There and back again...a Vanessa tale

If this post is half as long as our travels, it will take about two weeks to read. Now that you're warned, here goes. After about a month's worth of travel, interviews, and sight seeing, we are all excited to be back in Utah (which is a rare thing to be excited about). I was pretty nervous about all the grad school interviews, so I decided to take my little cheerleader with me to keep me company. She was an awesome travel buddy! We had a lot of fun spending time together. We started our trip by flying to Maryland and meeting up with Tia (Angelene), whom Vanessa had been talking about for a week leading up to our trip. Tia took Vanessa to the zoo while I flew to Lexington, KY (not the nicest city in the country) for an interview at UK. The next day, I went to Virginia Tech for a long, stressful interview, and was very happy when Tia and Vanessa picked me up to take me sight seeing. We first went to Arlington Cemetary where of 290,000 veterans and their family members are buried.

This is the view from Robert E. Lee's house. All the white in the background are headstones (probably not even 1/4 of all the graves)

The next day, we headed to the National Mall, which is where all the monuments and museums are located.

Vanessa touching the Washington Monument

World War II Monument (each one of those stars represents 100 lives lost; total 404,000 lives)

Lincoln Memorial (Vanessa thought he was Jesus)

The White House (Vanessa was really stoked at this point)

Later that night, we went to see the temple. As you drive up to it, it literally looks like it is coming straight up out of the freeway directly in front of you. It has apparently been the cause of multiple car accidents, which of course provided many opportunities for priesthood blessings that resulted in amazing conversion stories (maybe not so much the last part).

This is actually the short side of the temple. It is seven stories tall!

After returning from the east coast, we stopped for a short breather in Utah, and my interview with BYU, before setting out for the west coast. On the way, I had a phone interview with Nebraska in a Wal-Mart parking lot. We made it to California just in time for record breaking heat, which was very welcomed. While I was at my interview with Loma Linda, Lisa and Vanessa got to visit with Gah Mah T, Aunt Khaki, Emy, and Puppy.

Vanessa and Emily

Quite possibly Vanessa's favorite part of the trip; swinging while smelling "fowers"

At Uncle Dale's work (Chapparral)

Then we headed back to Utah. The next day, Lisa got some sweet 3-D pictures of our little, squished, Nicole.

That weird shadow is not her evil twin...it's the placenta

And finally, on Tuesday we received the news we had been waiting for!

We'll be Cougars for two more years!!