Sachenhausen Concentration Camp

Obviously you have heard about the horrors and atrocities of the concentration camps. You can read about this which is mild compared to many of the other things that took place about 40 minutes north of Berlin.
Pictures weren't allowed in certain areas and the most touching thing I saw was this small black shoe with a colorful bouquet of flowers from the top of it. It was only about 3 inches long but very intricate and detailed. But the story is that a 16 year old Russian student saved a portion of his bread at every meal to mold and sculpt this shoe. He eventually gave it to another prisoner, a German liberal professor, just before he died. The professor said, "It was the most beautiful gift anyone has ever given me." It made me wonder if the professor had helped gived morale or encourage this young 16 year through the hard times. I was really touched. Their portions were meager to say the least, and this truly was a sacrifice for this 16 year old.

Germany's Guilt

(Bottom picture) While on the tour of Berlin, our guide talked about Germany's guilt. Instead of trying to sweep their past under the carpet, they have taken responsibility for it. The company that produced the chemicals for the gas chambers is the same company that recently and freely supplied the anti-graffiti finish for the Jewish Memorial stones in the center of Berlin. And there are a lot of stones there. Did you know Hugo Boss did the Nazi uniforms? Neither did I. But our tour of Berlin was splendid. We did a walking tour and learned so much.

(Middle picture) "Where they burn books, they will also in the end burn human beings" - Heine. Here I am lying on a glass covering a room full of empty bookshelves. This memorial stands to remember when the Nazis began burning 25,000 books which didn't fit in with their plans. Symbolically, some of Einsteins work and one of Hitler's favorite authors were among them.

(Top picture) The Berliner Damme. Just a large impressive builiding on the Spree River.

Essen essen essen - Eat eat eat

Now that I am done running for a while, I eat eat eat. Here we are at an authentic German place. I ate a blood sausage, liver suasage, and a liver dumpling with potatoes and some great saurkraut on the side. My comrades got some other great German food. We've had fun. The drink is called Spezi (a mix of Cola and Fanta.) Coach Eyestone and I ate pig knuckle the night before. It was good too. I love Germany. Tomorrow Coach and I are heading to Prague for a day.

Sweden Trip

We got back from Sweden a few days ago and had a GREAT trip. I love visiting other countries and seeing the fashion, FOOD, and life styles. The "feel" of sweden was very nordic. Lots of trolls, gnomes, ships, and striped clothing, vikings, reindeer/moose and lingonberries. The style was very modern and clean (ie ikea). I felt that Sweden was kind of a mix between Germany and France. The woodland and magic of germany mixed with the glamor of france

Josh's race went well, it was an international race with lots of good guys. Going into the race he was ranked 12th out of 16 guys, and he finished 5th!

Here are some of the highlights of our trip...

Gamla Stan: old city. This row of buildings is one of the most photographed areas in the old city. it is in a cute little square with traditional restaurants all around the perimiter. The old city was soo cool because you really felt like you were taking a step back in time, it was a very large area filled with delicious restaraunts, shops, cool buildings, and street preformers.

Stockholm has alot of "inlets" and rivers and lakes. The entrance to the old city was just across this bridge. I like this photo because it shows some of the cool buildings and then this guy on his bike with a basket on it- which seemed to be very standard in Sweden.

While we were in the old city we saw a portion of what we think was the changing of the guard. They played music and wore very nice outfits.

This Troll was just hanging out in Gamla Stan. I love Trolls, Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and (all magical folk) so I had to get my photo with this little guy.

Our hotel was in downtown Stockholm near the old city. This was the view from our room. On sunday morning the bells were ringing and it almost felt magical!

After Josh's race was over we wanted to see more countryside and not just the big tourist city of Stockholm (though stockholm was great.) We rented a car and drove west. We stoped at a few castles and churches. This was one little city that we stopped at. Beautiful! Across the bay was teh castle below.

Another beautiful castle. All the castles we saw were built on bodies of water making them all the more spectacular!

An old church in the country just 30 min. outside of Stockholom.

The Food: They had some delicous ice cream. I got this tripple scoop of Lemon sorbet, raspberry sorbet (with chunks of raspberries) and tripple chocolate. (the raspberry and chocolate were a killer combo)

Lots of delicious breads and pastries

We had a really nice traditional dinner, this is Josh's plate: reindeer with lingonberries, greanbeans, and potatoe cake. I had Elk Meatballs with lingonberry sauce- so good!

This is just a country road. Many of the small country roads were lined with trees, so quaint!

I always get curious about what houses in other countries look like, so here is a Swedish house. Most of them are vertical "wood siding" with these red roofs. also quaint.

This trip may very well have been mine and Josh's last trip (alone) together for a long time. Though I'm so glad to have millie giving up on the great travels has been one of the hard things for me...so world, catch ya later.

Sweden

I got a great present for my birthday this year, a trip to Sweden! We arrived in Sweden on Wednesday and will be here till tuesday. Although we are really here for Josh's race, we decided that since it was over my Birthday I could come for my present! So far it has been great! (I posted a couple photos of some of the buildings around us, although they are not the best, pretty much any where you aim your camera would end up being a pretty picture) Sweden is a very beautiful country, beautiful people who have great style!

just a short note about food: (of course i couldn't go with out mentioning the food) The bottom photo is my "birthday cake" a strawberry cream tart. The shell was delicious with a thin layer of hardened chocolate, then a thin layer of vanilla custard across the bottom, next it is filled with cream and then topped with fresh swedish strawberries and covered in a layer of sweetened pectin.

stay tuned for a better post on our sweden trip :)

last few weeks...

I've been a really bad blogger this summer... but here are a few things we've been up to.





Josh won the U.S.A. championships (at the end of june) It was of course so cool and amazing that he can be so awesome :) He had a great season, but it's not over yet. Next week he'll travel to Europe to race, come home for a week, go back to Sweden to race, come home for 2 weeks and go back to Berlin to compete in the World championships! Hopefully I'll be able to go to Sweden with him (but we just feel a little bit bad asking my parents to watch Millie b/c she still isn't sleeping through the night. sigh.)



After Josh won his race, he wanted to take Mill on the award stand with him. ha ha. So, he grabbed her from me and she went up there with him and held his american flag for him, she was so excited! She is sporting her "game-day outfit" a USA onsie from the Olympics.


A few days after we got home from Josh's race there was a family reunion at Bear Lake. We only made it up for a day but had a great time seeing cousins. My aunt was freaking out b/c she thought we were going to ride with Millie on the jet ski, but don't worry, we just grabbed her for the photo.


We went through Logan on our way to Bear lake, so OF COURSE we had to make a stop at Aggie ice cream. It was delicous, but I was very saddened to see that they no longer make my favorite flavor, peanut butter & Jelly (they said it was clogging up the machines) (p.s. this is my sister kelly with millie, we just found out she's having a baby in Jan. so we're way excited!) It made me so happy to drive through Logan! man, I love that place so much! I try to convince josh that we should live there but he won't hear of it. Go AGGIES! ha ha

We've spent alot of time in swimming pools. Mostly in a blow up pool in our front yard, but on 4th of july we went swimming at some "relatives" real pool... this girl loves to swim.

Our other 4th of july festivity (sp), the "Freedom Run" Josh and I both ran the 5k. Josh of course won, and I just did my best. This was my 2nd post Mill 5k and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting back into shape:) I ran a 20:21, 40 seconds faster than my last 5k, and the course was harder. I'm really enjoying running lately and am loving all the great places to run here in Ut. I'll really miss all the Mountains and canyons when we leave.

USA track and field championships

So, we're in Eugene Oregon, Hub of distance running. We're anticipating the USA T & F championships, which will start tomorrow! Josh will be running the steeple chase and will have a prelim tomorrow (6/25) and a final on saturday. If you are interested in watching the prelim, you can go to http://www.flotrack.org/articles/view/1240-usatf-and-flotrack-partner-to-provide-live-webcasts-of-2009-usa-outdoors (if this link doesn't work for some reason you can go to flotrack.org and they should have something on their home page about the USA's coverage) The race time is 7:25 pm Pacific Time. There are 2 heats for the prelim, Josh will be in the 2nd heat. The final is at 5:40 pm Pacific Time. The final will most likely be on NBC- but if you can not find it there it will be streamed on flotrack.org.

Also pay attention to Rich Nelson of BYU, who will be next to Josh on the starting line, and Kyle Perry, just graduated from BYU and has rejoined josh as his teamate on team NB!

This year is a "world championship year" so the top 3 from each race will get to be on the USA track and field team and will compete in Berlin later on this summer! Good luck to Josh!

Tag- banannas

it's taken me a while to get around to doing this tag... but i think it's a fun one! you post the 6th photo from your 6th folder and tell about it. Then you tag 6 other people.

This is a Bananna tree in Brazil. (we went to brazil a couple years ago for josh to do a race.) I love the big red blossom at the bottom of the Bananas. The Bananas in Brazil were SOOOO good. They were very fresh, they don't have to use any hormones to ripen them because Bananas are actually grown locally. We tasted the best fruit on this trip including "juices" . You would choose a fruit or 2 that you wanted and then they would just take that fruit and put it through some kind of juicer, so you got the whole fruit in your drink and it was thick like a smoothie, ah, so good!

Pre. Results

Josh did well yesterday, no PR, but he was 3rd overall (beat by a Kenyan and an Ethiopian), and was the first American (all the good guys were there, by good, I mean all the guys with the olympic A standard, so that makes it especially good for him that he won!) Nice Job Josh! He ran a 8:26, which is his best time of the season. He's happy to have been the first american but also a little dissapointed because he felt so great and wished that he'd have run faster... well, he'll just have to channel that frustration for his next race. His next race is June 25 and 27- the U.S.A. championships in Eugene Oregon. At this race he will be competing for a spot on the World Track and Field team (which travels to Berlin in August to compete) I'll keep you updated on his commings and goings in the race world :)

Prefontaine classic on sunday

Josh will be racing at the Nike Prefontaine classic on Sunday. It will be broadcast on NBC at 11:18 PACIFIC TIME (12:18 Utah time) This is a Super competitive race. The 2 top ranked steeple guys in the world (kenyans of course) will also be competing at this race. There will also be other international guys as well as the best guys from U.S.A. Josh's PR is 8:21 so let's watch and see if he can break it! Good luck Josh!

what we did in may

To start out the month we saved this baby bird! it was in our driveway and couldn't fly. Josh put on a glove and climbed a tree one handed and put the baby back. It looked like the mom returned to it!


Millie met baby Rohat (Logan) who is 2 weeks younger than her. (Logan's dad Josh was teammate at BYU and then we found out we were both having babies and just days apart. Logan was due first, but he was late, and Mill was early) Millie LOVES, LOVES, LOVES babies and kids and gets sooo excited (squeels, kicks her legs and flails her arms) when she sees any!



We met our New Nieces/Nephiew/Cousins. Millie has 4 little cousins her age. so Including here there will be 4 girls and 1 boy. Those kids will LOVE family reunions. These are her little cousins Remmie and Avie (they'r triplets, their bro. Beck was being fed) They're so cute!


Millie was eaten by a dinasaur... here she is in it's stomach (these are real fossils put together by the guy josh use to work with at the dinasaur lab in provo.)

We got this little swimming pool and have spent some hot afternoons in it.

Memorial day races in Orem. Josh ran the 10k, and won. surprise. I ran the 5k- first one in 8 1/2 months! I was a little apprehensive about it because I hadn't done much consistent running till 3-4 weeks prior. BUT, my goal time was 22:00 and I ran 22:00.8! It was har to try and get back in the mind set of pushing yourself but It was alot of fun to be out "racing again" and I even was the 2nd female overall. I know that many of you probabally run that pace for a marathon, but I don't really care! ha ha. jk.

Millie's now 7 months!!! these taken on her 7 month birthday.

I heard this song on my friends blog and LOVED it! I HAD to find the sheet music for it. It took me a while to find b/c I was looking in the wrong places, but I found it for free online. When creating the movie Twilight, they asked 2 diff. guys to write Bella's Lullaby. They ended up using the other guys music, but I like this version much better. So, if you play piano, print it off, try it out and see what you think.

(Here's a link to listen to it if you'd like to do that first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhN7SG-H-3k)

"train the trainer day"

Last week on our favorite show, Biggest Loser, it was Train the trainer day. The contestants made up workouts for Bob and Jillian and tried their hardest to run them into the ground. When it was announced that it was "train the trainer day" the responses given by both embodied why we love Bob so much, and don't love Jill so much. Jill was like "ugg, I hate train the trainer day", and Bob was stoked about it, and at one point during the workout said "I can take what ever they can dish out, so bring it on!" I thought about this yesterday as I went up to Timpview High School (the school where I used to coach) to run with the girls. Just my luck, they were doing a "speed workout" on the track. While I was coaching them I ran just about every run and workout with them, so I couldn't walk away from this workout of theirs with out shame. I geared up to do these 2 400's and 2 200's (an easy workout for them) and the tables were turned as I was the nervous one, standing towards the back of the group, hoping that I would be able to complete the workout without making a complete fool of myself! I got my butt kicked by these girls, but I finished it. My first track workout for a year! man, glad to get that out of the way, brake the ice in a way...you forget the kinds of feelings you feel while running a workout. Some good feelings, some very much the contrary, but you always feel amazing afterwards... you were able to put mind over matter and make your body do something that it really didn't want to do! This is much of why I love running so much! I reall haven't enjoyed running very much these past 5 months. It's just felt like a chore, but this last month I've been remembering why I love it. I love to get out in nature, have some relaxing time to yourself to think, try to push my body and mind to new limits, and progress towards measurable goals. I don't know that I'll get back to the same shape I was in pre-baby, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try. Some may say I'm just chasing a dream, I just need to give up, I'm never really going to be that good- but, ah, whatever, that's not why I run, I run b/c it's something that as jerry McGuire would say "completes me" ha ha. It's something that makes me feel like ME! hopefully everybody has something that makes them feel that way? if not, it's out there somewhere :) p.s. I also run b/c it's glamerous as demonstrated by my photo at top-- me right after the st. george marathon.

Family Update

photos by Kara Jo Photography

These are our new family pictures. One of my friends from the ward is a photographer and she took them for us. We LOVE them! we think they are totally fitting for our TN. family photos. A little update on our family... Josh just finished his 1st year of Optometry school! Yesss!!! 3 more to go. We really can NOT believe that it's been a whole year! He worked super hard and did great. It was kinda a hard transition for him b/c he'd been done with BYU for almost 2 years b/f starting optometry school.-- We're really starting to enjoy TN. and are enjoying our house more and more as we have been doing updates on it. It's been fun to learn how to do handy man stuff. --The "world games" are this summer in Berlin and Josh wants to make the track team. You make the team same as you do for the olympics, top 3 americans from the U.S. nationals go. His coach is in Utah, and there are some good BYU guys for him to train with as well. so, we're spending the summer in utah. He's only run one race this season (and did GREAT, won with a good time) and has his 2nd race tonight! It will be broadcast on http://www.flotrack.org/videos/coverage/view/234940-2009-payton-jordan-cardinal-invite. Good luck Josh!!! Millie's doing great, and is around the 90% for her age. We're working on getting her to sleep longer (usual is about 7 hrs.) the doc. says just ignor her and let her cry it out. That makes me feel sad so I haven't done that yet. Feel free to leave any suggestions you have for us. I'm staying busy doing a whole lot of nothing (ie. cleaning dog hair out of crevices in out house that was left behind by the previous owners, maybe taking a shower and getting dressed, and all sorts of other "important" things)... but I am looking forward to doing lots of running, cooking and projects over the summer while I have helpers to watch Millie!