Reflections on my Grandpa Hal

On March 30th, 2008 at 3:15pm my Grandpa, Hal Minnich, went to be with Jesus. My Grandpa was a very well-read, intelligent man with a very humble spirit. He was fairly quiet, but when he had something to say it was well worth listening to, and it was usually about something he was passionate about. He had this infectious laugh that sounded more like a wheeze really and you couldn’t help but join in when he was laughing. He was a strong Christian man with a real love for the Lord. He and Grandma would always tell us, “We pray for you every day Heather, dear.” He wasn’t able to take compliments to well as I recall. Grandma doted on him saying how handsome he was and how she had to fight off all the other ladies that wanted Grandpa as their catch back in the early days of their courtship and marriage. Whenever she would do this, he would get this stern look on his face and would say, “OH Betty,” usually followed by an impromptu trip to the bathroom or an immediate need to find “something” in the bedroom. It was clear he was embarrassed!

After the birth of his first great grandson (our little Josiah) we took him over to see Great Grandpa and you couldn’t wipe the grin off his face as he looked at Josiah. It was obvious that he loved children. Before he passed on, I did call him at his home and had Josiah talk to him a bit. He said, “I love you Great Grandpa,” and some other things, and when I spoke to him afterward I could hear him smiling through the phone. He also said he was anxious to tell Grandma Betty about the conversation when he saw her next time.
I attended my Grandpa Hal’s memorial service this past Wednesday and brought the twins as well. It was a whirlwind trip (we flew in the morning at 9:00am and returned back at 8:45pm) and though it was a lot of work and preparation to bring the twins, I was glad that people could see them and enjoy them during this time. It was the first time in a long while that I can remember that most all the cousins were gathered together at the same time and we had a fun time reminiscing about Grandpa, Grandma and our various past family gatherings and such. One of the cousins commented how nice it was to hear the extended Minnich clan sing the hymns at church. Then Lynne (another cousin) said, “Yes, my husband asked me one time…does your family always sing when you get together?” Our collective response was, “Of course we do!” Our Grandpa and Grandma both loved singing and music in general and it was a guarantee that they would like some sort of performance by whoever would give one when we came to their home.



Here is Josiah "helping" Grandpa push Grandma in her wheelchair. I was told that Grandpa was one of only 2 men who daily visited their wives who were in the care center. He truly knew the meaning of "for better or for worse" and honored his commitment to Betty even through the tough times! What a great example to live up to for my first born and for all of us!

This event pictured here was the last time that I saw my Grandpa when he was living. We had come over to Spokane to visit our friends and family in December of 2006. We had hoped to come out there again this last Thanksgiving, but my pregnancy with the twins was just too complicated and difficult to make the journey. The wonderful news though is I WILL see him again! I look forward to the day when he will greet me in heaven!

I love you Grandpa and I am thankful you are free of pain and in a better place now!

Baby Dedication Pictures

This is a picture of all of us before the service. As a side note and prayer request, my Mom wasn't here because she flew to see her Dad who is in the hospital. He is very ill and is likely to die soon, so please pray for the whole family as we go through this time of grieving and saying goodbye.

This is our Pastor George praying for the babies.

This is my Dad (Paul) praying for the babies.

This is David's Dad (Ken) praying for the babies.

Dedication Day!

Here are some cute pictures of the babies on the day that they will be dedicated at church. I took them after the middle of the night feeding, so they are a little droopy looking, but cute nonetheless! I think in the first one they look more alike than I have ever seen them! And by the way, for those that need this Caleb is on the left and Daniel on the right. In the 2nd photo, Caleb is yawning and Daniel has the typical David eyebrow raise going on. Too cute!

Carpenters East Visit Carpenters West

We have had the pleasure of having David's parents, sister and niece come visit us for a few days this past week. They flew in on Thursday and will be flying out on Tuesday. It has been since April of 2006 since we had last seen them in person (see previous posts for that event). Both Josiah and Anna Grace have grown considerably since then! Josiah was just crawling when we went there last time and Anna Grace was walking and would pretty much tackle Josiah and he couldn't do anything about it. Now he holds his own pretty well, but it is interesting to see the dynamic between the two for sure! Josiah has taken to pretty much doing what Anna Grace says, but from time to time he gets really frustrated and starts crying about something she did that he didn't like. It was funny because off and on he will call her, "A grape," or "mr. grape" and will say, "Where is mr. grape?" or somthing like that. He does know how to say Anna Grace though and now that she has been here longer, he has been saying it correctly more often. By the way, this picture is of Anna Grace & Daniel. She is crazy about the babies and wants to hold them all the time!

Here are some of the memories thus far of this week with the family. I am sure there will be a post with more at some point as well, but this is a start.

Grandpa Carpenter has had a lot of chances to read to Josiah & Anna Grace and Josiah for one has taken advantage. He loves his "I Spy" book, which incidentally he ripped many of the pages of way back when and we had to purchase a new one for the library (whoops!). So Josiah has been holding it up (which now has been fixed with tape)saying, "Read I Spy!!" Grandma Carpenter has ordered some more "I Spy" books for him, which should arrive soon.

The Carpenters also brought with them a lot of boy's clothes and shoes that they were given from a friend of Mary's. This shot is when Anna Grace and Josiah dumped all the shoes onto the floor and decided to climb in the box. At one point, AG said, "Let's all stand up now." and Josiah did what she asked. They were having fun playing together. After this, AG got out and went over to the toys and retrieved a toy bee and said, "Let's play hive bee" and asked Josiah which bee he wanted to play with.

My Dad came over as usual on Friday and had a nice visit with the Carpenters East as well. He and Ken had fun swapping funny jokes and Ken is showing my Dad a puzzle game online that he likes to play. It was nice that the pastors got a chance to converse a little more. The last time they met was at our wedding over 4 years ago and they really didn't get a lot of opportunities to talk much.

David's Mom has had lots of times to hold the babies and has been a huge help with our fussbucket (Caleb). She has been really good at settling him down and has had her fair share of feeding him as well. Our little boys love their Grandma Carpenter!

The Carpenters brought Josiah this Thomas the Train painting set for the bathtub and so Anna Grace and Josiah wanted to try it out. We thought this would be a longer event for them playing in the tub, but it ended shortly after Josiah got bubbles in his eyes from Anna Grace who tried to help "clean" him. Josiah hates water on his head and/or bubbles in his face. So this picture is rather characteristic of their "fun" in the bathtub.

Prayer Alert

Here is a picture of our little Caleb who appears to be getting sick again. He has had this suspicious cough that has cropped up recently and we are hoping that he will be able to make it through whatever illness this may or may not develop into. So far, he does not have a temperature or any sign of breathing distress that we can tell. However, he does have a reduced appetite and he has been spitting up a lot of his food in the last few feeds. If he worsens with his eating, I plan to take him into the doctor tomorrow, but hopefully like his first cold he will pull through OK on his own with the Lord's healing as his doctor. Daniel shows no signs of illness at this point, so hopefully he won't get it too. Please pray that Caleb will get through this without any need to be hospitalized and also that we as parents will be able to tell if needs more help than we can give.

More Fun Pictures

The brothers blue with their typical expressions: Daniel smiling and Caleb frowning. Perhaps we can put their images on masks and display them as artwork? Hee hee hee!

This is Josiah with his babysitter Sharel. You can see the lovely tree in the background, which has bloomed in our front yard.

Here are the boys together in their crib intently watching the mobile. And our little Caleb boy actually has a half smile this time!

Spring Has Sprung!

David planted some daffodils here a while back and now we are seeing the fruits of his labors. As you can also see, Josiah still has a little bit of a runny nose left over from the recent cold he had. He is fine though despite that. Anyway, the daffodils are a great addition to the front of our house and look great around the blue wishing well.

Colorful Chicks

Today we went over to my friend Laurie's house and let Josiah play with the little chicks that they got recently. As you can see they are colored various different colors. They do this by injecting the eggs with dye and they are then born this way. They actually had 26 chicks sent to them in the mail! I guess they keep warm and upright by cramming them all in this box together. Of course the box has little air holes in it for them as well.


Josiah thought they were "so cute" and had a blast holding them and looking at them. Before we left to see them, I told him about the chicks and he said, "They are so cute....like brothers!"

Fun New Pictures

I had my babysitter Sharel take some pictures of the babies today since they were both wide awake at the same time. I showed this one to David and he laughed out loud. He said that Daniel has his mischievious eyes and I agree with him. David's parents wished upon him the parental curse, "I hope you have a child JUST like you someday!" David was a bit of a troublemaker as a young lad. We shall see which of our boys will test Daddy's patience the most!

I call this the Caleb surprise picture. It is hard to catch him smiling on film and this is about as close as it gets. He has been smiling more for us lately, but at the oddest moments. I came into the room late last night (or shall I say morning) around 3:30am to put Daniel down (Caleb was already fed and in bed) and when I looked over at Caleb he was smiling a lot at me.

Here is a cute picture of the boys looking at each other. Both of them were being rather fussy until I suggested that they lay on the blankie together, and right away they calmed down. It is apparent that they are more aware of each other now and are perhaps forming an attachment to one another.

Here is Daniel our smiley boy. He gives lots and lots of smiles. David was playing with him today and even got a small little squeal of delight. He was tickling his tummy and Daniel would open is mouth really wide in a smile like this and give a little squeal.

Caleb was working super hard today to get his head up. As you can see he was successful! This is such a funny picture of our serious little concerned one. Such a sweet little baby though! He is just a little more needy for the time being.

Here is a new use for your formula scoops all you moms out there who use formula. Josiah took the scoop from one of the used formula containers and decided it would be a spoon to eat his vegetable soup with. He has been very inventive these days in other ways also. He builds what he calls "ramp machines" with his Megablocks. There are a number of ramps for cars you can build with the blocks and he stacks them on top of one another and dubs it his ramp machine.

I included this last picture as it was my favorite of the boys together. Daniel has his typical happy expression and Caleb has his pursed lips concerned expression. Daniel does look MUCH bigger in this shot, but that was partly the angle at which it was taken. However, Daniel is still the bigger of the two. By the way, they have been sleeping around 7-8 hours each night! That has been helpful! Now if only I can get to bed when they do, then perhaps I will catch up on my sleep. Speaking of which, I should be in bed now!

Funny Josiah-isms & Other Fun Stuff

Hello to all of you out there! Sorry I haven't been as diligent with the blog entries as in weeks past. The twins are having more and more wake times now that they are older, (3 months old now) and so I am finding that my times to care for the house and Josiah are getting crunched a bit to play with the babes as well.

I have not been totally neglect in my blogging duties though as I have been taking pictures and collecting funny Josiah-isms to share. Now I finally have a moment to type them all into an entry. As you can see in the picture above, Josiah has taken on a new responsibility to feed his baby doll. My mom bought him this doll for use when we teach him how to potty train (which we haven't done just yet). You can put water in the little bottle and it will "pee" it out in this little potty chair that it comes with also. One of the steps in this book my mom gave me entitled "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day," is to teach a doll to go potty first. As a side note, she says she used this book to train my brother and I at the age of 3 and both of us learned easily and never had any accidents following the training. From time to time while I am feeding one of the twins I will say, "Josiah, why don't you feed YOUR baby?" (in order to get him occupied in doing something other than aggravating his brothers). He usually responds with "I can't...I'm busy right now," (he got that lovely phrase from me...hee hee) or once he said, "I can't....baby is sleeping right now." Once in a while though he decides that his baby needs some food and this was one of those moments!

David has been trying to take Josiah on more outings lately and one of these times they went to the school nearby and played on the playground. Josiah met a little friend there who wanted to pose for the camera with him as you can see. Apparently, this little girl was singing the alphabet and David asked Josiah to sing it too and he sang, "A, B, C, D...I don't know that word," and that was it. Not sure why he stops at D in that manner, but it is funny because he does that everytime he tries to sing the A, B, C's on his own.

As we have been working with Josiah these days, I have sometimes broken out the old , "I said NO!" phrase in regards to one behavior or another. The other day he came back at me with "I said YES!" and though I shouldn't have, I laughed out loud at that one and then tried to still enforce the point at hand.

The other day I gave Josiah a shamrock cookie and told him that it was a shamrock as I gave it to him. He looked at it and said, "Broccoli?"

David decided to mop the kitchen floor while I was gone the other day (kudos for the hubby) and asked Josiah if he wanted to help mop the floor. He said, "I don't want to go to MOPS!" MOPS is the group I attend which stands for Mother's of Preschoolers. Once David explained what a mop was, then he was into it. Of course, it took them a lot longer to clean the floor, but the result was the same! When I came home, Josiah said, "Wook...shiny!" (He still pronounces his L's as W's incidentally.)

Sometimes when the babies are crying or Josiah wants something, I might say, "Be patient, Mommy will be right there." Josiah has learned this phrase too and once when a baby was crying he said, "I'll get him...right there and then "Be patient, be patient, be patient," as he patted the babies' head.

Josiah fell down the other day (which is not an uncommon occurrence around here) and stood up and said, "I hurt my body." To me it just sounded funny!


Here is a nice shot of my Dad feeding Caleb the other day.

Here is the mighty Daniel in the new swing that Grandma got for the babies.

OK and this one is for all our English teacher/grammatically correct friends & family out there (that means you Mom, Mara, Kaytie, Youssef, Kathryn, & Jee). Do you all find it ironic that they are inviting people to a literacy festival, but spell festival like "fetsival"? David caught this one on film on his outing with Josiah.

Saying Goodbye to Jon

David's brother Jon made the decision to move back to South Carolina, and he came over this morning so that David could take him to the airport. He got to spend a little quality time with the boys before he left, since for once they were both awake and alert at the same time. He volunteered to pose for this shot down on the floor with the babes, and I think it is so cute that they are both smiling at him.

We also got some video of the little ones during this time and I will post some of the footage when we fill up the disk and finalize it on the camera.

And for those of you who can't tell yet, Daniel is in the froggie suit in the back and Caleb is Mr. Eyeballs here in the front of the picture. This is the look he gives whenever he is very intently checking things out. He is our super curious boy. Daniel is curious too, but he is more of a sleeper and eater than he is curious. Lately, we have been calling him "Mighty Daniel AKA Champion Eater." Caleb is still our "Clockwork Gnome" as he always seems to notify us right on schedule that he is hungry! Incidentally, he is over his illness now and is doing great! I noticed that right after I posted the entry that in the hours afterward he seemed to be improving. Thanks to the Lord ultimately for his speedy recovery and for all of you who prayed for him!

Poor Sick Baby

Well, unfortunately I think the virus we all had finally manifested itself in our little Caleb boy. Last night he had a fever around 101, and has been eating poorly as well. I called the nurse to see what to do and she said if he had a fever more than 3 days and/or had a wheezing cough to come in and get him checked out. For now it seems he just has a little congestion, but nothing that seems to hinder his breathing much and no cough. He threw up a good portion if not all of his last feeding and if he continues to do that at every feeding (where he isn't getting the full amount anyway) then we will take him in also as we do not want him to get dehydrated. The poor little guy has been sleeping lots and hopefully that will help him get well soon. Please keep him in your prayers.

Daniel doesn't seem to have it, though he has had more congestion than his usual (when he breathes normally he sounds like a little piggie) it seems to me. He hasn't had a fever though and is eating just fine thus far. Thankfully the Lord had mercy to stagger the illnesses here, otherwise I probably would have stayed sick much longer. I wish Caleb didn't have to get sick, but such is life. I just pray he won't end up hospitalized again, that would be a real bummer!

Fun New Pictures

The first two pictures with the polka dot blankie (thank you Mara) are of Caleb. We have been giving both the boys some tummy time now and Caleb doesn't quite lift his head yet, but he does scrunch up a lot and gets irritated about being on his belly.

Please pray for Caleb as he has been having some issues of which we are unsure of the source. We think his medications are causing some pain (gas pain likely) that wake him up periodically, so the nurse I spoke with told us to skip some doses of the meds to see if it was the culprit. We have done this and so far today he seems to be sleeping more peacefully and is taking more to eat again (he was eating less last night and we were concerned).

Here I got him to sort of smile as he was peeking at me.




Daniel is our smiler of the two for sure. Almost after every feeding he will give a few big smiles for us. Perhaps because he tends to be the bigger eater of the two it is his way of showing his satisfaction?


Here you see Mr. Daniel getting some air time holding his head up. For those of you who don't know, this is a big deal for babies this age to lift their heads, so he is doing good! This was a quick moment that he held it up and I was quick with the camera to catch it!

Josiah handed me the camera and said, "Take picture me...cheese!" He said, "Cheese," again as I took this one to get a sweet little Josiah smile!



Here is a picture of Josiah and Alonna (my friend Melissa's neice). Melissa came over with Alonna the other day and we made cookies and they both sat down at Josiah's little table and I got cute smiles from both of them!

Cute Little Heartbreakers

I finally managed to use a gift card from Old Navy that I received from my friend Darcy and among the things I purchased were these cute little outfits that if you look closely say "Heartbreaker" on them. I thought they were fitting for our adorable little boys! It is getting closer to where they are alert at the same time, but this is usually after one has been fed and the other is hungry. Can you tell who has been fed and who is waiting to be fed? Daniel says "Picture, smicture...I want my food!" Caleb is giving his condolences, "Sorry man, I am just going along with the Momma."

To calm our little crying one down to get a few more pictures, Momma retrieved the pacifer and as you can see Daniel's face is a bit less red in this shot.

It seems that our little ones have been able to stave off the illness we all had and I am thankful for that. They have been a little cranky here and there and we have had some spit up incidents from both that seem more like throw up incidents, but they have not had fevers, excessive nose runs, or refused feedings, so I think we are OK! Thanks for the prayers for them though as I am sure they have helped to keep them protected from this.

Valentine's Day Date!

This weekend we let my parents to take Josiah to their house, so that David and I could have a little respite (at least what we could with 2 month old twins at home anyway) and get away on a date as well. We had someone come over to watch the twins of course, and went out to a nice Italian restaurant that we like called Mama Stortini's (YUM) and also spent some time wandering around the Southcenter Mall as well for fun. It was most excellent to get out and do something adult-like!! We bought a jigsaw puzzle to do over the weekend (something we used to do a lot when we were engaged) and managed to get the 1,000 piece puzzle done by sometime Sunday morning.

I am not sure if I mentioned on the previous post, but after Josiah got sick with a nasty cold, both David and I got it as well. We both had high fevers and sinus gunk for a bit, but thankfully with the extra rest we got this weekend, we are both doing SO much better!

I also have a funny Heather-ism (that is what we call them around here) to share. This is where I combine various sayings that shouldn't be combined. The most famous of these is "I crashed like a light." Of course there are the sayings "I'm out like a light," or "I crashed at so and so's house." However, in my tiredness one day I combined the two and David noticed right away and corrected me, and we laughed about it long afterward. The newest story is below, but first I will give a little background for reference points to the story.

As many of you might know, I have been pumping milk to give to the twins (since they were born so young and had issues breastfeeding at first). Incidentally, I am working on getting them to breastfeed, but they aren't fully there yet, so I still am pumping around 5 times a day usually. A set of parts you use in pumping are called "horns," which have an obvious place to be attached to, and a common phrase for ladies who are stopping the pumping process say they are "hanging up the horns." I tell you this for the punch line later in case you didn't know the term.

I mentioned above that we had all been sick, and I was VERY tired the day this happened and I was so tired in fact that I probably could have fallen asleep pumping (which is hard to do!) As I was washing the pump parts afterward, I was talking to David and below is the dialogue:

Me: "Now I REALLY know what it is like to fall asleep at the horn!"

David: "What?"

Me: (very emphatically) "You know....it is a saying...Falling asleep at the horn!"

David: (laughing to himself) "No it isn't."

Me: "Yes it is....I know there is a phrase with a horn in it!"

David: (goes to his computer for Googling) "No....it is definitely NOT a saying."

Me: (laughing hysterically nearly falling down) "Now I KNOW there is a saying with the word horn in it!"

Later of course we established there are the sayings, "Falling asleep at the helm" or "Falling asleep at the wheel," and also "Going around the horn," which I think is where I got the horn idea. And before I am dubbed the ditsy blonde, I will defend myself in saying that when I am tired I get a little dyslexic, so I would prefer no silly blonde joke remarks please!

The pictures above are of Daniel looking at the rings on his carseat and Caleb "sitting up" or actually propped up in the chair for you to see his cute little self. This picture to the left is of David's work station in our room, where sometimes a crying twin is brought so he can look at Daddy while he works. Sometimes they stop crying by just being near us in their seats and David also plays music for them, which they like a lot too. One of the stories David hears often told about him as a young boy is that he too wanted to be where the action was, and sat in his Dad's office a lot while he was working. Like father like sons I guess!