Judah James Schaefer was born early Saturday morning. He is 7lbs 1oz, 19 1/4 in. long, has what we initially thought was blond hair, but now is looking more like a very light brown, and has quite long feet and hands (I see a future Van Cliburn or Michael Phelps…not sure which).  As far as labors go, it went very well and quite quickly.  Marelize was a trooper as usual and Judah was born 5 hours after arriving at the hospital.

Everyone is excited to have Judah here finally.  Marelize, since she doesn’t have to carry a basketball in her stomach anymore.  Malone, so she can have a “real-life” baby to take care of, sing to and eventually (an educated guess) boss around.  And finally, I am excited because I now have a son for whom I can buy all sorts of wonderful things like hatchets (both the cutting tool and the book by Gary Paulson), guns, fireworks, etc.  I can also make my best attempt at teaching him the Art of Manliness.  He is a great joy and we’re so happy to have him in the Schaefer tribe.

Here are a few pictures from the last two days:

On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me
~Edmund Blunden

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Setting goals is one of the most common practices of the personal development crowd, an easy way to give your life some focus and direction. The exercise is also something I advocate strongly and implement in my own life. However, if one is not careful goals can actually become more destructive than helpful.

When goals become the ends rather than the means they can create a lifestyle of checking boxes rather than skilled living.

Living simply to reach goals is similar to a hamster spinning in a wheel, lots of movement, but no real progress. Without an overall purpose for your goals the practice of constantly striving can create anxiety, restlessness and eventually become more of a burden rather than a help.

These thoughts came to light in a recent discussion with my friend Glenn. After setting my personal goals for 2008 I have spent the past few months attempting to reach them, some with great success and others, not so much. Throughout the process I have had to remind myself of the ultimate purpose for setting my goals in the first place: a life lived to the hilt in worship of God and leadership of my family.

Knowing the ultimate purpose of you goals helps not only in progressing forward, but also in prioritizing your life.

The quickest way to identify your top priorities is to identify the areas in your life in which you are irreplaceable.

As a husband I am irreplaceable. No one else can be a husband to my wife, but me. As a father, I am also irreplaceable. No one can lead, care for and be a father to my child like I can. Finally, in my worship to God, I am irreplaceable. Others can serve Him, many better than I can, but no one can replace my individual worship to God. In every other area of my life someone can replace me.

At my job, there are 1,000 other pilots that can replace me as the pilot. At my church there are plenty of other people who can replace me as a small group leader. Even my blog, while extraordinary and unique I know, haha, could easily be written by someone far better than me. On that note, if you ever want to write a guest post, please let me know.

When you make goals in various areas of your life there are bound to be times where they conflict with one another. If you don’t have a good grasp on your priorities you goals can actually lead you away from where you want to go.

This morning my wife and I took our 2 month-old daughter with us to the gym. Since I was planning on running on the treadmill I took our daughter and parked her stroller next to me. At around minute 18 she began to frown…I knew I was in trouble. Soon she began to whimper and whine. I had planned on running for 30 minutes. I shut down the treadmill and took care of my daughter who was beginning to cry. While running a marathon this year is a goal of mine, being a good father is another goal and takes priority.

Knowing which goals will take priority will determine whether your goals are ultimately helping you or hurting you in the pursuit of your best life.

The bottom line: Goals are an incredibly effective way of helping move your life in the right direction, but just as important as setting goals is deciding what the right direction actually is and which goals have priority over others as you walk out this journey. Keep setting goals, just make sure they’re serving you and not the other way around.

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Malone Lenie Schaefer is finally here! She was born on Thursday at 1:45pm, 7lbs 3oz and 20.5in. An incredible daughter! Just got home from the hospital and still getting settled so here are some pictures for everyone.

For more pictures and videos of Malone please visit my wife’s blog: Marelize’s Blog

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One finds himself organizing and reorganizing his life many times as his first child’s birth approaches. There is a constant assessment of the “known-knowns, known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns,” as Donald Rumsfeld would explain it. One of the fields in constant flux over the past few months has been finances, specifically how much a new baby will cost, how much we should buy beforehand and finally how much should be spent on certain items. My wife and I have had many great debates on these issues and found at the end of it all a philosophy of money and spending that both of us have come to agree on (for the most part). The philosophy hinges on the difference between “first costs” and “life-cycle costs.”

A good example of this difference is found in Thomas Stanley’s book, “The Millionaire Mind.” He gives the example of deciding whether to pay a professional plumber $150 to come install a new water heater or buy the supplies and install it yourself. Ask this question to a group of people and chances are you would get a good spilt between the DIY crowd and the “pay the professional” crowd.

Stanley writes, “Milliionaires and those who are likely to become wealthy someday are not ‘first-cost’ sensitive; they are life-cycle-cost sensitive. ‘First cost’ refers to the dollar cost savings if you install the water heater instead of using a skilled plumber. You may have saved $150 in the process, but the figure is very deceptive. You see, the plumber’s quote included a high-efficiency water heater. You shopped and found a low-priced (first cost) water heater with the same gallon capacity as the high-efficiency one, but over the projected life of the heaters, the plumber’s will save you more than the $150 in terms of operating costs. Also, the plumber’s is estimated to last longer and heat water faster. Over the life of the heater you would install, there is no warranty on the installation. You could easily install it incorrectly and burn out the system…”

He goes on, “The other issue relates to trade-offs. You cannot install a water heater and at the same time carry out assignments that are part of your work. Of course the plumber still charges more per hour than you charge for an hour of your time, so you could save by doing it yourself. But you are not thinking of life-cycle differences…If you decide to install the water heater yourself, you have to shop for a unit, which takes time and energy. You could be using this time and energy to enhance your professional skills or study investments….Then you have to study water-heater installation techniques and acquire the proper tools. Whether you rent tools or buy them, it still takes time and money. Finally, how many other hot-water heaters will you be installing during the remainder of your working life? I bet you’ll never want to install another one once you’ve stuffered through the first campain to save $150….After all this, ask yourself about the actual dollars you really saved. In terms of a life-cyle cost-benefit analysis, select option number two: Call the plumber!”

How does this relate to a baby you might ask? When deciding on what to spend money on and what to skimp on I have this philosophy of life-cycle costs in the back of my mind. Unless, this first baby scars us severely, Marelize and I plan on having a few children. So, when we look at the various cribs, car seats, or strollers (the must haves) we think more in terms of life-cyle costs (buying quality products that have good warranties and will last through several years and children) rather than being sensitive to “first cost” and trying to save through buying only the cheapest products. The baby industry is tricky though because the standards of safety and quality for products are high, owing to society’s generally positive view of babies and the incredibly strict expectations and requirements of zealous parents. So, it’s hard to find large variance in the quality of the industry’s products. The practice of the life-cycle cost philosophy in this arena then becomes much more complex leading to choice anxiety for many parents. It seems the best a parent can do is pick off the outliers (aka Bugaboo strollers for $800…ridiculous) and find something in the middle.

Now, this entire philosophy hangs on two big assumptions: 1) you have the money to pay the up-front costs associated with “quality” 2) the extra money spent on an item or service actually equates to better quality or a longer service life. There is a large risk of looking and feeling like a fool when you spend top dollar for an item only to find that the quality is equal or even less superior to an item of lesser cost. As I go through this baby process I’m sure I will experience this feeling once or twice and will be sure to share it with all of you.

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So as many of you know Marelize and I are expecting our first Schaefer Jr. in mid-January of 2008. As I write that it seems pretty far off, but when I stop to dwell on it I get a pit in my stomach….the “OH MY GOD I’M 23 AND GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR A HUMAN LIFE!” pit of nervousness that only an expectant first-time parent knows. Marelize and I went into marriage planning on having children fairly early on in our lives. For me, I wanted the energy to be able to whoop up on my kids in sports well into their teenage years (some sort of sick satisfaction I guess of knowing that I didn’t leave all my glory at Deti Stadium in high school) and for Marelize, she would like to be done having children by her early thirties. We felt we were financially in a position to support a child at this moment in time…the Air Force pays for 100% of the costs, so thank you tax paying citizens of America for my college and now my first child…and after much prayer, discussion and one to0 many times of watching “A Baby Story” on TLC we decided we’d go for it.

After first finding out Marelize was prego we went through several weeks of anxiety about telling people. We understood that we were going against the common advice of waiting to have children until later on in our marriage, so naturally we were worried that people would not be happy with our news, but rather skeptical or somehow half-hearted in their congratulations, almost waiting to see us fail and say I told you so. But, the reaction was quite the opposite, our parents, family and friends all were thrilled with the news which was a tremendous blessing and load off our backs.

So now the madness has begun. Ultrasounds, books on pregnancy, the purchasing of the cool, but no so expensive that you look like you’re trying to prove something, baby gear (who knew that such and innocent seeming industry, baby accessories, could be such ravenous wolves, preying on the fears of first-time parents….”I don’t know if my stroller can go off-road, should it be able to? Is off-roading something babies do on a day-to day basis?”)…much more to come on this topic, I feel that by the end of these 9-months I will have enough humorous material on the baby industry to write quite a book. Anyway, I must say that I am really excited to be a father. When Marelize and I first got to see our child moving around on the ultrasound a few weeks ago I got a taste of what the life of a parent will be like and it was sweet!

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