Firming Up Anniv/Vacation Plans

It's a few more weeks 'til July and our 10th wedding anniversary! Plans are firming up, and I've already booked Japa and moi on our flight from the West Coast to the East Coast.

To start us off, though, it looks like we're going to go with Mom and Dad to Hawaii! Alo-o-o-ha!!! Whoohooo!!! The usual 3-4 days of stopping over in Honolulu so that Dad can rest and break up the long haul from Manila to Los Angeles.

While in Hawaii, we usually stay in Honolulu. More often than not, Dad's fave place to check in is the Hilton Hawaiian Village. We've also stayed at the Marriott, which is very nice as well. For our next trip, we're going to have to convince Dad and Mom to go back to the beautiful island of Maui.

And really, we do need to try and get out of our "hotel-rut" and branch out into staying in alternative forms of hotels, such as condos or other Hawaiian vacation rentals. When we were planning Mom's suprise 60th birthday last year, we were looking at residential and other vacation villas as an option to staying at a hotel. With such a huge family like ours, it was just going to be more feasible, budget-wise, to stay at places such as these. Places that cater to families, and help highlight Hawaii as an eco-tourist spot that it is.

There are fabulous makena oceanfront condos that are such a great deal, it would be hard to pass them up, really! So, bookmarking this for future reference....maybe in a year's time we can go back and explore the state of Hawaii more.

{Update on Tita San}

A couple of emails from RJ. This one from this morning,

Just got back from the hospital and mom's surgery went well. The doctors removed all of the pus and will be administering antibiotic irrigation to the area that was just operated on for about a week (in addition to her intravenal antibiotics) . She'll be in the ICU during that time, but if everything goes well (and no further infection develops) the doctor said that she'll be ready to go back to manila na. Their only concern is that they found a small pinhole break in her brain membrane which the doctors sealed. They'll be monitoring that area during the daily(?) irrigation and they're hoping that no infection develops - mom's immunity is really low after all since she's had 5 surgeries as well as several radiation treatments, after all. But overall, I think this is good news. We just have to continue praying for her.

And this one from their evening visit:

Just came back from the hospital and things are looking really good. During our 30 minute visit, we were able to communicate with mom (the best we've seen her so far). She was able to look at whoever was speaking to her and was able to nod and shake her head in response to our questions. She was also able to slightly move both her arms and her legs, with mobility in her right arm being the most prominent. She even grimaced and shook her head when we suggested that we were going to cut her nails because they were getting too long. :)

She still has the respirator tube inserted in her mouth but it's no longer connected to the actual machine - just oxygen (from what I could see). The nurses said that it was still a precautionary measure and it'll still be a day or two before they remove the tube. All in all, I think she's making real good progress. We just need to keep praying that she doesn't get another infection. I'll update you all again tomorrow.

So hoping that all goes well for Tita San. Praying that she is able to get home soon, where she will be surrounded by family and friends, instead of being in Korea.

Please say a short prayer for her!

TTFN!