And Heeeeres Heidi ! ! ! !

Well I think you know enough about Donald now so I would like to write about my number two child, Heidi.

Heidi was born just a little more than a year after Donald, on August 23rd. I was so thrilled because I really wanted a little girl. She was an absolutely beautiful little girl. She was very bright right from the start. She was quite content to sit in her little baby seat and watch everything around her for the first nine or ten months of her life. She hit all the major milestones, such as rolling over and sitting up and things like that at all the right times.

Then when she was just a little over a year old, she started talking.

Now, I don't mean baby talking. Her first words when she was around fourteen months were "I would like more please Momma."

I swear those really were the first words I ever heard her say!

She skipped right past the Momma's and Daddy's and Bye Bye's and all the single baby words that kids usually start with and went straight to complete sentences. My Grandma Brinkerhoff, who loved Donald and Heidi as much as if they were her own, (She had them call her Grandma Elva, so that my Mom could have the Grandma Brinkerhoff title all to herself. She was such a beautiful person and I still miss her to this day.) Well she told me that she figured that Heidi had quietly spent the first year of her life observing everyone and everything and that now she was ready to make herself known. I think that is exactly what happened, too.

By the time Heidi was around seventeen months old you could have a true conversation with her. It made it hard for us to remember that she was still just a baby.

From the start Heidi was a keen observer of human behaviour. Sometimes to the point of making people uncomfortable. One time when she was probably two and a half I was in the Richland Fred Meyer and I had her sitting in the grocery cart, as we went through the store. There was a very heavy woman next to us shopping with a very heavy daughter who was maybe seven or eight years old. Heidi watched them intently for a few minutes and then said to me in her serious little voice, "That lady is very fat Momma, and her girl is fat too." She said this in just the most innocent and matter-of-fact way, but I was mortified. Then and there we had a talk about things that make other people feel bad and how we should never say things like that.

Skip to her grade school years. Heidi did not have an easy time with her first grade teacher.
I think Heidi was just too outspoken and too much of an independent thinker for this woman to appreciate.

Needless to say Heidi did not enjoy 1st grade.

When she was in 5th grade even I did not like her teacher. On the back to school parent night, Heidi came home that day really annoyed telling me that her faker of a teacher had made them spend the whole day making pictures and putting them up in the room so it would look like this was the kind of thing the class had been doing all along. The other kids thought it was so fun but my dear daughter saw through this woman's act and knew she was doing it just to impress the parents.

That's how her mind worked. You could never pull anything over on this kid.

Heidi was the first of my children to actually spend money on me for Mother's Day and my birthday. I think she was maybe ten or eleven. It was Mother's Day and she came and told me very excitedly to come outside because she had something for me. I was expecting the kind of surprise that you would expect from a ten or eleven year old. But no. She had gotten me a professional balloon and flower bouquet and it was actually being delivered by an actual delivery person.

I was so overwhelmed.

She did this at least one other time maybe two more. She told me years later that she had really only had a few dollars. I guess the people at Shelby's Floral were so impressed with her, that they gave her much more than she had money for.

That was my Heidi.

Well Heidi is grown up and married now to a great guy named Jeff whom I love very, very much even though I sometimes like to give him a bad time. She has two daughters Abbey nine and Lindsay seven. She is a very good mother to my two oldest granddaughters and I am very proud of all the things she does. In fact I have skipped past the rest of her growing up years because I want plenty of room to tell about what a kind and generous person she has turned out to be.

Giving service is a big part of who Heidi is. She is a big feeder of Missionaries. Several of the wards she has been in, the people do not sign up to feed the Missionaries like they should. So Heidi has told them that whenever they need dinner, to let her know and she will cook for them. She even asks them what they want and she goes out of her way to treat them like honored guests.

Several months ago there was a family in her ward that was moving to a new house that was still in their ward boundaries. The wife and mother of this family was nine months pregnant and had to get her house cleaned in just a few days so they could move into their new house. In Relief Society a sign-up sheet was passed around for the sisters to sign to go over and help this sister with her house. Heidi was one of the last to get the sheet and when it got to her no one had yet signed up. Heidi felt so bad about this that she signed her name and was over there the next day. She swept and mopped all of this sister's floors for her. I realize this might not sound like too big of a deal, but for the last few years Heidi has been severely anemic. She has so little energy that it is almost impossible for her to keep up with even the bare essentials at her own house. So for her to go and do this for this pregnant sister was really a big thing.


Since she lives in Spokane, when Lisa was pregnant with Elisabeth, Heidi opened her home to Donald and Lisa whenever they needed it. She also watched Alexandra and Lorelai for them. She loves her little nieces so much and I'm sure that no one could have given them more love or better care.


The latest act of service Heidi has gotten into was also something that was announced in Relief Society. One of the sisters in her ward has an elderly next door neighbor, who is not a member of the church. This dear ladie's husband just died this February and on top of that her ninetyish partially senile mother lives with her. It was announced that this woman really needed someone to come in and sit with her mother, so that she could go shopping or to Dr. appointments or whatever things that came up for her. It was also mentioned how lonely this poor lady was since her husband had died and that she just plain needed company to visit with her. Well my sweet daughter signed up for this and has been going probably once a week to sit with the ninety year old mother for a couple of hours so that the daughter can get out, and then staying and visiting with the daughter, when she gets back. My Heidi really is one of the earthly angels.

Okay a little bit more about her personality.

Heidi is funny !!

She is one of the funniest people I know. I swear that she could have a career in stand-up-comedy if she was so inclined. She can do impersonations dead on and she can do ANY accent in the world. At family gatherings she cracks us up with her hilarious monologues. If you don't believe me ask Lisa or Courtney I think they are some of her biggest fans.
She knows how to relate to her youngest brother Shawn better than almost anyone. One of their favorite games she plays with him is Super Heroes. Heidi will be the villain and Shawn the hero. They will shoot their freeze or death-rays at each other and when they get into it is impossible to not be laughing.

As I wrote in an earlier post She has not been able to have another baby so now they are looking into adopting an older ( that would be from one to six years old) child. I was a little skeptical about this at first but Heidi has so much enthusiasm when she decides to do something that she has really won me over. I know that whatever child they end up with, that Heidi will be a wonderful mother and she will enrich this child's life in a most wonderful and exciting way.

As you can probably tell I really love my daughter and I am very proud of the incredible person she has become.