Our Town

Ryan is our resident conversationalist. He is keeping us on our toes as he hears new words or understands new concepts. Recently, he's been using the term "our town." When we drive somewhere, he'll ask if we're in "our town" yet or he'll say, "we have one of those in our town" in reference to a number of things-chain restaurants or stores.
It hit me the other day that while it makes sense to Ryan that this is our town, I have not allowed it to become my town in my own head. In fact, I kind of think of the Montgomery Gentry song "My Town" when I hear him use the phrase. While the specific storyline of the song doesn't fit me nor the town I grew up in. The essence of the song hits home. That you spend so much time one place that there are certain feelings associated with it. While the song goes on and says that things have changed, there's still a consistency, an understanding of the town itself that is just there in your subconscious. At least, that's how I feel. I could tell lots of stories about growing up where I did. Part of who I am comes from where I grew up, how I was raised and the things I've taken for granted as being part of an ideal hometown. 
What's even more interesting is to compare that to Oliver's sense of "my town." In his entire life, the longest he's ever lived in one town has been these last 10 years. He grew up moving every 2 or 3 years to a wide variety of exciting and not so exciting places. His family learned that it didn't matter where you lived, but how.
It's a little sad to me that I've not allowed my head or my heart to accept the fact that this is our town. We've lived in 7 different "homes" in this city. When we were dating, we walked all over the blocks near our apartment complex and alot of areas not so near our apartment complex. Oliver worked on Downtown Center Street for a while. He secretly found and bought a ring in our town to give to me as a symbol of the commitment he was making to me. We found a great basement apartment to live in when we were first married. Then we quickly found another one 14 blocks further west that was just as great, if not greater. That led us to visiting new parts of our town that included a river and a beautiful walkway. We were blessed with two beautiful sons delivered in our town's hospital where Oliver himself was born many years before. We've discovered most of the parks in our town. I've discovered many roads that don't have adequate sidewalks for stroller pushing. Our town has grocery stores with differences: one serves up Kong Kones and one makes muffin tops. Our town holds doctor's offices. Our town has a preschool that Evan's attended for 2 years now. Ryan has his own "school" that he talks about whenever we drive past. There's a beautiful library that I have a card for. There's a temple that shines at night and mountains looming over it all.
And then there's the campus of BYU. The reason I'm here to begin with, the reason we've lingered, and the reason I've struggled finding peace with this being "our town."
BYU's population is roughly the same size of the town I grew up in.
BYU provides almost everything a college student would ever need to survive. There's the housing. There are jobs. The classes. The entertainment. It even has food, a fitness center, churches in the classroom buildings, a health center and lots more. Everything is enveloped into a small space if you don't have a lot of needs(or a lot of transportation options). I took to this university bubble easily. After being a student for so many years, I learned and felt comfortable in being a citizen of the campus. It felt (and can still sometimes feel) like mine.
Basically, the point of this rambling and run down memory lane is to point out that I need to be better about being a citizen of our town. Ryan needs it. I need it. I need to feel comfortable with where I'm living. I need to take advantage of the opportunities available to me, even if I struggle with the fact that with a "population at the 2010 census of 112,488, Provo is the principal city in the Provo-Orem metropolitan area, which had a population of 526,810 residents at the 2010 census."(thanks wikipedia).
This is our town. Will we be finding a new town in the next year or two, yes. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of things I can be doing to let this place feel like mine. One more thing for me to learn from my son.

Opposition in All Things

Our beautiful blue eyed blonde had a rough start to this week. He had multiple seizures a day on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday until he was given a prescription for an anti-convulsant medication which has, thankfully, stopped any more seizures from happening.
Those three days were very hard for me. It was hard to see Evan not being himself. He wasn't able to behave like normal-he was very lethargic and would fall almost every time he stood up. By Tuesday afternoon, as we left the doctor's office, I was extremely overwhelmed. I had seen my son have a seizure multiple times and come out of them in pain. He had fallen so many times and hit his head just as many that I felt his safety was in extreme danger. I was spending most of my time within a foot of him to help prevent him from falling. I'd come out of the bathroom Tuesday morning to see him seizing in the living room. And that afternoon after the doctor, he followed me to the bathroom, and promptly hit his head on the door jamb. I spent 20 minutes then crying. Ugly, face reddening bawling. I decided that I couldn't leave Evan so I didn't go to my staff meeting that afternoon. I also decided that I didn't have the energy to split my focus between Evan and Ryan so Ryan got to go play with Oliver's cousin, Tyler, for the afternoon while I laid and held Evan. Oliver came home after picking up Ryan and the prescription. After the first dose given, Evan was practically back to normal that night. He had energy. He had an appetite. He didn't fall asleep until 3am.
The next day I felt so much love and support. The night before I'd been able to talk with my parents and felt reassured just by hearing their voices and their concern. I got a phone call Wednesday morning from an old friend who'd heard that stuff was happening. I got some supportive words via facebook. Tyler stopped by since I had not told him anything about what was going on and he was worried about us. He then took Ryan outside to play and to lunch while Evan was napping and I was able to clean the house a bit. Oliver's Mom and sister came over to be with the boys while I had a meeting and then stayed to hang out for 2 hours after. It was nice to just be with them. And then my beautiful friend Shayla who had called me earlier in the day, who lives in an entirely different state, "brought" us dinner. She has always been so thoughtful and generous and it really meant a lot to me that she would do that for us. I was so overwhelmed by the generous acts. Even just the questions of "how are things?" by those who knew something was going on but didn't know what.
To explain how much of a big deal this is, I NEVER miss meetings on Tuesdays. By the simple act of choosing to stay home and take Tuesday off, my associate Hall Advisor knew there was something extremely wrong. She called me just to make sure things were okay and to ask if there was anything she could do. I even had an RA offer to bring us dinner...well, his best effort which would be a box of cereal.
I cannot express the giant difference in those two days. From moments of pain, despair, and confusion to being lifted up by love and service. Thank you for all of those things.
2 Nephi 2:11 & 23 says:

For it must needs be that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. [...]wherefore they(Adam & Eve) would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. 

These two days really expressed the significance of opposition in life to me.  I am thankful for Evan's health. I'm thankful that we haven't had to deal with this situation for the majority of the last 5 years. I am thankful for doctors. I'm thankful for loving friends and family.

If you Think about Seuss

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

We ate green eggs and ham.
We ate them in a box.

We ate noodles like the poodle with the tweetle beetle battle on his back.

We made cheese trees that made some fleas sneeze.

 And read Fox in Socks.
We enjoyed some red fish and blue fish(well, green). Oliver read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to his students and incorporated it into their discussion on genetics.

We balanced one or two apples up on top. We could not get Ten Apples Up On Top.

We also read The Big Brag, Yertle the Turtle, Horton Hatches the Egg, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, The Lorax, and Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

We even watched a few musical scenes of Seussical the Musical which made me think of my sister.
We had a fun little dessert to look like the Cat's Hat. 

And at the end of the day we were thinking in rhyme, but very grateful to have spent so much time reading together. Thanks for your creativity Dr. Seuss.