August Adventures

August has been a wonderful month spent home in Palo Alto and enjoying our local activities and area. We even went on our first family bike ride!

Elsa and Liam continue to enjoy their swim lessons.  Elsa is getting to be a better and better swimmer, going quite far all on her own.  See a video from her lesson:

Elsa continues to enjoy DCC, her preschool, and this month they had two fun fieldtrips.  The first one was to the downtown libray.

And the second one was to Pizza My Heart to make pizza!

With one of her MINI friends, we went to a local children's theater outdoor play, and it was fun to see Hope and Elsa together again (with Hope's big sister).

Liam continues to grow and is now 8 months old and an amazing crawler - getting into anything and everything. See him crawl:

He also really likes to pull himself up to see what is going on around him.

We keep trying solid food with him and it is sometimes very messy.

We went on a fun outing to the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, with my Aunt Jan.

Our butterfly Elsa enjoyed all the butterflies.

Liam liked it too.

We went to the Palo Alto Art festival, and Elsa even contributed some of her own art.

I continue to like to dress the kids up in matching outfits, and watch them as they are starting to play together.

And sometimes it is nice for some special Elsa time, like eating ice cream on the deck.

What a great way to enjoy the summer!

Liam's Christening

On the Sunday after the Lair, the Nisewaner family and Stokstad family headed to Ocean Beach in San Francisco to baptize baby Liam. Big sister Elsa was christened here in December 2010.

Liam was dressed in the same outfit that Elsa, Sonja, and Erika wore and stayed happy throughout the blessings by grandma Julie.

Arne's brother Paul and sister-in-law Paula are the godparents.

We ended the morning by having brunch at the historic Beach Chalet at the west end of Golden Gate Park.

It was a great day to celebrate baby Liam!

Grandpa Bob Stokstad posted more pictures from the event here!

Camp Blue 2013

This July we again headed up Route 108 to Camp Blue!  We were very excited to introduce Liam to our Lair Family.

Everyone wanted to hold Baby Liam - he was just always smiling and happy.  We were lucky to have many family members join us at Camp Blue.  My Mom was there, and enjoyed her Liam time.

Arne's brother Paul and sister-in-law Paula joined us.  It was great for Elsa to get to spend time with her cousins.  She played games with Sonja:

Explored the creek with Erika:

Created Tie-Dye with both girls:

Leading to tie-dye based matching outfits!

The girls also were stars in the KK/6&7's Parade:

Elsa enjoyed climbing everything, particularly on the deck eating meals.

Liam enjoyed his first watermelon.

 I enjoyed a lot of fun time with both Elsa and Liam. 

And we all enjoyed lots of time in the water.

Elsa loved being thrown in the air and jumping off the diving board.

 Elsa  also reconnected with her friend Mackenzie at the pool:

Arne enjoyed was some rest in our hammock with Elsa and Liam.

And at night we enjoyed the shows, but often Elsa and Liam would both fall asleep after a day of too much fun.

 

 We were excited to take our annual picture with Mike White!

Arne's other brother Erik joined us later in the week, giving the Stokstad brothers time together with baby Liam.

It was nice for the two families to spend so much time together.

We took many fun family photos at the Lair.  We look foward to next year and we hope to have all the Stokstad's join us again!

Elsa is 3!

Elsa is 3!  We had a wonderful weekend celebrating Elsa turning 3 years old.

She wore a dress she picked out - a birthday dress to school on Friday.  As a treat she made banana cupcakes for her classmates and helped put togther goodie bags.  She really like getting her own goodie bag at the end of the day.  We then had Birthday Day cake at Prolific Oven on the way home!

Sunday was the big day, starting off with a party in the park.

And ending with a family BBQ and pool time.

Then a cupcake cake at home!

Elsa has changed so much in the last year.  She talks, sings, dances, explores, asks to play games and do projects, swims in Level 1 swimming lessons without mommy or daddy, and so many other new things. We love our Elsa and look forward to another year of growth and exploration!