i'm engaged!

i mentioned in the last post that my dad was having surgery in LA, so i came down to be with him here for about a week. james was able to come on thursday night for the weekend, and he proposed on friday night!

we had plans to see a new water show at california adventure friday night, so after watching the show, which was neat but very crowded and hard to see, we walked over to disneyland as the fireworks were starting. we finished watching the fireworks in the park, and decided to ride matterhorn mountain because we hadn't been on it yet. when we neared the front of the line, they announced that it was broken. :[ so we headed over to space mountain instead only to find that it was also not running. at that point james asked me if i just wanted to go take some pictures in by the castle... i guess he knows me and my picture taking habits well enough to know he would get a definite yes to that question. as we were walking on the pathways near the right side of the castle, he said he needed to tie his shoe. i looked at his shoes and said "no you don't. your shoes are fine. come on!" [i wanted my photos by now. ha.] so i kept walking, and he stopped. when i turned around, he was on one knee with the ring. :] i basically just kept saying, "babe! what are you doing?" and he kept saying, "look!" and then he finally said, "will you marry me?"

afterward, we walked around the rest of the little pathways and fountains. then i called my dad and found out that my family was in the park near the front gate, so we went to tell them the news. when i walked up... no one seemed to be reacting in any sort of shocked manner. it turns out that they all knew. ha! james called to ask my dad about two weeks ago when he was on his way to s.f. to buy the ring, and my mom was with my dad, so she knew. then my dad told my brother and sister here at disneyland... so they knew too. as we were walking around, i jokingly told my mom and sister that i was surprised that in my family of criers, no one cried!

i guess i should also add that he definitely got the right ring. :] we had never gone to look or anything, but he knew what i wanted. i have tried asking him questions about how he picked it, and he said he just went to tiffany and said he wanted the classic tiffany ring. ha.

here are a bunch of random photos. the first two are from immediately after he proposed:


this was the next day at haunted mansion:
and over by thunder mountain:
this is later in the evening also at thunder mountain with my sister:
and with james:
this was sunday morning in toontown:
and a partial [my dad has taken it very easy and spent most of his time in the hotel watching movies] family photo:
this is the spot where he proposed during the day:
and a few castle pictures! :]

anyway. that's the latest news! james is back home for work, and i'm still here in LA because my dad's post-op appointment is tomorrow morning. we'll find out at that point what the pathology reports showed, and hopefully it will be good news. he's doing better and better each day. he has six holes in his abdomen. five of them are about 1-2cm and one of them is around 3 inches. that's the main source of his pain, but his prostate was much larger than they thought it was, so they had to make a larger hole to take it out. his birthday was on saturday, and he was able to come to out to dinner and even ride a couple rides. it's nice to see him smiling and joking around, even if his is in some pain.

i'll be back with more soon! :]

sad news.

i found out on the 16th [which was my first official day of spring break] that my dad has prostate cancer. i was back home in reno, and he came down to my room in the morning and told me the news. i tried not to cry in front of him, but it was hard... i definitely got teary. i still do now when i think about it.

he's had an elevated PSA for a while, so he had a feeling. i had a feeling about it too. but he decided to wait until his dad passed away to get the biopsy so that his dad wouldn't know...

[you might remember that my grandpa had prostate cancer too.]

anyway. he is going to have surgery towards the end of may in LA. after his surgery, my sister and i will spend about a week with him down there, and then i will take him home. [thank goodness i'll be done with school by then.] the rest of my family will come down as they can get time away from work, and we're going to spend time at disneyland... leave it to my dad to put a fun twist on a crappy situation. :]

he decided to go with the da vinci robotic surgery, and his surgeon has excellent records and lots of experience. so i am trusting that he is in good hands and that everything will be fine during and after the surgery. i'm also hopeful that they will be able to get good margins during the surgery, so we don't have to worry about it anymore. with the da vinci method, the recovery time is generally much quicker than traditional surgery... so maybe he will even be able to enjoy a ride or two. either way, i think he's happy that everyone will be able to come see him during his initial recovery.

i'm not sure if i mentioned that my grandma also found out that she had cancer after my grandpa passed away. she didn't want to have surgery or anything, but her doctor convinced her to go ahead with it. a few days after she got home from the hospital, she collapsed. it turns out that she had a DVT, two pulmonary embolisms, and a stroke because her doctors didn't give her anticoagulant therapy post-surgery, like they should have. :[ she's lost a lot of her speech, memory, ect. it's heartbreaking really. she gets very frustrated now about her situation, but she has made some progress with therapy. my sister told me that she was able to play a whole song on the piano the other day, which is so exciting. but then... she has a hard time setting the table for dinner. and when she was making breakfast the other day, she put the whole egg in the frying pan and forgot to crack it. people keep telling me that they "know someone" who fully recovered after a stroke, and i really want my grandma to be one of those people too. i hope she has the will to continue working on getting better. she's such a strong woman, but i know it's very hard for her to be in this spot now.

school is done in three weeks, and i am so excited to be able to focus on my family and not have the stress of school adding onto everything else that's going on right now. wish me luck on getting through this last stretch of class and exams!