So Far In the South

So we've made the move to Memphis, and we've been here about 2 weeks. We've just gotten internet so this'll be my fist update on the move. We've had a good time so far. It's definitely the south here. Our house is nice, we're just renting till we find a place of our own. You'd go crazy to find out how much house you can buy with a little money. Tracy and I found a house on line for $2,000. If you put 20% down you'd just pay $14 a month! (forget abou the fact that it's in serioulsy bad shape and in a seriously bad area!)

Our ward is great and we've met a TON of nice people and got some yummy goodies from ward members! We really appreciate the warm welcome we've felt from the Ward, and from Southern College! We even have another S.C.O. /LDS couple about 4 houses down! It's been fun to hang out with them.

TN. is a cool place, but the Weather is certanly NOT cool. It's pretty hot, but it's the humidity that gets ya. I feel like I'm in hawaii. It's really green and there is lots of cool wild life! there are lots of Herons, and turtles, and Armadillos that live out here. I've yet to see a live Armadillo, but you see them dead all over the freeway's. We have this really awesome park near by that we like to run in. It's about 5 miles by 3 miles with lots of different paths and lakes/ponds and there are even some buffalo's there! (inside fences of course)

Shelby Farms Park

I have this thing with mushrooms... and they have some really cool mushrooms here.

This Osprey almost took my head off in the park. (It flew about 4 ft. right over my head and gave me a fright!)

These trees are all over here, these balls are about the size of baseballs. We don't really know what they are but josh calls them Monkey Brains. They had them in Ohio and he and his friends would throw them at each other like snowballs.

Nashville

A couple weeks ago we went up to Nashville for the weekend. (Josh went to College there his freshman year and has alot of friends still up there) It was his friend Kyle's b-day so we went to celebrate and also got to walk around the city for a while. I LOVE Nashville, it's such a nice city.

This is Bellmont University, the school Josh went to. It has a way nice campus. We stopped by and walked around and talked to his old coach. Bellmont is a really small private Catholic (?) university. They have a good Basketball team!

Josh's friends from Nashville. Kyle, Alicia, Micah, Dana, Justin, Victoria, Josh and I after Kyle's birthday dinner.

Downtown Nashville. Lots of Bar's and Live music and cowboy boot shops. ( if you don't drink you may not have a lot of stuff to do in Nashville.)

Us and some of Nashville's own Honky Tonky-ers.

The Orient

Sorry, I'm still posting these pictures from they mysterious Orient... These are some photos of classic China...

The GREAT WALL. I wanted to let my runner girls know that I did indeed take the oportunity to sing "Be A Man" (from mullan) as I was wondering across the great wall. (I'm pretty sure we sang it better than donny osmond, given the circumstances.)

One of the buildings at "The Temple of Heaven"

We had a couple of tours, one night we went to an awesome acrobatics show and then went to a traditional chineese dinner, where we were served the famous "Peking Duck" this was our duck chef. (I hate to say it, but panda express has more enjoyable chineese)
Temple of Heaven

Traditional Dinner, Russ, Cindy, Mom, Tracy, Amy, Me...

Everyone rides around these bikes with their stuff in the cart behind. The roads were Crazy there! Way busy and Crazy Crazy drivers. Really no rules of the road, just finagle your way through traffic, right of way goes to the bigger object (bus vs. taxi, person vs. taxi etc.)

The Asians LOVED tracy. They were constantly asking her to be in photos. She even had a 30(ish) yr. old chubby asian man try to kiss her after he got the photo with her... well, he did kiss her, she was trying to turn her head and get away, but he still got her on the edge of her lips. It was probabally the funniest thing that happened the whole trip!

Fountains at the Summer Palace, they shot water out of their mouth into the mote below.

These dragons and other mystical animals were on the roof tops of important chineese structures (palaces and temples.) These are on a temple in the "Forbidden City" The more animals, more important the building. I think the max amount of amimals is 12.

Statue in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was an olden time city, fully enclosed by a 50 or so foot wall. The emporer would live inside with all the acompanying temples and luxuries. they also had the fair, or carnival inside the walls each year.

This is our crew, Including our awesome tour guide Tony (Tony spoke great english. He said he learned english from watching the T.V. show "friends") We are in the large courtyard of the forbidden city. This is where the yearly Carnival would have been held. The building behind us had the throne of the emporer.

Tony took us to a jade factory where we got the run down on this prescious stone. Before the tour none of us really cared much about jade, but after you learn all about it, and the processes that are used you really think that jade is the coolest thing. You feel like you NEED to have something made out of jade. This is what I would have choosen, if I hand the $. they were thousands of dollars.

Summer Palace.
Summer Palace

Of course we had to see the Classic Pandas of China. Very Cute.

Some delicous food the you can eat anytime when in the orient.

China

We got back from China last week. It was way fun, and also way funny ( see photos from previous entry). I was so glad that I got to go over and watch Josh compete. I was so glad that some family and friends could go with me. Along with some family, my friend Amy (we were roomates in college) came with me, I was so glad she could come! These are some Olympic photos... I'll do another post with the tourist photos...

These are the olympic mascotts, "the friendlies" we LOVED them, in the village they had these huge blow-up's of them. There was one for each color of the olympic rings

Me, Amy and Tracy with you know who... This photo was so we could complete a mission from Seth.

This is our crew in the birds nest after Josh's race (Coach Mann, Josh's parents Russ and Cindy, Josh, Me, My mom , sister tracy, my friend Amy) We were all way proud of Josh. (This photo was taken by a NBC/KSL news anchor. They did a TV interview with us, and on that same news blerb they did a close up shot on my stomach... great.)

Josh's race... Amy & I were sat way up in the nose bleeds. The others were sat close enough for Josh to hear them cheer. This is Tracy's photo, we couldn't even snap anything worth looking at from our nose bleed seats. The stadium was huge and it was way exciting just to be inside it!
Olympic rings in the olympic village. We went to the village with Josh one day and looked around. We got to eat in the dining hall where all the athletes of diff. countries eat. There was SOOO much food. They had salad bars, fruit bars, sandwitch bars, desert bars, Itallian caffeteria lines, mediteranian lines, chineese lines, etc. All sorts of food. Also a McDonalds (of course it was "All you can eat")

Birds nest stadium. As you can see, the sky is blue, it was a georgous day. The pollution really didn't seem to be as bad as it was cracked up to be.

Flags of all the countries in the olympic village.

Olympic Village. Each country had a building for athlete "suites", then they all used the same dining hall etc. The big thing in the village was trading pins (or trading jersy's/gear. Josh got shirts from Thailand, Germany, South Africa, New Zeland, etc.) They had this cool little lilly pond area in the middle.

China

Common baby outfit, so where does the poo go?

Toilet...

Not going to happen. I tried but could not bring myself to use these.

What is going on in this country???

Olympics

I Just have a quick second... but I wanted to post an update on Josh's race. He just finished a couple hours ago. It was so fun and amazing to watch! He didn't actually run as well as he was hoping, didn't make finals. But I was way proud that he ran at the Olympics, that is so AWESOME! I'm proud of him for putting in all the hard work, and for making it to this point, and for making it to the race alive (ha ha, I think I might die of stress...)

Baby Shower

My mom and sisters put on a darling Baby Shower for me. It's kindof early to have a shower (at 6.5 mo.) but we wanted to do it before I moved. They did such a great Job! It was all SOOO cute! I got some darling stuff for baby Millie, I can't believe how generous all the guests were!!! Thanks everyone! Millie & I will love using all the gifts!

We had cupcakes, and pink lemonaid, and strawberries dipped in white chocolate and then drizzled with pink also the big pretzels dipped in Caramel then white and pink chocolate (my little sister works at the Rocky Mtn. Chocolate Factory so she is pro at all the chocolate dipping stuff... she even made home made caramel) We also had salad and chicken salad (the kind with red grapes!)

Megan Lohrke, Me, Jen Bradbury

Lindsey and Tracy made me the way cute diaper cake.

Kelly & my cousin Sheila planned some fun games... we did the baby food guessing game, guess the size of my stomach and Baby concentration.

My friend Mandy, makes these WAY cute little frames! emmajanesframes@gmail.com) I'm excited to hang it on the wall.