Mal's Home!!!

Mal came home on Thursday! We were so excited for her to be home finally...along with Karen and MiMi! We had an amazing service today at church organized by Jana Hardage. She did a great job pulling it all together and making sure things ran smoothly. We opened with a slideshow that I put together that basically covered the last three months in pictures from the car wreck to the waiting room while she was in PICU those first three weeks to her first bites of food then on to her first trips outside all the way through rehab at Baylor. It's amazing how much stronger and healthier she became across the three months and you can see her get stronger throughout the pictures. Jackie Tucker sang "Praise You in this Storm" to start the slideshow and then "Waiting on You Lord" played for the remainder. She did a very good job!



Also in the service, Tom Compton, our youth director, spoke about how Mal has impacted the youth and our church and though it was tough for him to do that as Mal's youth director...he did a great job! Another dear friend of ours, Brian Nivens, who coaches at Magnet Cove, spoke about how even kids at other schools have been impacted by Mal's testimony throughout this ordeal. He spoke from the heart and did a great job as well.



The youth group sang, Call on Jesus, which Mal loves and even though many are close friends of hers and were very emotional today they stepped up and did a great job and Mal really seemed to enjoy it. Jana then spoke and she sang "Jesus Bring the Rain" which is an awesome song and Mal had posted the words in her status one night. Jana is truly one of those people who can minister in music and has been such a blessing to me since she came to Caney!



We didn't leave much time for Bro Ro to preach but he did a great job of tying Mal's situation into his abbreviated sermon. He preached briefly on how we are supposed to be there to suffer when another member suffers and rejoice when another member rejoices. I know we do that at Caney..we brag when the bragging needs to be done and Caney has certainly stepped up and helped bear our burden since Mal's accident.



Here's the slideshow from this morning....

A Day of Contrasts

Today mom and I took Gracen to the ENT and Audiologist because she had failed her hearing screening at school. She has fluid in her ear and so he gave her antibiotics, steroids and a nasal spray to see if we can get it cleared up. Hopefully that will work as she does not want another set of tubes..she's had about 7 last time I counted it up with her last pair at age 6.

We had a good day though after the appt was over. We decided to make a day of it and went to the Park Plaza mall since we hadn't been in a while and look around. Justice is Gracen's new favorite store so we bought a few things in there, bought me some shoes I was needing, then had lunch and just browsed around for the afternoon. The guy in one of those booths lured us in and proceeded to curl Gracen's hair and sell us the iron he did it with..yeah we were suckers but he was from Israel and just too nice and Gracen loved it!

When we got home tonight we found out that a coaching friend of Marty's that is married to a girl from this area so lots in our area know them, lost their 10 year old daughter, Gracie, to complications from a seizure today. They lost their younger daughter about 6 years ago when she was 2 from the same thing. I had received a text about Gracie while I was shopping asking everyone to be praying for a miracle for her, and all day as I shopped with my Gracen it was in the back of my mind what they were going through today with their 10 yr old daughter and how very different our days were. I was having a wonderful day with my daughter and they were having the worst day of their lives...again.

Makes me want to hold my kids a little tighter and I am definitely so thankful for the blessed life we are living! Please say a prayer for this family now and in the days to come. They are going to need them.

Fourth Grade

I planned on getting back to posting more regularly, but that hasn't quite happened yet so I'm just getting our first day of school posting on here. The kids started fourth grade this year which is still hard for me to believe! They turned ten right before school started...their first double digit birthday and I about went into depression so fourth grade and changing classes was another big step for me and them both, but so far so good! Here they are on their first day of school. They wore their Mal's Pals shirt that we have been selling as a fundraiser for Mallory. Gracen kept blinking and that makes her so mad! :) I always take a full body pic so I can see later how big they have gotten and this is the only one that turned out okay.

Here they are in their favorite pose..hugged up!

They have two teachers this year, Mrs. Tolleson and Mrs. Cowart. Mrs. T is their homeroom teacher and she has them in the mornings then over to Mrs. C for Science and Math and then back to Mrs. T for the remainder of the day. The first day, Mrs. T told Carson she was going to print him a t-shirt with a "?" on it! LOL! Gracen said he kept talking and I asked who he was talking to and she said, "Mrs. Tolleson!" I said, "What?" She said, "Mom, he is constantly asking her questions and blurting out the answers. Finally he raised his hand because she kept telling him he had to raise his hand but he still blurted out the answer and she said Carson, that is not going to work either!" That's my Carson!

Now we are two and a half weeks into school and so far....no problems for talking...he's following the rules! I guess she got her bluff in on that first day of school! BUT, we have lots of days to come before the last day! :)