where they are now.

Off to do some more work!

Ciao!
Sam