Climb every mountain!

This was our view this weekend on our way through Steven's Pass! I must have taken at least 20 pictures just of this group of peaks while Sam was driving. So beautiful, and I wish I could stand on the very top. Climbing of course would be the hard part.

And that is exactly what we feel like we are doing having to go back to school after such an awesome break for the holidays. Climbing that mountain! The reward will be great - student successes, concerts, programs, and of course summer - but man - climbing is such a challenge!

My break was actually over on Wednesday, and Sam had two more days. I remembered that I have Thursdays off, so we decided I should take a vacation day on Friday and we head out of town for a couple days (and for the last time for fun for awhile). We had a gorgeous drive to Seattle on Thursday (4 degrees when we left, 45 when we got there!) and were able to stop and catch up with some friends before continuing on to Riss and Danny's for a couple nights (thanks guys!). One of our friends is a band director and his wife told us about his very rough fall while he went to pick up their daughter. He had some stupid issues as well as a crazy schedule and ended up have a complete mental break down and had to spend some time in the hospital, as well as two weeks out of work. This made me think a bit since I wanted to be a high school director originally and Sam still does. Crazy what stress does to people. Since our first year of teaching we have made a very deliberate effort to not stress out as much about work at home and it has worked wonders. Let's just hope this trend can continue and that once Sam does get to teach high school we can keep things under control!

While in Seattle we made the obligatory trip to Ikea, mostly with Mom in mind as she had wanted a few things she picked out in the catelogue. But, alas, they didn't have those things and we bought more than our share instead! I am really excited, though, because while most things we bought were "little," I think they will make a big difference in our home. For example, we eliminated the giant trash can and got two small ones for under the kitchen sink. Looks cleaner, and Dawg can't demolish them! We also got some decorating shelves for the bedroom. All of this home decor stuff prompted us to buy paint for the office this weekend. Yay! Now we just have about 15 different projects going all at once - and we are headed back to school! We'll see what actually gets done before summer, but for now, I think it is safe to say that I am motivated!

Wish us luck tomorrow as we journey back to school. The mountain awaits!

~Heather

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year! Wow! 2013 is already here and soon we will be leaving 2012 in the dust!

As is tradition, Heather and I have made our resolutions for the new year. I will post my resolution on here in hopes that people will hold me to it and maybe even help me out. I will let Heather post her own if she wishes (yes, I dare you!).

In the past I have been actually pretty good about keeping my resolutions. I typically will only resolve to keep them for a few months. This serves a few purposes. One, I don't overwhelm myself with an unrealistic expectation,; two, if I can keep it up for a few months, it will become habit...right?; three, I allow myself somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel, a reward if you will, for maintaining my practice. Of course, what my goal is depends on my resolution. For example, a few years ago I made a resolution to stop drinking my beloved adult beverages until after Easter. After Easter, I rewarded myself. Easy, peasy. (Ha! I'm a teacher. There's no way that was going to go on for a year!) I view a resoltion as a sort of challenge to myself.

This year my wife and I talked about doing something a little deeper, more meaningful. I interpret this as something that will help my life become less self-centered, something that will expand my life and make it better for the long run. I thought about many things that I suck at, but had a hard time pinpointing something that doesn't just affect me, but also has an impact on other people. So....

I tend to close myself off to other people over time and let relationships fall out of...practice. Friendships need to be kept up, and I am horrible about being the person who helps keep it up. I tend to feel that other people don't do a very good job at this either, but I am resolving to do my best to keep up my end.

So there you have it. My resolution is to keep up contact with friends.

So, here is to old friends, new friends, and friends I have yet to meet.

Heather and I also have a joint resolution (we sound like the UN!). We both despise house work and are bad about keeping up being so busy. Our resolution is spend 10 minutes each cleaning the house every day. That isn't a lot, but again, start small so that you can accomplish your goals. We will probably spend a little more time during the weekend to tidy up a bit too.

So there you have it! Welcome to Earth, 2013. I hope we learn to like eachother!

Sam

New year, new goals, new post!

Once again it has been awhile...I feel like we always start our posts this way. More on that later...

Quick update - As Sam said we are trying hard to get loans, etc., paid off so that we can live the debt free life. We still have a long way to go, but we're making progress. To help with that, I got an extra part-time job at Sears for the holidays. I learned a ton - like...I am grateful for my day job, professionalism, and a supportive family. I quit after a month and a half. Working a second full time job was not in my plan, and management seemed inflexible, so it seemed like it just wasn't worth the strife. SO, I had Christmas break off in its entirety, which was such a relief, though over much too fast.

We had a wonderful Christmas with both of our families. Sam's entire family was here this year, all siblings, spouses, and nephews. It was a blast getting to hang out with everyone! The second half of Christmas day was spent with my family. We had a quiet afternoon in the winter wonderland we call Pandora (Cheney) and also spent last night with them ringing in the New Year. As always, we feel totally spoiled!

Like I said - quick update! Now on to the new year. We have lots of things already planned out for the year, but I think we are most excited about getting to do more camping this summer once school is out. We leave just two days after my last day of school for Eagle Lake, CA for Grandma and Grandpa's (on the Wisswell side) 60th anniversary. Amazing. Of course we also have the third annual Schlaich family camping the weekend before Labor Day weekend, this year at lake Chelan. By then we will also have a new nephew (my vote!) or niece!

I don't usually come up with New Year's Resolutions because history says I wont keep them, but Sam is insisting. While getting healthy, losing weight, eating better, etc. are always on the list, we talked about how that is just setting ourselves up for failure. So this year we are setting different kinds of goals for ourselves. That's where I get back to the immense amount of time between posts on this blog. My resolution is going to be to try and write a post each week. Now, sometimes exciting things don't happen for us to write about, but that means that we need to create more exciting, or meaningful, experiences. Sam and I have gotten into this habitual routine...get up, go to work, come home, VEG. And we can come up with the best excuses, but usually it has to do with being tired. So, in order to create more meaningful experiences each week, whether it be hanging out with a friend, going for a hike, working out, etc., we will cut the crap and get past that excuse. And then my goal will be achievable :-).

Tomorrow I go back to school, and then Sam goes back on Monday. Go figure, the last day of break I have come down with a bug, but hopefully I feel better tomorrow and can get the ball rollin' in the classroom.

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and has a blessed New Year. Cheers to new goals!

~Heather

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