September Fun

September was a very eventful month!  Elsa started her new Saturday morning KinderGym class - New Stars.  Now she is out on the gym floor without us and is loving the class. 

 Liam continues to crawl all over the place.

And now is even crawling all the way up the stairs!

 We went to a fun birthday where Liam and Elsa go to play in a little pool.

 And Arne's volleyball team won Summer league!

 There were big work trips for both of us.  Arne went to Louisville Kentucky.

 And Elsa created an airplane seat for herself and talked about packing up and going to Albania. One of her classmates at preschool went to Albania recently.

She is loving dressing up - and this is her new princess outfit, which she calls a pizza princess because the stars and moons on the hat look like toppings on a slice of pizza!

She is also really good with her bike, enjoying riding around the courtyard and playing on it.

 One of our favorite things continues to be sleep and Liam is a good sleeper.

 I headed off to India for a 2 week work trip.  During my weekend there I had wonderful local roasted corn.

 saw great waterfalls,

 and revisited Mumbai and their gate, that I saw with Amanda when I visited in 2006.

 While I was gone, the grandparents helped Arne out with the kids and brought over dinner.

 Arne was proud of getting Elsa's hair washed and in a pony tail.

 Elsa Liam and Arne spent a whole day at the SF Academy of Science.

 We also had a lot of fun with FaceTime and I got to see them everyday.

 Even in the airport in Hong Kong!

 At the end of the month, it was another fun birthday party, with yummy cupcakes.

 Airport Day in Palo Alto, with Elsa in the cockpit of a real plane.

 Then as she slept, Liam tried to drive the car home.  Check out his 3 teeth!

A great, although pretty exhausting September!

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!