Kevin Minnis

Hey everyone,

We are still in Iowa City tonight. My Dad had his testings this morning/afternoon. During the afternoon they couldn’t keep him awake to ask him questions and get the testing done….so they were going to just send us home and come back next week.  but…we asked if we could just stay tonight and get it done in the morning. So that’s what we are doing.  We found a hotel close to the University that wasn’t flooded..(Hawkeye country…YUCK )  My Dad has literally gone down hill since we got to the hotel.  My Mom is recovering from surgery three weeks ago so my Sister and I are handling the brunt of everything. My Dad was very, very, very non-coherent after he had a nap and all that. He knows who we are, but he’s talking about farming in the field, book sales, and going to school tomorrow.  It’s very sad. Then we had to try and get him to the bathroom.  He’s also very immobile tonight. We are hoping it’s just from sitting a lot today.  We don’t know if we are going to be able to get him out the door in the morning if he’s still like this. My sister and I aren’t quite “mighty” enough. So…that’s what we are dealing with right now. We know that Walgreens down the road has a wheelchair we can go buy if all else fails.

This is about the most depressing day I have had in a long time. My Mom says this is the worst he has ever been so far.  Hopefully we can make it through the night without calling 911. We don’t know.

So, needless to say, we don’t have any answers yet. Hopefully we’ll know more tomorrow. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be good news, but we’ll at least be able to know more about the lightning and what it actually did to him.

Thanks for all your prayers and support. This is insane!! I never thought it would come to this. We have a feeling the nursing home is in the near future. I dread that very much, but we know my Mom can’t handle him either. It’s a lot for three of us right now!

Wow, time has gone by like you wouldn’t believe and with it have quite a few events. We had a garage sale on the 3rd and ended up selling quite a bit of stuff. It’s really amazing how much “stuff” everyone has in the U.S. Just look at all the people giving to Good Will on weekends (after garage sales).

Around the same time period, Jayden and Josie got pink-eye and then gave me the pleasure of experiencing it too. Needless to say Josie ended up getting it twice and Jayden three times before it was all said and done.

Kim’s Mom had surgery back on the 19th so I watched the kids (I took last week and this next week off from work) while Kim went and waited with the rest of her family. We took the kids to see Grandma Pat that afternoon and then went back again that night to help Kim’s Dad get back to our place to stay the night.

This memorial weekend was rather interesting to say the least. On Friday Kim came back from shopping with a friend and said that she had some interesting news for me. As soon as she said it was about her Dad, my heart sank as his health has been questionable as of late. The good news is no health problems that he currently has was the issue. The bad news was that he had been struck by lightning while sleeping Friday morning. Dale was sleeping when he felt the lightning bolt start up his feet and continued up through his spine and ending at his head. He especially felt it when it hit his back as he has metal rods in his spine from previous back surgeries. He told Pat that he thought his legs had blown off when it initially happened. It’s odd that he even drove himself to breakfast that morning as he was pretty incoherent later that morning. The lightning knocked the picture off the wall and left a mark on the white paint (see larger image from link above).

So we decided we’d head down to Creston on Saturday after attending a couple of graduation parties. It’s always an eery feeling going somewhere when you’re not sure what to expect. Yesterday Dale feel asleep a lot (he fell asleep with his breakfast in his lap). He also slept through Dinner. Fortunately he was doing a lot better today. He even drove himself to the restaurant for breakfast this morning.

It’s amazing that more damage hadn’t occurred and I consider it a miracle that Dale even survived. So all in all, quite an eventful month.
 

Wow, almost a month since the last update! Last week I was in Florida for almost a week to attend the Informatica World 2007 conference. I learned a lot and had a good time hanging out with Broox and Kevi. Broox was down there for and RFID conference so the timing was perfect. The weather was perfect too. It would have been fun if Kim would have gone with too, but that will have to wait till the next trip.

Back at the home ranch…the kids are doing pretty well. Josie is working on getting some teeth now so Sunday night was a tiring night as she didn’t want to sleep much. It amazes me how growing teeth can be so painful. Josie’s also crawling all over the place including going up any and all stairs she can find. Of course she can’t come back down yet, so we have to run up and get her.

Jayden has been keeping his end of the deal up being an almost 3 year old; the almost daily melt down and his big brother attitude. He is as curious as ever and loves to “do things on his own”. In his words, “I will do it!”.

Kim was very busy taking care of the kids last week, as well as, organizing a garage sale (Jayden’s pile and Josie’s Pile). It went over pretty well and we got rid of quite a bit of stuff. It amazes me how much stuff one accumulates having kids.

It’s good to be back in the groove now, but the Florida trip was fun. See more pictures in the Informatica Set

Sorry to all of my viewers for not updating for more than a month. It’s been a busy time of year, between getting Christmas presents purchased and a project at work, I haven’t had a lot of time to get this updated.

Last weekend we had Christmas on the Wagner side. We all had a good time and watched the normal movie, “Christmas Vacation”. We all got some good presents and more presents.
Yesterday Kim and the kids hung out with Emily and Mady. The kids exchanged gifts and apparently Jayden wanted to keep opening gifts…even though there weren’t anymore. So, I think Jayden is getting the hang of Christmas or at least the gift part. haha.

Josie has been growing a bit…not as fast as Jayden did at her age, but still growing. She had her 6 month checkup yesterday and was a whole 12 pounds. She’s starting to sit up on her own now. She’ll sit for about a minute then fall over.

Don’t forget to good and if you need help tracking Santa be sure to visit the Santa Tracking Site.

Merry Christmas!