Ola from Spain!

Hi everyone! It´s 9:45 pm here in San Sebastian, Spain...and 3:45 pm back home in Fort Worth! Just wanted to let you know that we are having a great time. Don´t forget to check the blog: lccsmissions.blogspot.com. Unfortunately, I´m not able to use all the wording that I want for a variety of reasons, so my updates sound ambiguous, but we are doing great!

Off to Spain!!!!

Well, the arrangements have been made and it is time to head off to Spain!!!! I can't believe it is already time to go! We leave out of DFW around noon-- Newark first, then the long flight to Madrid. Go through customs (my favorite thing since I have such good memories of it in Miami.......sarcasm.) and then a commuter flight from Madrid to San Sebastian. San Sebastian is on the Atlantic coast of Spain, very close to the Northern border with France. We might even get to drive into France one day!!! The hardest thing will be being away from Daniel and Emma for so long. :( But I have a lot of pictures to take with me!

We set up a blog site for all 3 mission teams from LCCS this year. We all will be updating it so you can find out what is happening on 3 different continents- Europe, Asia, and South America!! How cool is that! Anyways- check it out at lccsmissions.blogspot.com. Thailand is checking in at the airport right now, we leave tomorrow morning and Peru is leaving tomorrow evening. I'm so excited to see what God will do through all of the teams!

On another note, Emma had an appointment today with her Pulmonary specialist, Dr. Dyson at Cooks. It's weird because we haven't been to one of the specialist clinics in 9 months! (Weird in a good way, of course) Anyways, we were checking up on her tracheomalcia, because she can still get pretty raspy and wheezing, and she should have outgrown it by 2. He said that everything is still pointing in that direction, but that it was unusual that she hadn't outgrown it. He said that the kids that don't usually are CHD kids, but its because an enlarged valve or artia is pressing against the trachea. Anyways, we did have a chest x-ray done while we were there. It was actually kinda cute-- at first, Emma really didn't want to have to sit for the x-ray. Luckily, she's big enough now that we don't have to hold her flat down to take it. The tech showed her the big camera but still Emma didn't want to sit on the table. Then I told her that she could have her lollipop after the pictures were taken, and she didn't have to wait until we left the doctor's office. Well...she just hopped right up on that table, and even smiled and said "cheese" as they took the pictures-- even with her arms being raised sabove her head by the tech! She did awesome. So the chest x-rays looked ok, which is good news. We decided to wait a few more months until the summer to see if she will outgrow everything. We have an appointment to see him again in July. If she still has symptoms, we are going to do another outpatient procedure where they sedate her, and then send a probe down her throat to look at what is going on. He said that if the symptoms are still there, ti could very well be that she has some scar tissue from a breathing tube that will need to be lasered off to get rid of the symptoms. Obviously, her growth and activity levels have not been affected by this, but she would forever sound like our little "monster" if that is was causing the raspiness and we didn't remove it.

So not terrible news, not great news, just ok news. It was our decision to wait until the summer because we are just not at the point where we are ready to subject her to another procedure right now. Both for her and us, I guess you could say!

So that's all for now...gotta go pack!!! :)