Lillian Houghtaling has arrived!

Congrats to Austin and Cristina! It sounds like delivery went GREAT! I don't have the details yet, size, time etc... Or pictures, but she sounds MUCH smaller than Taggart! So Welcome to the family little one!

Issue 39

Is in your email boxes! Enjoy

Scott's Mission Call!!!

Scott has been called to the Colombia Bogota South mission! Mike says "That appears to include the less-populated areas in the south half of the country, and his mission shares borders with Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. He will be speaking Spanish, and will report to the MTC in Provo on Jan. 14th. And if you missed the conference call there is a video of it up on Katie's blog (don't forget to turn off the music on the left side).

Erin and Justin

Justin Badger proposed to our Erin today! And they have a new blog telling all about it! The wedding is March 27th in the Atlanta Temple. So congratulations and welcome to the family Justin!

Medical Status of Marie Houghtaling

Well, Marie/Mom/Grandma Houghtaling has (finally!!) returned home from Rex Hospital. What a relief, after all this time! We are so thankful to all of you who offered your love, support, prayers, and fasting, on her behalf. I have had enough of hospitals these past 3 1/2 months, so that I hope I never see the inside of another one again, either as a patient or as a visitor! They took excellent care of Marie following her 3 recent surgeries. But still, after awhile, hospitals truly get very old!

Marie's recovery, thus far, is coming along pretty well, but it's not yet complete. All the physical scars are doing very well. They took out the latest set of surgical staples (used instead of stitches) yesterday (Tuesday), and today they removed the drain-tube that was draining some really icky ozzy liquid from her abdomen! And she is weak, and still has substantial pain in the lower part of her abdomen, below the latest scar. (The surgeon told us this is "to be expected", because of what he did down there to fix her up.)

So now it's trying to revive her appetite, gradually do more and more physically so that she can get back her stamina and strength. The doctor told her she can eat just about anything that sounds good to her, but we'll probably stick with stuff such as potato soup for a few days more, since it has only been 2 days since she has had ANYthing via mouth.

So now the hospital stuff is over --- for a while, anyhow! This will be my last report (ever, I hope!!) on Marie's condition!

During the worse of her illness, because we were spending so much time at the hospital with her, I had suggested to many of you that it would be helpful if you wouldn't phone to inquire as to her status/condition, but contact me via email. That had the additional advantages of me being able to print out your emails for Marie to read in the hospital, plus I was able to respond quickly in most case.

But now, all that is over forever (we hope!) Therefore, please feel free to contact us any way you wish, because we are trying very hard to get back to "normal", whatever that is!

We again express our sincere appreciation to all of you for your sustaining support during a very difficult time in our recent lives. We are so grateful!

Love,
Bill and Marie Houghtaling

Video from Gerda's funeral

(From Joe Haynie)

Dear family,
Thanks so much for your calls, letters, love, and support during the past few days as we've celebrated the life of Gerda Pratt Haynie and participated in her funeral. The visiting during the viewing, the funeral service (messages and music), the internment, the lunch, and the visiting afterward were so memorable to me.A number of you have asked whether it was recorded or not. I was able to get a recording of most of it (my batteries ran out halfway through the closing song and so I missed Glen's closing prayer). I've posted this recording on my website as a "podcast". I've submitted my newly created podcast site to iTunes and Zune so those of you who use those services should be able to find them tomorrow or the next day by searching under podcasts for "Joe Haynie" and subscribing (I'll be putting music and musings out there from time to time).For those of you who have not yet joined the wonderful world of "podcasting" but would just like to hear the funeral go to the following link and either download the funeral file (it's big--almost 90MB) or try clicking on it to open it and listen to it on your PC.

http://joe.haynie.name/podcasts/joehayniepodcasts.xml

Gerda's obituary

(From Joe Haynie)

Here is the link to mom's obituary. There's a place at the bottom where you can leave comments if you'd like.

http://www.provo.kaango.com/feViewAd/12715585