Barb's Blessings . . . Counting them one by one.

The older I get the more I like the old pictures. Somewhere inside these aging bodies lies the same hopes, dreams, aspirations and spirit that shines through in this picture from 1970. We had been married all of 3 months in this picture. Life was full of possibility. We had no idea what lay ahead but anything seemed possible. As the year draws to a close I find I am more attached to the past and spend more time reminiscing and remembering. The years were not all easy and the times were not all good but somehow the memories are precious either way. Life didn't turn out anything like we expected it would but, all things considered, I wouldn't change a thing. The hard times have brought growth and the good times have brought cherished memories. Life is about the journey not the destination. Now 39 years later, who knows what that destination will be. There is still faith and hope and come what may . . . whatever, wherever, however, we will be on the journey together. . . f...

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, How lovely are your branches. Closeup of the Mantel Panoramic view of the living room. When my dad was alive he and my mom would put up this fake Christmas tree every year that looked like a few hundred bottle brushes shoved into a twisted metal trunk. He would decorate it with lights, garlands and these red bulbs that were covered with red threads. After a few years they started to get worn and the threads started to unravel. It wasn't the world's most beautiful or artistic Christmas tree but my dad LOVED putting it together for himself and for my kids. He hung lights outside long after it was wise and prudent to climb a ladder. That's probably why they were never taken down the last year he was alive. Why didn't my kids or I do that for him? My mom and dad shopped ever so carefully for each of us and the gifts were wrapped with precision and care by my dad. On Christmas Eve we would all go over there exchange gifts and th...

See story below :-). Friday: Got up early and took down all the fall decorations -- scarecrows, fall flowers, cornucopias and pumpkins. Boxed them all up and then dusted all the places that hadn't been dusted since I put them out a month or so earlier. Fortunately my house doesn't get very dusty or I wouldn't be able to get away with that. Then I cleaned the whole house, changed sheets and stripped and waxed the kitchen floor. Yes, I have a kitchen floor that has to be stripped and waxed -- think Stater Bros. tile. Tried to clean myself up and we went to dinner at IHOP (we had a coupon). Crashed into bed. Saturday: Got up early and cleaned the garage. Made a run to Deseret Industries to unload all the stuff we had accumulated since my last trip 6 months ago or so. I stopped by the California State Citrus Park on my way home and picked up some momentos to make Riverside Christmas ornaments out of (story for another blog session). Got a call while I was at the park...

Black Friday I did most of my Christmas shopping today without even leaving the house. You can find almost anything you want online and if you have time to look around you can find whatever you need with free shipping, and sometimes no tax. I used to love getting out in the middle of it on Black Friday, fighting for bargains and getting all my shopping done. I guess I'm getting old 'cause I looked through all the ads yesterday in the paper and I couldn't even find anything I wanted to buy -- at any price. Like the rest of the world, we are cutting way back this year. I am so grateful to have a job with so many out of work. Fleetwood laid off 760 people last week. None of them were from the corporate headquarters where I worked but only time will tell if the company can survive. My heart aches for my friends and so many others I don't know who are struggling to find work right now. But for the grace of God, go I.

My dad doin' what he loved in the Don Schaack uniform. He always wore khaki pants, a plaid shirt with kleenex, 3x5 cards and a pen in his pocket. And of course the smile! It was 10 years ago this week that we had an early Thanksgiving with my mom and dad on Sunday and then got a call that my Dad had passed away on Wednesday. It was a shock but he was 81 and he passed away in his sleep on Monday or Tuesday. My last memories of him are sweet. We had a wonderful family Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the trimmings at our house on Sunday with lots of chatter and laughs. He was a Webelos leader and had held a pack meeting the week before. He was active and of service to the very end. A few years ago my brother Greg and I took a little genealogy trip together to visit with our dad's youngest sister, Dorothy, who lives in Lakeport, California. We looked at and copied 100s of pictures and talked about relatives we never knew. On the last day we were there we asked her...

I got an email from my sister-in-law, Karen, who lives in Utah asking me what was going on in California. She said there were thousands of people in and around the Los Angeles Temple protesting the passage of Proposition 8. (My email is not working on my new computer but I still am getting it on my Blackberry.) I logged on to MSNBC to see what was going on and was appalled to see an angry mob had closed down the streets in front of and around one of the most sacred places on earth. I confess that I have been somewhat ambivalent about this proposition. I have admired those who zealously walked the streets, knocked on doors and stood on street corners. But I was not among them. I put the Yes on 8 sign out on my lawn three times and was greatly relieved to come home and find it still there and that my tires were not slashed and my windows broken. There are several reasons I have been reticent to put myself out there. I now find myself working for people who are extremely co...

As one of only three or four Democrats in the LDS church -- there is just me, Senator Harry Reid, and Brent Denkers, now that President Faust has passed away -- I thought I would share my feelings on the day after. I voted for a Democrat for only the second time in my life. I read Newsweek, Time and US World and News Report each week -- as thoroughly as time allows. I consider myself an informed voter. I didn't make this decision lightly. I have not been duped by a liberal media. I have studied the issues and chosen who I thought best met America's needs. I believe that one of the most important jobs of a president is to bring hope to the country. I didn't get that sense of hope from McCain and I was seriously concerned about his age and the inexperience of Sarah Palin. I thought she was amazing in the beginning but came to have some major concerns about her knowledge of the issues and some other things that surfaced in her behavior both past and present. It conc...

Snow White And yes, she worked in this costume all day (she's a hair stylist) and then went out dancing all night. (The dwarfs were fast asleep.) Oh to be young again.

I copied this from my friend Shalece Beyler's website. I think it says it all.

Some years we all got into it. Roger won a prize for this black widow costume. Wasn't she the cutest little cheer leader ever. The first year they went trick or treating. I read on a friend's blog today that her kids each got a sheet and a pair of scissors to make their own Halloween costumes. It was another indication of my need to over achieve as a mother (for whatever reason) that I went all out for Halloween every year. I wanted my kids to win the prize for the best costume. I succeeded the year of the black widow spider (the first picture). Of course the prize was just more candy. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

MT. BALDY Mt Baldy (9,988 ft.) on the left and San Gorgonio (11,499 ft) on the right. One Saturday in January I was elbow deep cleaning toilets or some other Saturday chore and Kent called to me from the car on his cell phone and told me to grab my camera and come with him. I am never too happy to stop a task I am in the middle of, but he was insistent so I grabbed my camera and we drove a few blocks from our house to the edge of the river bottom that is just behind the street behind us. (Did that make sense? We are one street away from the street that back up on the Santa Ana River.) The Santa Ana is usually knee deep even in the dead of winter and we seem to always be in a drought here in So. Cal. But this wasn't about water in the river. This was about a gloriously beautiful winter day. The kind that makes thousands of people move here after the Rose Parade, the kind that makes us pay three times as much for our cracker box houses as they pay for a mansion in other parts ...

I started working at Riverside Community Hospital one year ago today. It's been the hardest year of my life but I am feeling pretty good about the progress I have made. The first six months were the hardest. Shortly after I started I was informed that the office needed to be open from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm. I took the late shift but most days I feel the need to be there before 8:00 am when my bosses arrive. So I work 9 1/2 to 10 hours every day. It's a drag at times but God has blessed me with the stamina to get through every day - usually without much of a break even for lunch. Not bad for an old broad like me. Healthcare has it's own language and it's mostly acronyms. I swear that half the time they don't know for sure what they are talking about. My second day there I could see that I would need to break the code if I was going to survive so I ordered a book of healthcare acronyms from Amazon.com. When it came I opened it up and for every acronym there ar...

Seems like only yesterday they placed you in my arms. We waited 10+ years for that moment and it was worth every second. Now 28 years later we have shared so much joy, so much sorrow, so much laughter and more than our share of tears. Through it all, we have loved you more than life itself. So here is a David Letterman list of 10 things I love best about being your mother. 10. You catch and grill the best salmon in the northwest -- maybe in the US and probably in the world. 9. You do great linguistic imitations, (Abu selling Mint Squishies at the Quickie Mart being my favorite). 8. You are a devoted husband and father. 7. You are a hard worker and a dependable and honest employee. 6. You are a creative and talented musician and artist. 5. You are considerate and kind and always the first to say I'm sorry. 4. You are one of the smartest people I know -- though you don't know everything :-). I love your curiosity and breadth of interests. 3. You are strong and courag...

My handsome son in 2003 with the Seattle Skyline in the background Roger called this morning and he had just been in a traffic accident in his company truck. My heart broke for him. I always tell him that a mother can only be as happy as her most unhappy child and I so wanted to make it all better for both of us. He was in Seattle on a freeway and ended up in the middle of a 6 car accident. His brakes locked in the rain and he couldn't stop the truck in spite of the fact that he had left plenty of space between him and the car in front of him. He is 3 weeks into a new job and by all accounts is doing a great job. But, he couldn't help but worry that this would impact their trust and confidence in him. I said a dozen silent prayers on his behalf and was grateful that I needn't have worried. His boss told him, "accidents happen and that is a place on the freeway that is accident prone." The tow truck operator who towed his truck away told him that one day the...

Kent and Kathy (2004 Family Reunion) Sterling is making a miraculous recovery and most of that can be credited to skilled physicians, a merciful God and answers to prayers. He had a pacemaker put in on Thursday mid day and came home from the hospital on Friday. He had to keep his left arm immobile for the first 48 hours and it will be a couple of months until he is back to normal but the prognosis is good. His biggest disappointment is that he will miss the Huntsman games this year. The doctor says no golf for 2 months. He is under the nurturing care of our sister, his daughter, Kathy (Kent's twin sister). There isn't anyone I know who is more nurturing and good to the core as she is. We are so grateful to her for dropping everything and being there for Dad and for all of us. It has been such a blessing for all of us to know she is there. He couldn't be in better hands. When Kent had surgery in 2001, she came and stayed for several days and helped us get through so...

We had a BIG scare yesterday. We got an early morning call from Shauna, Kent's sister, telling us that Kent's dad was in the ICU in the hospital in St. George, UT. Sterling (Dad) awakened in the middle of the night and had started throwing up and couldn't stop. At about 1:45 am he called our nephew, Ryan Tyler and his new wife Holli, who both work in the hospital (Ryan in the ER and as an EMT, and Holli is an RN). He said "I don't feel good," and then hung up. Ryan rushed right over (thank you Ryan) and took him straight to the ER where they took him right in and hooked up to heart monitors, and found that his blood pressure was extremely low and his pulse was irregular. They admitted him to ICU and the phone calls swept through the family in the wee hours of the morning. Knowing that there wasn't anything we could do, they waited until 6 am to call us so we could get the sleep we needed. We packed to head up there and I went to work until we knew ...

I thought I should give Rachel equal billing today. This is a video of Rachel dancing with her dance partner George. Our nephew Robbie Schaack was visiting the summer after his mission (2006) for a little beach time and California sun. While he was here George and Rachel gave him some Salsa dance lessons. I captured it on video with my little Kodak camera that has a video feature. It's not the greatest video but it's some great dancing. Sorry about the commentary in the background. Some of it's pretty funny but most of it is just irritating. It's 5 minutes long but don't miss the back flip at the end. Make a Smilebox slideshow

Nearly every week I get a new picture of the latest fish Roger has caught up in Washington. He feeds his family for a few months in the fall on all the salmon he catches and last year was in a bass fishing club for a time. He caught a bass that was just a few ounces off the state record. He put it in his live well, had it weighed and measured and threw it back. The Washington Hunting and Fishing news did a story on him. He knows where the bass is and is just waiting until it gains a few ounces. In 2004 he stopped on his way to work and caught a 42 pound king salmon. When he got to work the secretary called the local newspaper and they had a photographer there in about 5 minutes. The picture in the local paper got Pratt Pest Management a few clients who called up and said "I want the kid who caught the big fish to come kill my bugs." He has made all of us proud . . . but especially his Grandpa Schaack whose heart is in every cast. Make a Smilebox slideshow

GAZANIAS When we moved in December of 2000 I took up gardening. I swore to anyone who asked that I was just doing it so the yard and surroundings would be pleasant for Kent because he was house bound - working at home and not getting out as much. But as the months passed I discovered that I was enjoying it and it has become a new hobby. It has been a learning process with lots of mistakes along the way but as the years passed there were fewer mistakes and better results. One of the first things I did was pull out a bank of red apple that was held back by a retaining wall of railroad ties the entire width of the property (about 65 feet). It took me months to get it all out, kill off the roots and then replant Gazanias. But oh what a pay day when they bloomed. I didn't have sprinklers up there I wound some dripper hoses through it and it worked for the first year. Then the hoses sprang leaks and I have been struggling to keep them watered ever since. Now half of them are dead...

The Schaack Family About 1948 My dad, Don Schaack with his father and mother about 1920. We had a missionary farewell today in Sacrament meeting (call it what you will, it was a Sacrament meeting filled with people who came to bid farewell to a missionary). Garrett Revay is going to Tonga and it was a good meeting with 4 youth speakers in various stages of youth and young adulthood. For the closing song we sang "Shall the Youth of Zion Falter." ( " True to the Faith, " Hymns , no. 254, text and music by Evan Stephens) As we sang the chorus I thought about all those who had gone before me to whom I owed so much. On my mother's side they crossed oceans for what they believed. My father's family were good to the core and I know without question that my father is teaching them the plan of happiness beyond the veil as we strive to live worthy of their blessings while in this mortal probation. So I am grateful for the blessings of good and faithful ancestors and ...

Rachel about 1997 -- The ice skating years Rachel and I are watching Cutting Edge right now. We haven't seen it in about 5 years but when she was about 12 years old this was her favorite movie and she watched it two or three times a week until she had the dialog memorized for nearly the entire movie. I started her in ice skating and she took to it like a duck in the water. She was amazing. Within a short time she was ready for a private coach and all that means financially and time wise. We signed her up for private lessons and the very first week the teacher came with a cassette tape which she had created at home with some songs that they were learning and she told me it would cost me $8.00 or something. I asked her if she had signed up with ASCAP which would allow her to charge for someone else's music. She told me no but all the coaches charged for their music. I told her that I couldn't pay her for music she had no right to duplicate. She got all upset and Rach...

This is the obituary for our friend Frank: FRANK ANTHONY FORMICA Our beloved husband, father, and grandfather, passed suddenly at the age of 74. Frank was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After his military service in the Air Force, where he learned his lifelong trade and hobby of mechanics, he settled in San Pedro with his family. He worked for American Airlines for over 40 years. He is survived by his loving wife of 54 years, Norma; their sons, Michael of Tustin Edward of Hemet; daughters, Susan Lovett of Wildomar, and Nancy Larkin of Mission Viejo, along with 14 grandchildren. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he has served in many positions including Scoutmaster, High Counselor, a member of the Palos Verdes Stake presidency, and twice as a bishop. He also served a senior mission with his wife in Colorado. He helped organize the Park Hill Ward and was currently serving Hemet Stake as the Patriarch. Frank had many hobbies and talents including phot...

So here goes. I have had lots of encouragement to do this. I'm sitting here watching HGTV -- not much of a surprise. We do have a new TV that doesn't shut down every few minutes, which is a surprise. We just replaced it on Saturday. We didn't want to spend the money to buy a flat panel so I went on Craigslist and found someone who was upgrading to a flat panel. It's a 3 year old TV and is HD ready should we ever decide to hook up to HD. It was only $125 and if we get another 10 years out of it maybe we will be able to afford a flat panel. We lost a friend this week. We have been getting together with a group of patriarchs and their wives a couple of times of year for dinner at each others homes. One of the highlights of the dinner was spending time with the patriarch, Frank Formica, from Hemet, CA who is an Italian from the Bronks. He is hilarious and we adore his wife. Frank had an accident of some sort on Friday and was killed. We are soooo sad. We aren...