Yee-Haw

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We felt like true Houstonians last night when we attended the Houston rodeo, which is apparantly a really big deal. One of Brad's vendors gave us tickets to go see Rascal Flatts (who we love!). And we found out that the Houston rodeo is not just a rodeo but some fun combination of the State Fair, Rodeo and Concert. Grayson loved the petting zoo, running from animal to animal to pat all of them. He looked like he owned the place. We think he's destined to be a farmer when he grows up, but I think that's more of something you inherit these days, not something you just become. He also loved his first theme park ride, which he technically was not even tall enough to ride and we didn't even have tickets, but when he ran through the gate and started climbing up onto one of the bees, the guys told me to just go ahead. Sometimes it pays off having an out of control toddler :) None of us really cared all that much about the rodeo part, with the exception of a little sport I discovered for the first time called Mutton Bustin, which is the cutest thing I've ever seen. Since Brad's parents have sheep on their property, I'm thinking we could start training Grayson to participate in the event :) A great time was had by all, with maybe the exception of the guy who sat in front of us who Grayson tapped or touched or kicked at least 15 times on accident....who are those people who are dumb enough to bring their 2-year-old to the rodeo??? Lauren Banks & Me sitting in the tire of the giant John Deer Tractor And this is Grayson's back-pack, which we purchased for pre-school a few days ago. He is all of a sudden obsessed with it and insists on bringing it everywhere. Doesn't he look like he's running away from home?

Thank You for your Prayers

I just wanted to thank everyone who prayed for my Mom and for the sweet emails, texts and voicemails we received.

My Mom had the heart cath this morning and everything went well. They did not have to put in a stint because she only had about 50% blockage, which is actually pretty normal for a diabetic, and they don't take action unless it's 70% or more. So, it looks like her heart issues were a result of the severity of the pnemonia, and she most likely did not have a heart attack. Thank God!

She will have to have heart exams regularly moving forward and someday something may need to be done, but not now. It was definitely best case scenario and she should be able to go home tomorrow or Saturday. Praise the Lord! She is ready! And so are we!

An Update

Hey all!

Just a quick update tonight. Momma is looking really good. She had catheter and all IV lines removed except one port in case they need to draw blood again. She would have been moved to the cardiac step-down unit today but they didn't have any available beds so they're going to keep her again overnight in ICU. The doctors suspect coronary artery disease and the plan is to have a heart catherization done on Thursday and if a stint in needed they will put that in during the procedure. Thank you for the prayers and support and please continue to pray! Our family really appreciates it.

Whitney Coben (Haley's sister)

My Mom

Hi wonderful friends:

Thank you for the sweet texts, voicemails, emails, ect and most importantly prayers. I appreciate each one, I just haven't had time to respond to them.

Basically, on Tuesday my Mom went into the hospital with what we thought was dehydration from a bad stomach bug. Then penmonia was discovered and then heart issues. Now they speculate that she may have even had a heart attack which manifested itself as stomach issues (common in women apparantly). Friday night she was moved to the ICU because she was basically headed towards septic shock, with her kidneys starting to fail, acid in the blood, unable to get her blood pressure up, ect. ect ect. In the opinion of my sister and me and some of the nurses, a pulminary doctor should have been brought in much sooner than he was and she should have been tranfered to ICU sooner than she was.

But, thanks to the LORD and your prayers, she has had 100% improvement in the last day and a half. Basically, all of the issues she was experiencing are gone and all of those things I listed are back to normal. Praise God! The doctors kept us in the dark enough that we didn't even realize the severity of the situation until they already had it under control, which I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's what happened.

It is a possibility that she may be released out of ICU as early as tomorrow. We don't know if that's good or bad because she wasn't necessarily recieiving proper care when she was on the general care floor. At one point her blood sugar even dropoped to 15, which is just neglegence in my opinion, but I'll save my soap box about the health care industry for another time :) I thank God for my wonderful friends in the medical field that I know are making a positive difference in the lives or their patients every day!!! There are not enough of you out there!

Anyway, I'll send updates as things progress. Please keep up the prayers and THANK YOU!

Haley

Almost Houstonians

Bye House! :( "Where'd it go?"

Our Wonderful Life Group

My San Antonio Girls


Calvin Hargrove



I don't know that we're "official" Houstonians yet. We own a home here, but we're not yet living in it. But the hotel we're staying at is in Houston. Does that count? Either way, we'll be official come Friday...only two days to go!

I know I personally don't always recognize God's hand in my life, but it has been so evident in this move. We prayed specifically that our house in San Antonio would get a contract on it in a time period of two days and we had our first showing on day two and the very same people put a contract on it in on day three. Considering we had so many..."This is a bad time of year to sell a house," "Good luck in this market," "you've only lived in it for a year," and "You will definitely lose money," comments, it was all a huge confirmation that this is God's plan for us when it all happened so easily. We were able to find a house that we love in Houston in one weekend with hardly any negotiation required. When I showed my mom pics of our new house to be, she asked, "Well, my Gosh, did you even special order the paint colors in your prayer?" Even the packers who came to our house were believers and prayed over me as they were leaving. It was so cool! As crazy and stressful as the whole process has been, God has really provided for us every step of the way.

In the last few weeks since I've had a chance to blog, lots of note worthy things have taken place. First, we got to meet Calvin Hargrove, Luke and Steph's little boy, who is PRECIOUS! If you read their blog, you of course already know about our visit since Luke blogs about 100 entries in the time I do one....seriously, Luke, it's a little out of hand. And that's the reason for the whole "Luke is the best person in the world" blog entry because he is a computer hacker and stole my identity.

Our wonderful San Antonio friends threw us a good-bye party and I pretty much sobbed all through church on Sunday having to say good-bye to them. What, me, emotional? Shocking I know.

We also said good-bye to our first house :( We took Gray to say bye after it was all empty. At first, he seemed concerned that his toys were not there, but then he was just excited to have all the room to play and started running around in circles.

Personalize your own invite

Here are some pics of the new house. This is not our stuff, but since it may be a little bit before the house is set up (knowing us only a couple days) I'm posting pics of the house with the seller's stuff :) That way, if someone finds something they want to steal, they won't know where to go to steal it because it's not ours!

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Luke Hargrove is the biggest CHUMP in the world who steals people's passwords and hacks into their blogs and writes untrue statements.

Happy Birthday Friend!

I can only think of a couple people who are as big of freaks about their birthdays as I am (2 actually, Amy Shelton and Courtney Roberts) and TODAY is Courtney's birthday!!! It also happens to be my half birthday, and no, I don't really celebrate half birthdays, but it's still kind of cool that I have two friends whose birthdays are on my half birthday (Happy Birthday DREW!!!). But, I want to take this opportunity to wish Courtney a very special day and tell her how much I love her!!!

For some reason, when you get married it gets even harder to make friends because not only do you have to click with someone, but you have the click with their spouse and your spouse has to click with both of them, it just adds a whole different dynamic to the friend making process. In fact, I can only think of a handful of couples to where all the factors have lined up. But, Josh and Courtney are definitely one of those couples.

As we've been preparing ourselves to close our San Antonio "life-chapter," I've been getting pretty emotional about leaving our friends here (shocking I know, me emotional?) I just am overwhelmed looking back over our lives to see how God has provided for us no matter where we are. I have to confess that I drug my feet quite stubbornly when we moved here to San Antonio, but once we arrived God blessed us immediately...from giving us a great place to live, friends, a wonderful church home and a son, which we didn't even have to wait nine months to meet :) With all those blessings, we also have faced lots of challenges over the past 2 1/2 years and we were forced to learn a hard lesson....how to ask for help! I know it is our, as I'm sure it is for most people, tendency to want to be the ones who "have it all together" (HA!) and we'd just rather be serving than the ones being served. But, out of all the lessons (and let me tell you, there have been quite a few) that we have learned here, that is definitely the one that really stands out. In learning that lesson, we also have realized that it takes a special kind of friend to let your guard down with and ask when you need something. And usually they're only the friends that you have a long history with, but that is what has been so wonderful about San Antonio, God gave us that special connection with people here without having to have a long history, the kind of relationships that only he can ordain.

So, I would like to thank ALL of our wonderful San Antonio friends for seeing us through one crisis after another during out time here and for loving us even though we so DON'T have it all together :)

Courtney, Happy 25th Birthday!!! Brad and I feel so lucky to have you and Josh in our lives!