Latest reflections from Axel

"Mommy, do people go on a rocket ship to make sure space is going okay?"

"Mommy, this croissant is crunchy, like a goat's beard and a flamingo."

Summer Vacation

We spent most of August on vacation with family. First stop Mammen family reunion in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, then a week in Park City and finally Salt Lake. So much fun, and great to reconnect with loved ones. The kids really got to know all their cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles better. It felt like a nice long break from our day to day in Los Angeles, great to be in the mountains and away from the city life.

On our drive to Utah we stopped at a historic fort in Southern Utah where they happened to be having a poineer festival. It was a great welcome, and good to stretch the legs.

Getting cleaned up after the long drive.

Lunch on Main Street in Park City before the drive to Yellowstone.



At the cabin in Yellowstone--Sleepingbags for all the kiddos. They were so excited!

Of course we hit all the highlights at Yellowstone in including Old Faithful, who was faithful as ever.

Axel loved the stinky mud pots.

So beautuful!

Swimming at the firehole in Yellowstone.

We had a fantastic time at the chuckwagon dinner in Jackson Hole.

Lulu takes the reins!

We stopped at Jenny's Lake for an afternoon on the way from Yellowstone to Jackson Hole.


Axel vs. nature. The best picture of the trip.

Back in Park City, mountain man Taylor emerges.

Their first trip down the Alpine Slide.

We spent an afternoon at 'This is the Place'.

Back in SLC with my family, nothing beats foil dinners over the campfire.

My mom threw a birthday party for all the grandkids, it was a pretty big hit.

Fun times with Grandpa Roger!

We spent a wonderful afternoon at the county fair with my mom and her family.

We love aunties!

Back in LA now. Lulu hits the beach. The summer vacation is over, but so many great memories were made!

Catching up--big time.

Ok, so I kindof fell off the blogging wagon. Sorry. Wish I could say there was a really good reason why, but there isn't. I just fell off and the longer time went on, the harder it was to get back on. But I am back and promise to try to stay. Honestly not that much has happened in the past few months. We had Christmas in Utah, which was great. Axel went skiing for the first time. We spent lots of time with family, opened gifts, etc.

In Februray Taylor had to spend a week in Utah for work, so we went along and had some good times with family, including the picture below with Lauren and Axel jamming on the piano.

While there, we got to see Lauren try on her wedding dress (she is already married!!) which was really fun. It was great to see her in her pre-bridal state. Eventually I'll catch up and get to posting pictures from the May 2nd wedding-which was beautiful!

We spent a fun day in Park City, and checked out the skii museam.

In the past few months Lulu has developed some serious sass. She is very precocious and not shy at ALL. She says "Hi!" to everyone we see all the time. Very cute. She has also recently learned to use screaming as a tool of manipulation. Not as cute. Although not yet 2, she acts very much like a 2 year old. She is quite a talker and likes to say things like, "alwright!" "I did it!" and "Oh no, wha happen?" and my favorite, "hewwo."

We haven't seen a whole lot of Taylor in the past few months (because of--can you guess?--work), so I cherish those evenings when he is actually home before the kids are in bed, as shown below.

Axel and Lulu are becoming better friends, and foes. Although they fight a lot, there are moments when they really play together and have a lot of fun. Today when I turned on the computer and Axel saw the picture of Lulu on the screen he said, "Oh, there's Lulu. I just love Lulu." It was so sweet. I will have to rememberhe said that then next time he womps her over the head.

I had a couple of visitors in March. My mom came to visit, and help me, while Taylor was in Hawaii for a week. It was really good timing because I ended up having pnemonia and strep throat while she was there and I probably wouldn't have even gone to the doctor if she hadn't made me. She took really good care of us and honestly I would have been in bad shape without her there that week.

My good friend Renee came to LA for a wedding and we got to see her! Love that Renee. So fun to see her and catch up. Miss you!

We had a wonderful Easter. This kids went to a couple of Easter egg hunts, we colored eggs, Easter Bunny came, and of course, church and a big meal prepared by Taylor. Lulu loved her sunglasses from Grandma Kay.

The Easter egg hunt at the Spector's was a real hit. Axel found most of the eggs, and Lulu spent most of her time getting a ride the the car below.

Last month we spent a Saturday at Travel Town, Axel's favorite place on earth, and rode the train for the millionth time. Those trains just never get old for him.

Can't you just see the joy in his face?

He can't get enough.

Taylor helped him try out the kite he got for Easter. Pretty fun.

October: Marathon, Hawaii, Halloween

Looking back on the month of October, I realize that it really has been great. Lots of very memorable experiences. First, I ran my first marathon in St. George. It was a really amazing experience. My sister Reghan and I crossed the finish line together after 4hrs 29 minutes. My dad finished after us, and poor Lauren had to take the bus back after serious stomach ailments kept her from finishing. I really never hit the wall and felt pretty good in spite of the pouring, freezing rain and blowing wind the entire race. We were not expecting that, so it was definitely something to contend with both physically and mentally, I felt that I was just running to get out of the rain as soon as possible.

It was an incredible thing to complete my goal, finish the race, and to share the experience with loved ones. I really felt that I had overcome a lot just to get to the race day whole. Most notably; an injury a couple of weeks before the race that kept me from being able to run, a viris the week before the race, and my entire body breaking out in a terrible rash the night before the race, which kept me up with worry for most of the night so I got very little sleep. I don't know if another marathon is in my near future, but in spite of all that I did have a great experience and would love to do another one!

The runners,after the race. You probably can't tell how completely soaked we are.

The whole gang. It was such a thrill to see everyone after the race because I had looked forward to it for what seemed an agonzingly long time.


Sisters, sisters.
Dad and the girls at Brock's parents house after the race. It was wonderful to spend some down time with the family after the race.



Taylor and I also went to Hawaii in October. Taylor was there for work and I was able to join him for a long weekend while Taylor's parents watched the kids--thanks Bill and Kay! We stayed on Oahu on the North Shore and the Turtle Bay resort which was so beautiful. Turtle bay is named well because it does have a beautiful natural bay with sea turtles. We did actually swim with the turtles which was rather surreal. The picture below is a secluded beach we walked to from the hotel.

On Sturday unfortunately it rained all day, but we decided to go ahead with our plans to hike to a waterfall. It turned into quite an adventure as the river we had to cross continued to swell with the rain. We had to wade through waist deep fast flowing water at several points, and were completely covered in mud by the end. We felt like adventurers marching through the jungle, and although it may have been more pleasant on a sunny day, it would not have been as memorable.

Sunday we went to church and visited the beautiful Temple.

Don't you love all the pictures we have where Taylor is holding the camera in front of us?Someday I will have to do a blog of all the pictures we have of us like that. For some reason, they seem to turn out best.

Some kind soul finally offered to take a picture for us.

Sunday night we stayed in Ko Olina. It was also lovely, I especially loved our room which had a huge balcony and amazing view of the ocean. Here we are at the resort enjoing one last evening in paradise before shipping back to reality.

The balcony and view.

Switching gears again, Halloween, my favorite holiday. Although I have to say that one of the main reasons I love Halloween is because it is in the fall, and I love fall. But in LA, there is no fall. Every day is exactly the same, 80 and sunny. I'm not complaining, I love it, really, but the holidays just have a different feeling about them. It was actually really hot that day and the kids were all sweating in their costumes. But they sure looked cute anyway. I took the kids to a little community halloween festival, which was lots of fun.

Lulu the new walker took to the streets in her pumpkin costume. It was nice for her to have some extra padding for all of those falls.

Axel fell asleep in the car on the way to the festival and woke up quite cranky in spite of being Thomas the Tank Engine. His mood is reflected well in this picture.

The big jumping house really helped to thaw him out. Nothing better that jumping around in a big house with other dinosaurs, fairies and tigers.

Poor little pumpkin keeps falling down.

That night we went to the ward trunk-or-treat where Axel got to fill his Thomas candy bucket, which, incidentally, he has eaten every last piece of in the last two days while working the potty-training system. He has figured out how to go potty on demand for candy about 30x a day, it has worked out pretty well for him so far, but I am coming up with a new system that hopefully will preserve both the incentive to go potty and his oral health.

Daddy and pumpkin.

Back at home we tried to get a good picture me me with the kids, and honestly after several tries, this really was the best one.

Axel's 3rd Birthday Extravaganza

Yesterday Axel turned 3 years old! I Can't believe I have a 3 year old. The baby days are officially gone. On to childhood full steam ahead. I'm not sure I am ready for this...

For Axel's party we rented out an old dining car at Travel Town (a place in Griffith Park where old trains are parked for kids to play on). This was an obvious choice since Axel loves Travel Town and all things train. It was a Thomas-themed event, of course, because two years later Axel is still really into Thomas. The party had a lot to live up to since Axel has been very much anticipating this day for several months, which in a 3 year old's life is the equivalent of several years. At first he seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing but once his friends started showing up and he realized this was the real deal he was pretty darn excited.

The birthday boy......taking it all in.

Interesting.....

The kids always love watermelon!

Very excited about something here....

The whole gang...

We took all the kids on a train ride, which was a big hit. There were tantrums when it was over. When Taylor bought the tickets he let them know it was for a birthday so as the train was starting off the conductor announced that it was Axel's birthday. He was so embarassed his face turned bright red! So cute.

Enjoying the train ride.

Lulu had a pretty good time too. Her favorite part of the party was playing with Bilbo, our friend's little dog. She is such a dog lover, it is so funny. She goes nuts and starts waving her arms and laughing whenver she sees a dog.

As Axel likes to tell everyone, "it's a diesel engine!"

The train conductor....doesn't he just look like the perfect conductor?

And finally, blowing out the candles. We certainly set the expectations way too high after this birthday party, but oh well, you only turn three once. By the end of it all we were exhausted, and I was particulary suffering from birthday fatigue, since I had been preparing for it all week. But it was worth it to see that smile!

Louisa Turns One!

Louisa actually turned one while we were still on vacation, so we celebrated when we got back. She didn't seem to mind. She was pretty fascinated with the whole event, especially blowing out the candle. Axel, of course, was excited about it too, since he is really into birthdays these days. It seems that he believes we arbitrarily assign birthdays to any day, and can't understand why we haven't decided that it is his special dayyet. The other day he looked at me very sadly and said, "mommy, where my birthday?"

Is she more excited about the wrapping paper or the present?

I was probably more excited about the dress than her, but who is a one year old birthday party really for?

She loved eating the cake. We have discovered that Louisa has a real sweet tooth! I can't wait to teach her about chocolate.

Axel finally got a big boy bed! He was so excited about it, he actually wanted to go to sleep the first few days. It took a week or so for Axel and Lulu to get used to sleeping in the same room, but they are pretty good about it now. They have learned that they just have to go to sleep, no matter what the other one is doing. Axel likes to take on the big brother role and we often hear him yelling, "Lulu go to sleep!"

Still Catching up: Our First Family Vacation

For our first official family vacation we rented a beach house in Northern California near Mendicino for about a week. We really had a wonderful time, although not as relaxing as Taylor had hoped, it was certainly memorable. The drive up along the coast was really amazing. When we got to the beach house it was in tiny town, very remote area, and took in some of the most amazing landscape anywhere.

One of our favorite things we did was ride the Skunk Train out of Ft. Bragg. It was about a 3 hour trip through the most beautiful redwood forest. At the stopping point we all got out and had BBQ before heading back. It was a really great way to experience the redwoods riding in an open car-the smell was amazing! Axel, of course, loved every minute and still talks about it all the time.

We spent some time at the beach, although cooler than Southern California, it was still an adventure with all the driftwood, sand crabs, sea weed, and tide pools. Lulu the beach baby loved crawling around in the sand.

We found some incredible places to hike along the coast.

Hiking in a Redwood forest was lots of fun, until Axel got too restless in the backpack and we let him get out and walk. I think a snail would beat his pace, soooo distracted by every little thing!

One of our favorite things about the beach house was the small pack of wild donkeys that lived in the field behind the house. They would come right up to the fence in the evenings, they were very tame and fun to watch. We saw quite a bit of wildlife around the house, deer, rabbits, a skunk, and a herd of sheep with big curved horns.

We also had a fun day visiting the very quaint town of Mendicino. The next few pictures were taken while exploring the bluffs at the edge of town.

Off-roading in the stroller!

The beach was beautiful, cold and stormy.

We took 3 days driving back and visited family along the way. First we stayed with Taylor's Aunt and Uncle Kim and Carl outside San Francisco, then we visited his Grandma Pat, and finally Kirt and Renee in San Louis Obispo. It was really great to see everyone!