McAllen, St. Louis, Milwaukee: Vacation 2016

Well we are back from vacation. We were gone for almost 3 weeks and traveled over 3,000 miles. Nate was gone almost an entire month and logged more miles than we did.

For this trip I was the most prepared I have ever been when it comes to packing for a trip. We have done 2 big road trips with Zoe in the past and this would be our biggest yet. I wanted to make sure that we were really prepared. I packed up snacks, new toys, a great deal of technology and many other essentials. We had a mountain of bags ready to go the night before.

Dancing Machine: Zoe Wollenberg

It's the middle of June! This is very exciting for our small family because things are finally starting to slow down a little at church. It has seemed like things have been busy since Christmas. Advent and Lent were very close together this year, then once Easter was over, we had school events, confirmation, graduation parties, a youth gathering fundraiser and lastly, VBS. It has all come to a close and we have about two "normal" weeks before we head on vacation.

VBS went great. We averaged just over 100 participants throughout the week. We had even more people helping make dinner, leading children around, taking pictures, leading crafts and music, and watching the little ones so their parents could volunteer. VBS is a huge undertaking every year. It requires many hands to pull off.

Another Zoe First!

The close of the school year has been a very busy time for us, mostly for Nate. We have been in the call process for a new DCE at St. Paul and he also has VBS coming up soon. Because of his crazy schedule, he took his day off on Monday the past couple of weeks. We decided to do something with Zoe that we hadn't done before; we took her to play on the beach. I had avoided taking her to the beach for a few reasons. The biggest reason was that with her condition we have to avoid bacteria getting in her diaper and need to keep her dry as much as possible, plus her prophylactic antibiotic makes her more susceptible to a get a sunburn. The other reasons were not as dire, such as: Zoe eating sand, lugging a million things on the beach, having to change her clothes/diaper and such at the beach. Those are normal parenting beach woes that I didn't want to handle on top of her condition. Since we got a good report at the last urologist appointment and she is listening to directions a little bit better these days, I felt comfortable to try it out. I also was okay with only spending a couple of hours on the beach as a trial run.

An Update on Zoe's Condition - Spoiler - It's good news!

Many of you know that Zoe has a bladder condition called Vesicoureteral reflux. Vesico-ur-whaaattt? Basically her ureters from her bladder to her kidneys are kinked and that makes urine travel back up into her kidneys, collect bacteria, and cause UTIs. Zoe was diagnosed with this at about 3 months old. You can read about all that here.

Well, about a month and a half ago we took Zoe to her urologist in San Antonio and they did a test to see what the status of her condition was. She underwent two tests and performed like a rock star! We received good news right away from the radiologist that Zoe's condition had almost completely resolved itself on one side and the other side had decreased from a 5 (the worst) to about a 3.5 or 4. This is superb news. When she was diagnosed there was only a 10% chance she would grow out of it. She is now up to about a 60% chance. Now, if she has another UTI at all she will have to have surgery. The good news is that the surgery would be a less complicated procedure. That being said, we are still praying for her to grow out of this. We appreciate all of your prayers as she continues to grow, that she may completely grow out of her condition and stay infection free.

On our way back home, our tire blew. Thankfully, Nate was driving and calmly got us to the side of the road. It was pretty scary.

And just because...

That's all for now. God is good.

The Best Mother's Day Gift

Last night, Nate was getting Zoe ready for bed and I was making a very late dinner for Nate and myself after traveling back from Austin. Full disclosure, I've had better days. Zoe ran to me in the kitchen and I picked her up and for the first time she said, "Mommy, I love you." *Tears for days* That was the perfect Mother's Day gift.