The One with I Love Provo

This morning we dropped Joey off at extended doggy daycare. He was so excited to be there, he runs right to the gate that separates him from the other doggies.

Then we drove to good ol' Provo, UT! Here are some pics from our (thankfully) uneventful 9 hour drive.
There was a blanket of brown smog/fog covering the valley of California before we headed into the mountains. Enhanced here with a sepia filter.
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Hello Vegas.






Goodbye Vegas!
It was over 100 degrees most of the drive. It reached a peak of 110 somewhere in Nevada.

That means it was like 120 degrees to preggers me. Thank goodness for AC. We didn't even dare roll down the windows to check it out.
Hello beautiful Wasatch Mountains! How I've missed you so!

Hello old apartment!

Hello "Y" Mountain!

It's good to be back. You never know how much you really appreciate something or some place until it's gone or you move. We've got a whole week of fun planned and I can't wait!

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The One with the Annual Evans Family Reunion Days 4 and 5

Thursday morning we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. It was not a good day for squirrels. We were no more than five feet from our car when we saw a freshly ran over squirrel sprawled out on the sidewalk. Then thirty seconds later when we walked into the gated fields there were a couple of employees raking out a squirrel that decided to go for a nasty swim in the tar. They got the squirrel out and would have washed it and set it free, but it escaped its box and ran away. The workers said its hair will fall out in a few days...so if you see any naked squirrels running around La Brea, it must have recently had a rough encounter with tar...poor squirrels.


All of these tar pits remind me of that ancient cartoon dinosaur movie Land Before Time. Though these tar pits came long after dinosaurs walked the earth.

New tar pits erupt all over the place all the time. They just keep building gates around 'em.

Here is an excavation site that's been put on hold for five years while they work on another project.

The colored flags mark different animals bones.

This is a picture of a picture of an excavation site with lots o' bones.

These tar pits will never cease to fascinate me. How random is it that in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world there are deadly tar pits?

After walking around the tar pits we headed up to Hollywood to see what there is to see.
I wonder how many stars Hollywood High School cranks out every year?


About this time my camera battery said it was going to die so we ran around trying to find any star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that we recognized. This was the first one we found:

Puff Daddy. So random.
But my camera didn't die for awhile and I still got to take some pics of the famous sites.
There must have been a movie premier going on at Grauman's Chinese Theater because the red carpet was rolled out and lots of places were blocked off.

The Kodak Theater is where the Academy Awards take place every year.

I peaked inside:

The columns leading up to the theater have Best Picture from 1927/28

all the way up to 2071.

And now we've seen Hollywood :)

Then the Andy/Cami/Drew/Avery/Luke family headed back to Utah and the rest of us came home, napped, then went to Philippe's for dinner.

Mmmm boysenberry pie....so much for my diet!



Today was "Transformation Day." Once Tom and Margi woke up we dismantled the bed and took out the mattress. Finally we started building all of the furniture that's been in boxes and cluttering our apartment the last few weeks!


Here's Tom and Chris building the sturdy crib.

This is how Joey feels about being replaced. Despised and dejected. Poor Joey. We still love ya little guy!

All done!


Next we built the dresser. It took for.ev.er.

But many hands make light work and we built a good piece of furniture that will go with Fox in all his bedrooms. Notice the dresser replaced my cardstock racks. Sad day. Serendipitously they fit perfectly in my closet so I still have the racks for my some day future craft room.


I built the glider while Chris was taking his family to the airport. Now all that's left to do is get a rug, wait for the bedding and glider cushions to come in the mail, add frames and what not to the bare walls, get a diaper hamper, finish the wardrobe unit, and get all the other little essentials like wipes and lotions and ointments and on and on (and on and on and on). Lots to do and only 8 weeks left to do it!

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The One with the Annual Evans Family Reunion Day 3

We had another fun-filled day yesterday! I opted out of going to the beach in the morning and stayed home to catch up on some work, but here are some pics of the rest of the non-party-pooper family:





Chris and I were in charge of dinner and made a great big batch of Grandma's Chicken Curry. It was nummy. After dinner I took a quick power nap then we headed up to the Dodger stadium for our very first Dodger game.
The views of LA from the stadium are the best I've seen yet.


I hesitate posting pictures of me, they're just painful to look at because I'm so chubby in my face and legs and all over really. But it'll be good for me to look back on and remember to eat better next time from the get-go.

There's the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory waaaaay out in the distance.

Funky tree.

Helllllllo Dodger Stadium! Talk about vertigo!

Chris' family is from Denver. Guess who the Dodgers were playing tonight? The Colorado Rockies. What are the chances?

The Rockies won 3-2.

Chris and Paige. 8.18.10

I don't know what's on the agenda for tomorrow...I think maybe the tar pits, observatory, philippes, etc?? Whatever it is, it'll be fun!

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