Christmas Letter 2012

Christmas 2012 is our fifth together, and before every one of those holidays Sundy and I have debated the sending of Christmas letters to our friends and family. (Any guesses on who advocated which position?) This year we finally reached a compromise: blog a Christmas letter and leave everyone the opportunity to either seek out or ignore the accounting of our yearly accomplishments.

Somehow the task of writing the letter fell to me. And here it is:

Our year started in Durham, Oregon, with us living in Paul and Bev Roberts' beautiful home while they served a mission in Finland. We knew that our days in Oregon were numbered, because I had accepted a scholarship to the University of Colorado School of Medicine, but we were in denial about the move. Oregon was the place we had come to call home and experienced the joys and sorrows of our first four years of marriage.

The two of us at the Roberts' house

During the early part of the year, I finished up my master's thesis, evaluating a buprenorphine-assisted opioid dependence treatment protocol. I continued managing the medical department of a drug and alcohol treatment center. Sundy, meanwhile, was in high demand as a child and family therapist at Western Psychological. In our free time we would go jogging through Cook Park and began visiting all our favorite Portland locales for the final time.

My (Tyler's) completed thesis. Technically I graduated with my MHA in August, though I didn't attend graduation as I had already begun med school.

In July, Grandpa Maestas, my mom, and my brother Sage drove to Portland to help us move. With their help we packed what belongings we had left into a truck and drove to Utah.

With us in between jobs and homes, we spent an obligation-free July with family in Utah. While there, we watched Katherine Jenkins perform, ran our first 10K, watched multiple softball games, and, most importantly, got Sundy on a horse for the first time:

She looks like a natural, doesn't she?

We left Utah for Aurora, Colorado just a week after the mass shooting made the city famous, this time with the help of Bob and Nancy Peterson, Sundy's parents. I started school in August, and our new life in the Denver Colorado area began.

The adjustment from Oregonians to Coloradans was not easy. It took Sundy several months to find a job, before she finally ended up managing a before-and-after-school program at Ponderosa Elementary School. We also finally ended up in a house we love, attending a church congregation (the Peoria Ward) where we have made great new friends.

The most exciting news of the year: we are again expecting a baby, a little girl due in early March. This pregnancy has progressed further than any previous, and as Sundy enters her third pregnant trimester we are grateful and excited for the new addition to our family.

Though we don't want to jinx ourselves, we are grateful that this year has been one of dream fulfillment. For our entire marriage we have been trying to get into medical school and expand our family beyond the marital dyad. One of those finally came to pass this year and the other looks to be happening early next year. Rest assured that once our little one arrives there will be plenty of pictures up on this blog...

Merry Christmas, everyone! We wish you a happy and blessed holiday season, and hope that your coming year is filled with joy and growth.

The End of an Era

Three or four times a week, Sundy has to be to work by 6:25 am. As we are a one-car household, this leaves me with two choices of how to get to school on those mornings: have her drop me off at the bus stop at 6:15 or wait and walk the mile to the bus stop an hour later. I generally (well, make that always) choose the latter option. This gives me some time to work out, though lately I've been using the time to get some extra sleep (as my Thanksgiving-altered waistline can attest).

Usually the bus gets me to campus a few minutes before class starts, but the first two days of last week the bus was running late and I missed the first few minutes of lecture. On Wednesday, then, I left twenty minutes earlier, planning to catch an earlier bus in order to make it on time.

It was a beautiful morning, the sun coming up over the eastern plains, the late fall air crisp and clean, the traffic on Mississippi Avenue light and quiet. I took it all in and enjoyed the walk, listening to the latest This American Life episode on my iPod and appreciating the fact that it was most likely the only exercise I would be getting that day (it was one of those days I elected extra sleep over working out).

As I cut through a parking lot, I noticed the bus waiting at a light just before my stop. Concerned about missing it (rendering the loss of extra sleep vain), I ran to catch the bus. Which I did (and discovered that even though I've picked up a few extra pounds, I'm still in shape enough to run to catch the bus).

As a bit of a news junkie, I take advantage of the bus ride to catch up on the day's headlines. Sundy and I got smartphones for our jobs when we lived in Oregon, and though we no longer have a data plan, the phones have WiFi capability. I take advantage of that to load up the digests for Slate and the BBC before leaving home, in preparation for reading them on the bus. That day had been no different. After settling in my seat, I reached in my pocket to pull out my phone, but it wasn't there.

I searched my other pockets, then my backpack, but found nothing. I remembered grabbing my phone before leaving the house, so I was fairly certain I hadn't forgotten it. Then my heart sank. What if the phone had fallen out of my pocket when I was running? I got off the bus at the next stop and began the long walk back to the parking lot to search for it.

And I found it. Face down in the parking lot. But when I picked it up, this is what I saw:

Spiderweb screen.

Forlorn and dejected, I started walking home. I was already late for class, and I knew that Sundy wouldn't be able to get a hold of me to coordinate picking me up after school. My class lectures are recorded and broadcast online, so I decided that rather than go back to school I would head home and mourn the loss of my beloved phone.

Before moving, to break our phone contract and get rid of data on our phones, we had to purchase another phone at full price. I bought the cheapest phone they had, and we kept that little phone with us through all our moves. Fortunately, then, I had a phone I could use (as much as I'd like to do it, it's hard to imagine life without a cell phone in this day and age):

My new, bottom-of-the-line phone.

When Sundy got home and heard the sad news, she said, "It's the end of an era." Smartphones were the last relic of our DINC (dual-income, no children) days. It's unlikely that we'll have the money for another smartphone (and the contractual data plan that comes with it) before finishing medical school. So I guess I'll have to find another way to read the news on the way to school. I wonder if I can find any good deals on newspaper subscriptions...

Autophagy

I finally figured out why I didn't get into medical school until this year.

We are currently studying cell physiology. Organelles, membranes, endocytosis, cellular respiration - mostly information we covered in high school and college level biology. Last Wednesday, though, we were introduced to a new topic. After a clinical vignette on cholera (to get us ready for our Thanksgiving feasts, I'm sure), we covered the process of autophagy.

We learned that autophagy is the process by which worn out or dysfunctional proteins and organelles are delivered to and degraded by lysosomes. And this is cutting-edge information. In his deadpan Irish brogue, Dr. Thorburn told us that this was the first year autophagy had been taught as part of the med school curriculum at UC Denver, "so those of you who could have gone to school last year but decided to wait a year made a good choice. Look what you would have missed out on."

The first picture of autophagy ever taken. Published in the Journal of Cell Biology in 1962

Yep. There's the reason. My medical education would have been incomplete without a lecture on autophagy. Who knew?

It Feels Like Home

The title of this post (and this blog, for that matter), come from our wedding song of the same name. Original, I know. But it's truly amazing how all the places we settle into can become our "home"--our refuge, our happiness.

When we moved to Colorado, we knew we wanted to live in a house. We knew it couldn't be like the mansion we house-sat in before, but after spending so much time without neighbors bumping our walls or the smell of smoke wafting in on a summer's day, it seemed like a necessity, not a luxury, even on a medical student budget.

Bless Mississippi Ave. It's a huge street with lots and lots of sirens and traffic, and probably the only reason we can afford our stay in this 900 sq. feet of a house. My personal favorite amenity is the garage. (No picture available).

Tyler's favorite is the yard, which thankfully is long enough to somewhat block the noise from the chaos of traffic. He loves it so much he took TWO pictures, but I will just post one :). I think he loves the potential of this weed-covered place. He's already talking about raised bed garden plots with all his spare time:

Our lovely bedroom with its yellow hue--yes, that is Aurora sunshine sneaking in through the window:

The kitchen/dining area was our biggest challenge, but since adding some IKEA counter space, this area is totally functional, minus a dishwasher. We do, however, have two dish washers :)

Our living room, complete with happy red couches from my parents, brought all the way over the mountains by Tyler's family:

A glimpse of our office/workout space/library. You'll notice how preposterously large my masters diploma looks next to Tyler's masters diploma. I promise, I didn't pick the size.

Yes, it feels like home. We'll post a picture of the nursery when there is anything that resembles a nursery in that room. Right now it just feels like storage in there.

It's a . . .

The ultrasound technician told us she is not allowed to guarantee any baby's sex, but she also told us that she doesn't say if she's not sure. . .

And each time she checked (three times), she definitely said "GIRL."

She was a moving and a shaking, before, during, and after :)

Yay for baby girl Anderson!!!!  

Anatomy

Anschutz Medical Campus (CU Denver) 

Last year, when I was interviewing for medical school, a second-year student told me about his typical schedule: "Generally, we have classes for 4 hours in the morning, and then I study for 4-5 hours in the afternoon." It wasn't like undergraduate education, he told me, where one has several breaks during the day in between classes. "You have to think of it like a full-time job."

At the time, I was working full time and attending classes on the weekend. I didn't respond to the student's advice, but I remember thinking, "Oh, so it's not like having a full-time job and going to school? Medical school is going to be easier than I thought." That was the thought that got me through my master's program: I just have to finish this, and life will be easier. Life will be easier in medical school.

Then I started anatomy. To give a bit of background: the curriculum at CU School of Medicine is organized in blocks. Rather than studying anatomy, physiology, molecular biology, epidemiology, and pathology at the same time over multiple semesters (in a manner similar to undergraduate education), courses are covered one at a time. That is, during the anatomy block, we only study anatomy. All of our lab, small group, and clinical skills curricula are focused entirely on the memorization of anatomical structures. Afterwards, we move on to the next block (molecules to medicine), where we study only molecular biology (and a little epidemiology). And so on.

Rembrandt's representation of a 17th-Century anatomy lesson (take away the pointy beards and ruffled collars, and add some halogen lights, and it's not too different from 21st-Century anatomy at CU)

The anatomy course ran from August 13 to October 15, two months that succeeded in destroying my expectations of a more facile existence in medical school and humbling my rather lofty estimation of my learning ability. I should have known better.

You see, anatomy has never been an educational strength of mine. Ten years ago, I took anatomy as a college freshman, hubristically confident that my high school academic success would easily transform into community college A's. Unfortunately, my brain did not seem built for the easy comprehension of the differentiation and identification of human body structures.

The first three units of the class went fine. Then came the muscular system. Though I studied more for that unit than I had for any previous class I had ever taken, in groups and and, with cadavers in the anatomy lab and with textbooks at home, it was overwhelmingly difficult for me to learn all of the muscles' names, origins, insertions, relative locations, and actions in the time allotted for the unit. When the exam rolled around (all too soon), I passed it, though the score was quite a bit lower than my previous ones.

The score had dropped enough, in fact, that the professor approached me before class and asked if everything was all right. "You know," he told me, "mid-semester, a lot of students start planning for their missions and begin to lose focus in school." Taken aback by his comment, I didn't tell him that my drop in score wasn't mission-pining so much as muscle-perplexion. In fact, I don't remember responding with anything at all except for "Okay." (That professor actually wrote one of my letters of recommendation for medical school. I've since wondered if that was related to the fact that it took me 4 tries to get accepted.)

Unfortunately, my difficulties did not end there. In the lab, I found it difficult to recognize the difference among some tendons, nerves, veins, and arteries. Over the semester, through hard work and some helpful mnemonics, I was able to drastically improve my understanding of the subject, and I ended up passing the class with a decent grade. However, I left the class still feeling unsure and unsteady in anatomy.

I should have anticipated that med school anatomy would also be difficult. Needless to say, this block did not pan out as I expected it to. I spent multiple nights and weekends in the lab and at home. Until now, never in my life have I studied out of fear of not passing. And studying out of fear is much less fulfilling than learning out of interest in the subject.

Well, last Monday I took the final anatomy exam . . . and I passed, with a margin actually a bit larger than I expected. I have now began the Molecules to Medicine block, which we have been told is less taxing than anatomy. I'm beginning to see a pattern, though, in what we medical students hear about our future studies: a better life is just around the corner. Working, studying, and applying to medical school is difficult, but just get into school and things will be easier. Anatomy is a beast, but make it through and the next coursework will be more manageable. Just make it through course work; life during the third and fourth year clinical rotations is better. People hold out "grass is greener" lifelines to us, and we students are desperately gullible enough to grasp on.

But it's getting us through. So far I've found Molecules to Medicine to be manageable, and I'm enjoying the subject matter we're studying and learning. Next week I get my first chance to be out in a clinic and actually interact with patients. Things are definitely looking up. Anatomy is finished; long live Molecules to Medicine.

Of Late in Aurora

It's been some time since an Anderson family update, so I thought I'd skip the gimmics of writing a real blog post (the Sundy, heart-felt, drawn-out kind), and just give some bullet points.

* As announced on my personal blog, I am pregnant. I'll be 18 weeks this week, have had a surgery to hopefully keep this baby sewn in until 37 weeks, and will be finding out the gender of the baby on Oct 26th!

* Tyler is passing his anatomy class (don't let his next blog post fool you--he is still a smart man, even though anatomy is a kick in the pants for sure).

* Tyler got called as our ward's Ward Mission Leader, and we LOVE having the missionaries in our home weekly.

* I got a job last week as a before and after school leader at a Title 1 elementary school in town. Of the 50+ children in our program, only 7 live with both of their parents. Let's just say there are a lot of emotional and behavioral issues. Some of these children are at school for 12 hours a day. Wow. It's not quite my counseling field, but my skills learned in play therapy for the last two years are actually quite helpful.

* We had our first snow-fall last week. I enjoyed watching kids build tiny snowmen with the skiff of snow in the October sunshine. I'm kinda digging this fall sunshine thing. Denver may have something on Portland after all :).

* Our good friends from our ward and medical school invited us up to Matt's family's cabin to watch General Conference. SO fun to be with a family in the mountains feeling the love of God.

Life is good. Our hearts are filled with gratitude to have another opportunity to have a baby. We sometimes wonder what it would be like to be more than S & T. The prospect is dizzying. Love to you all :)

Cats, Cars, and Colorado

Two weeks ago, while Tyler was busy studying anatomy, I was given the opportunity to ride back to Utah with my grandparents to see my family for a short 5 day stay. I left my dear one and got to attend a family reunion of sorts with my dad's side of the family. The road trip was long but it was worth to see loved ones.

Conveniently, my dad's youngest brother Glen and my Aunt Karen were driving through Colorado from Utah back to Virginia (wow, what a trip!) and were able to give me a lift back to Denver after my stay in Utah. Inconveniently, their trusty Toyota Sienna van broke down (actually completely died) just five miles outside of Vail, Colorado. Normally, I'm sure most would consider Vail an ideal vacation destination, but for a family who had already been on the road for three weeks, this was not ideal.

Here's some footage of Karen trying to get cell phone coverage in the frosty Colorado air while my 7-year old cousin Joseph kept saying things like "this is a situation." Here's me smiling at the craziness of at all :)

 AAA gave Karen the phone number to a taxi service to pick us up and take us back to Vail, but because Karen could not be more specific than "we are at mile marker 185.5 about 5 miles west of Vail on I-70," the taxi would not come pick us up. Fortunately, the tow truck driver was completely comfortable with breaking AAA rules and let us ride in the van on the tow truck back to town, as seen here:

Here's cousin Isaac being cool as a cucumber while Glen and Karen brace themselves for the future.

By 10 pm, this little caravan was eating pub food at a local bar, settled into the reality that we'd be staying the night and not leaving with the van in the morning. The only person with a real appetite was little Joseph, shown here with his burger:

 We made it to Denver, and the Petersons made it back to Virginia in a rental van. Waiting for me were two happy kitties, who had been banned from the bed while I was away:

 (Insert my body between these two lovies and you've got yourself a classic Sundy morning ;).

We have moved into our new house, and I am missing Nick (above) and Nellie (below) like crazy. I am, for the first and only time in my existence, a crazy cat lady.

Apparently, Tyler missed me. I sure missed him. Colorado is turning out to be quite an adjustment for me. I can do anything with him by my side (especially since the cats are no longer by my side).

First Exam

At the risk of self-categorization, I acknowledge that there is a medical student stereotype. Medical students are the ones who visit their undergraduate professors to argue for two points on their 150-point chemistry exams. We can be "smart-and-we-know-it" types, who take some pleasure in showing how much we know, especially if it means contradicting someone who got it wrong. We tend to be passionate, type-A, driven people who sincerely desire to help others but want to do so with the prestige of the MD title. After all, it takes a certain high level of self esteem (and masochism, for that matter) to commit to 8-12 years of time-intense post-graduate education and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans that accompany it.

We medical students tend to be those who were near the top of the class in high school and undergraduate education. It isn't easy to be in a program where an immense quantity of information is thrown at us without the hope that we will be able to retain everything. That became especially apparent this week as we prepare for our first exam. On Friday, a professor explained what the exam would look like, and slightly panicked students began firing questions about what they could do to maximize their scores, including pre-arguments for questions they anticipated getting wrong: "What if I answered it this way?" "But I thought that teres minor was fed by the posterior circumflex humeral artery."

I have to admit that I am one of those with a bit of anxiety about how well I will do on the test. This is the first memorization-heavy class I have had in six years - my music classes in undergrad and administration courses in the MHA program I completed tended to be read-and-analyze rather than memorize-and-regurgitate classes. As a result, I think my memorization muscles have atrophied. Information just doesn't seem to be sticking - for the life of me I can't remember which of the erector spinae muscles attach to the costal angles as opposed to the rib bodies, or which of the bundles leaving the brachial plexus is the axillary nerve:

I take comfort, though, in the grading system at the school: fail, pass, and honors. A passing grade is anything above 70%; honors, a pleasant but rather meaningless designation, is anything above 90%. It might take a little adjustment, but I think that I can be content with a just-above-passing grade.

The first exam (clinical anatomy of the back and extremities) is on Wednesday. It has two parts - a written portion and a practical portion in the anatomy lab, where we will be identifying structures on dissected cadavers. Two more study days...

The Results of an Overloaded Brain

Before reading this post, look at the above map and find the UPI building. Find it? OK; please continue:

Last week there was a Presidential Scholars reception on the medical campus. It gave a chance for those of us at the medical school who received scholarships to meet the donors who made the scholarship possible and express our gratitude for them. I felt it was important for me to do that, as the scholarship I received was what made it possible for me to attend medical school at UC Denver:

When I interviewed at the school last fall, I fell in love with the school and the sunshine. At the Denver Airport, after the interview, I called Sundy and told her, "I really love it here. It's too bad it would never work out." The out-of-state tuition at UC Denver is one of the highest in the country, and I didn't think I could justify its cost when I could get in-state tuition at OHSU, the Oregon medical school. The acceptance to UC Denver came two weeks later. Sun and I were both excited about actually having a medical school acceptance after 4 years of trying, but we were still holding out for OHSU. However, a few weeks later, I received word of a UC Denver scholarship that would make tuition significantly less expensive, even compared to the in-state rates at OHSU. We had felt good about Denver all along; the scholarship was the final piece that fell into place and made our move here possible.

So, I greatly appreciated the scholarship and wanted to express that appreciation. I made plans to attend the reception, and since it was on campus, I decided to stay at school after classes and then just walk to the reception a few minutes before it started. I had received the address where the reception would be taking place in an earlier email, so I figured I could look up the address sometime during the day.

Then the day of the reception, I got reminder email. The email did not have an address, but it did say that the reception would be held in the UPI building, and referred me to the attached map to find it. I found the building on the lower right corner of the map (is that where you found it, too?) and mapped out my walk to the building. That evening, I started walking there with what I thought was plenty of time to arrive.

What I found, though, was a building under construction. I walked around it and thought that there was no way the reception could be held there. So I walked back to the education buildings (where I could get WiFi) and checked the email again. Sure enough, the building under construction was what was marked as the UPI building. I walked to the building again, now about 20 minutes late, and walked around. I found an opening in the construction fence and walked in. The building door adjacent to the fence opening was also open, so I walked in.

I spent the next 20 minutes wandering around a half-constructed, deserted building. On one floor there was a large room full of cubicles, but completely void of any person from whom to ask directions. Another floor had several rooms that could have qualified as reception halls, but the doors were all locked, and I could hear no one on the other side of them. It felt surreal, like I was part of a Twilight Zone episode, or of the Parable of the Ten Virgins - because I had not adequately prepared, I had to return to obtain the WiFi oil of knowledge and thus arrived too late, after the festivities had begun and the doors had been locked. Finally, I gave up.

I called and left semi-coherent messages for the organizer of the reception and the dean of student affairs so they would know that I hadn't just blown off the reception (I was just lost and really confused). I once again made the trek to the education buildings to write an email to the dean and more fully explain the situation. When opening up my email, I found a previous email from the dean that gave the address of the event: 13199 E Montview Blvd, on the other side of campus.

Yes, I had misread the map. The UPI building is actually the University Physicians, Inc. building, up in the top middle of the map. If I had written down the address earlier or checked the address before I left, I would have known. Whoops.

Apparently I was the only student who made the mistake. I arrived at the reception an hour late, and hastily (and sheepishly) explained the situation to the dean, who was attending the event. I could just feel everyone's eyes boring into me: "This is the type of student that received our scholarship money?" Also, I missed out on all the food.

I blame my confusion on the ambiguity of the email that was sent on the day of the event (which did not list the address or the full name of the building), but my ultimate excuse is the Human Body course I am in. The flood of information I am trying to absorb has overwhelmed the part of my brain I need to think clearly.

Medical School - First Week

Though we had a week of orientation prior, classes at the UC Denver School of Medicine officially started last week. So far, things are going all right (though we'll see if I still feel that way in three weeks after the first exam). The curriculum is arranged in blocks; for these first 9 weeks we will be covering anatomy, and after that physiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry in the alliterative "Molecules to Medicine" course.

One of the great things about medical school is that of focus. Because courses are taught in blocks and we students (the vast majority of us, at least - last week I spoke to a fellow student, a pharmacist, who is picking up shifts at a pharmacy on weekends) are not working, all of our energy can go into the current courses. That said, the sheer volume of material is almost overwhelming at times. These 9 weeks in anatomy comprise the entirety of anatomy we will receive over our medical training, and thus over the time we are learning everything - bony landmarks, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, ligaments, joints, fascias, ect., ect., ect. - that we will need to know as future physicians and surgeons.

The last anatomy class I had was my first semester of college - exactly 10 years ago. I took the class early to get it out of the way, but right now I regret the choice. Though terms are familiar - acromion, subscapularis, vagus - I usually don't remember to what they refer. Give me a few weeks, though, and I will (I hope).

The class structure is irregular right now. I've been told that later on in the year, the schedule is 4 hours of classes in the morning and 1-2 afternoons of classes. But right now we usually have classes in both the morning and the afternoon, usually instruction in the morning and anatomy lab or clinical skills (where we learn how to perform a physical exam) in the afternoons.

I am grateful for Sundays - time to step back and think about something other than medical school. I'm also grateful for Sundys - at least the one I'm married to. She cooks, cleans, drops me off, picks me up, makes flashcards, studies with me, and puts up with my moodiness. Only 17 of the 157 students in my class claim to be married - I feel sorry for the 140. I don't think I could make it without Sundy's support.

Tomorrow it is back to the books and cadaver lab (my first dissection is on Tuesday). Wish me luck!

Burlington

Burlington, Colorado is a town of 4,000 people 11 miles west of the Kansas/Colorado border. Right on I-70, many a traveler knows the place due to frequent blizzards during the winter months. Burlington offers safety from the storms of the plains. 

Burlington is also home to "the jewel of America," a fully restored, hand carved and painted carousel from 1906, which was originally purchased by a theme park in Denver but later bought by the Kit Carson County for about $2,000 when carousels started coming with horses that ride up and down.

I've just filled you in on why some might know Burlington. I know Burlington because of the Billingtons. My grandparents lived in Burlington, CO, for my entire childhood. This little farm town is like the Wonder Years of my memories. When we got to Denver, Tyler suggested we drive the 2 hours and change to get to this place that brings a smile to my face on mention. As we traveled across the flat lands, Tyler asked if he really had to ride the carousel. I was outraged he'd even think of not going.

It didn't take a lot of convincing once we arrived. The charm of the county fair grounds, the well-kept lawns, the 25 cent fair, and the historical museum describing the mysterious and complex history of the carousel's arrival and upkeep won Tyler's heart.

My heart was set on riding the hippocampus, the mermaid-tailed horse. I intentionally waited to get in line for the ride after a crowd of a dozen left so that I could be the first person on.

Here I am with the said hippocampus:

  

You'll notice that there are no pictures of me riding the hippocampus :(. Because the animals are all original with original paint, the rule is that once you pick your animal, you stay on it and cannot get on any others. If my plan to be the first person on would have worked, you would have seen that dreamy picture of me atop my childhood mare. But alas, a less than delightful child crept up in front of me as the gate up, handed his wooden token to the lady in charge, and ran straight to my beloved saying, "I'm going to ride this one!" Curses!

Tyler convinced me that my life was not over and I could still ride and have a good time. Nostalgia really does bring out the child in me :). We picked a family of giraffes instead. Tyler rode the papa:

 I rode the Mama:

And someday. . . that baby giraffe will have a rider, too.

Just down the country rode from the fair grounds is the Burlington LDS chapel, a tiny building filled with too many beautiful memories to enumerate. Summer mowings, winter craft bazaars, Sunday meals, testimonies rich in love. 

And of course, Grandma and Papa Billington's house. The one I have most memories in, on Pomeroy Street:

 And the one where I lived for a summer. I survived a tornado in this house (in the bathtub with a mattress atop my sweet 5th grade head :):

We went to Pizza Hut for lunch (Burlington never was known for its cuisine), drove past the middle and high school, and stopped by the pool, another spot full of summer memories. Sadly, the park across the street with the space ship is no longer. I guess it was a little old, but otherwise, the place is as I remember it, minus all the loved ones.

White Coat

August 10, 2012--a day to go down in history. Tyler was inducted into medical school with the University of Colorado's official White Coat Ceremony. I must admit, the last 4 years of pain-staking frustrations, work, and determination (mostly on Tyler's part but some on mine, too) made this day a sacred experience.

We (all the families of the 157 new students) sat in the heat of the Colorado morning sun as we heard from the Dean of the School of Medicine and numerous other impressive people who do impressive things, just waiting for the moment when our special student crossed the stage to be handed their first stethoscope and helped into the blessed, crisp and clean coat of medicine. 

Here is a picture of Tyler, eagerly handing his coat to the good doctor (he never was a fan of public attention):

 

 Here he is walking to sign the honor code in his new coat:

 It didn't all hit me until I got a view of him from the front, stethoscope hanging naturally around his neck, that he made it: he fought for it, and he is here. I am grateful for my sunglasses that hid my tears and that I could keep my sobs silent.

(He is so classy, he even thought to match his tie to the chairs).

I know this is just the beginning, but like the speaker who challenged the students to continue finding the joy in their journey, I believe in this doctor-to-be, in his capacity to show mix compassion with integrity. We'll have bumps and hard times for sure, but this moment was surreal, one that assures me that God hears prayers and rewards the efforts of those who don't give up.

P.S.-- This campus used to be an old Army base which housed the Fitzsimmons Hospital. That hospital is now the administration building. It was the only building I recognized, from about 25 years ago, when Lacey Jean was born. Here's to Lacey's birthplace! Good things happen in Aurora :).

A Barberian Moment

The climax of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings may be one of the most sublimely beautiful in all string-instrument literature. Leading up to it, the slow, writhing theme ascends and descends through the orchestra, moving almost seamlessly through the cellos, violas, and violins, always reaching for some unknown apex but never quite attaining it. Then, after the instruments have slowly moved up in their range, they reach the highest limits of their register - the cellos at the end of their fingerboard, the first violins so high that performers have to count ledger lines to find their notes. They come to rest on the inverted tonic chord. That fortissimo floating minor chord moves to a Gb major chord, and the phrase terminates with an unusual cadence, a Cb chord with a clashing major seventh resolving to Fb major, while the orchestra maintains the elevated dynamics. That last chord is held for a long, fermata-ed 6 beats before it is released, and then the orchestra holds a momentary silence - a "grand pause."


There is something triumphantly transcendent about those few chords, with their high register and inverted voicing (meaning the main note of the chord is not the lowest note heard). After a tortuously slow rise, moving one step back for every two steps forward, the music reaches its destination, the sonorous summit.


But the climax is all too brief, and its terminal grand pause is followed several repetitions of its closing cadence, transposed, subdued, and lowered. It is almost as if the orchestra is tries, valiantly but futilely, to recreate that gloriously climactic moment before resigning itself to continuing on with the rest of the music.

For Sundy and me, this last week has been reminiscent of a Barberian climax, a time we have been able to spend together, with no pressing worries or cares. We have gone on multiple walks, visited Denver landmarks, eaten out, went on a road trip to eastern Colorado, and just sat and talk, enjoying each others' company. The time has been a blessing, a time for us to draw closer as a couple. That will end tonight, though, with a cadence of Sundy's homemade berry crumble and vanilla ice cream. Tomorrow we will move on to the next part of our lives' song - that of a medical student couple. Wish us luck.

Things I Miss about Portland

1. Sunday dinners at the Perry-Hanchetts. We love Sundy's Aunt Carla and Uncle Chuck, and her cousins Crystal, Kevin, Kayleen, Bobby, and little Perry, and visiting them on Sunday evenings was always a treat. It's not going to be easy getting used to Sunday afternoons without them. And let's face it - that was the best food we ate all week.
2. The Tigard 2nd LDS Ward. We attended two LDS church meetings today, one for the ward where we are temporarily living and one for the ward we hope to move into (if everything on the rental we want turns out okay). (LDS congregations are assigned by location, so where we attend is matter of where we live rather than where we choose to go). Both were good wards. We felt the Spirit at each, though we felt more warmly welcomed into the second ward (the one we hope to move into) than we did in the first (maybe they sensed that we were short-timers?). But none compared to the feeling of good ole Tigard Two. Maybe it will once we get to know people, but we sure miss the good folk of our congregation back in Oregon.
3. Our friends. The McCollums, the Huffakers, the Rudolphs, our church friends, Sundy's work and school pals, my De Paul buddies - evenings are long without our friends to enjoy them with!
4. Grocery stores. No Winco or New Seasons Market out here. Fortunately, there is a Costco, and we hear there are some Trader Joes (though we haven't yet seen one), so we haven't completely lost all of our favorite stores. What they have here, though, at least what we've found, just isn't the same. Walmart is no Winco, and King Sooper's is no New Seasons (what kind of of name is that for a grocery store, anyway? And what's with the deliberate misspelling of "Super"?)
5. Wooded parks with trails. I really miss running through Cook Park. Jogging on sidewalks through urban sprawl just doesn't compare.
6. Clouded skies. Yes, I'm missing them already. It is nice to see the sunshine, but 95 degrees is HOT (it appears that our time in Oregon has decreased my tolerance for heat). As I sit typing this in our brick oven of a rental home without AC, I really wouldn't mind some 60-degree rainy days.
7. Good, friendly drivers. It may be our out-of-state license plates, but I get the feeling that Colorado drivers don't care for us. And, man-o-man, the jaywalkers! I've almost hit several of them leisurely walking across 7-lane city roads, mid-block.

Not that we aren't enjoying our time out here. It is a fun, sunny, beautiful place, and we are excited for what this next phase in our lives brings.

Our New Home

We have arrived! The Mile High City is now considered home. These beautiful souls, Bob and Nancy, took their blessed 2000 Odyssey on an epic journey, bringing what would fit of our meager belongings in the cavity of the van. Mom has always been up for adventures, and she made sure to call along the way here to let us know  the botany of Colorado, the geography of the Denver area, and the local site-seeing attractions, including the Molly Brown Mansion:

We did some botany sighting of our own with my dad while Mom went to dinner with her high school friends, finding ourselves at the Denver Botanic Gardens on "free day." This lovely bush is called Darwin's Joyce.

We actually did not tour the Molly Brown Mansion as the picture above may allude to, because, well, we have our own Molly Brown mansion. The place we're subletting for the next two months is owned by a lady named Molly Brown. I was disappointed to learn that Molly is not her real first name, thinking it was too good to be true, until I learned that the unsinkable Molly Brown's real name was Margaret.

I'll take you on a small tour of our rented M.A.S.H.:


Meet our newest additions, Nellie and Nick. Both seem to believe that this bed is their bed. I was fine to let them think that, but Tyler has been teaching them several times a night that if they break through the barricaded door, they will end up on his wrong side of the bed ;)

 This is the bathroom shower curtain. I never knew how fun it was to look at the world when doing your business. Did you know that there is a Prince Edward Island owned by South Africa?

Here's the Mansion proper, aka the living room/dining room. Molly and Eric left wonderful books to peruse, including American Test Kitchen recipes for me and Mammals of Colorado for Tyler. Scratch that. All the books are for Tyler.

We really love the gas stove top and all the awesome cookware the Browns are graciously letting us use. As we got rid of all our old cookware, we are getting ample time to know the joys of All-Clad pots, double broilers, and dutch oven cookware.

Like I said, we've arrived. Adjusting takes time. The sun has been shining. none. stop. It's hot, quite frankly. This is the best time of year to be in Portland--we miss the green and the cool. One thing Denver has that Portland was missing are streets have the same names and go on forever, rather than Portland's meandering streets that never lead to the place you thought. In all that meandering, we found some real treasures.

There are treasures here, too. Tyler's medical school campus is gigantic and quite impressive. I'm glad he's the one starting school. We will adjust. This is our new home. It almost feels like it.