Elsa's Pre-School Graduation!

On Friday, Elsa's pre-school had a "graduation" ceremony for the children that will be leaving for kindergarten in the fall. We watched as all 10 graduates walked into the hall.

The graduates performed songs such as the "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and "The More We Get Together, the Happier We'll Be".

  Finally, Elsa's name was called and she got her diploma.

 After that it was dinner and play time.

 Liam had a lot of fun at the event too!

Hooray for the class of 2015!

You can see all of Arne's pictures of the graduation on Flickr.

Mother's Day

This year we continued our Mother's Day traditions of making strawberry jam and going to the beach.

 Lids can be jewelry 

 The strawberry jam is over-flowing the pot and the kids are saying "whoa!"

This last picture I tried a one second exposure to make it appear that Karna was moving quickly. 

I made a video: 

Mother's Day 2015 from Arne Stokstad on Vimeo.

It's fun to see how much Elsa has grown in two years. Here's the video from 2013

We went to Fort Funston with Summer dog. 

It's wonderful to keep these traditions up. 

Disneyland 2015!

For Elsa's 5th birthday this summer, my mom took our whole family on a wonderful trip to Disneyland!  We had a wonderful 4 day holiday. On Thursday morning we flew down to Southern California and then took the bus to the Disneyland resort.  

For our first afternoon we just hung out at the Disneyland Hotel pool and room, enjoying the cool water and watersides.

I love lollipops!

That evening we headed into Downtown Disney for a look at the shops and dinner.

Bright and early Friday morning, we headed into California Adventure - all of our first visit to this park.  The first thing we did was meet Elsa and Anna!

Then we headed to Cars Land and Bugs Land for fun rides, like the bumper cars.

After the rides, we headed to the Frozen sing-a-long.  It was a lot of fun to sing the songs with a crowd full of people.

Our next stop was lunch - lunch with the princesses!  They all came by our table to say hi to Elsa and Liam.

After this we were tired, so we walked back to the hotel and while Arne, Mom and Liam took a nap, Elsa and I played more in the pool. Then it was back to the park for more rides and a parade.

We rested again and then after dinner it was back into the park for a sound and light show.

Both kids were asleep before we made it back to the hotel.

Saturday morning we entered Main Street of Disneyland and had a wonderful time trying out a number of fun rides and then going to Toon Town and meeting Mickey Mouse!

After Toon Town we went to Splash Mountain, my favorite ride - it was a little scary for Elsa.

After Splash Mountain and lunch, we headed back to the hotel for some more pool and rest time. In the afternoon we enjoyed the Disney Parade and then rode It's a Small World and saw a Mickey show.  We then went to New Orleans for the Tree House, a Jungle Ride and Pirates of the Caribbean.

We stayed out late and watched the evening show - Fantasmic.  Once again the kids were asleep before we made it back to the room.

Sunday morning, we took the Monorail into the park and rode the rest of the rides in Fantasyland, before meeting with more princesses.

Then it was off on a boat ride to the island to explore the caves!  This was one of my favorite places as a little kid.  

We watched a show at the Royal Theater before saying goodbye to Disneyland and taking the Monorail back to our hotel for a swim before heading home on the plane.

What an amazing trip!