National Anthem 2018

On April 30, we all headed to San Francisco to a Giants game.  This wasn't just any Giants game, it was the game that Elsa was signing at! We took the train up and then met up with the family.  Then Elsa and I stayed at the side of the stadium and waited for her to enter the field.  It was great watching all the kids play before the event.

Then they walked onto the field to sing!

Elsa at Giant's Game from Arne Stokstad on Vimeo.

Elsa had a blast!

After singing, we watched the game with family and all her Addison friends.

We had a great time and then Arne drove us home in his new car.

Spring Sports

This spring has been filled with sporting fun.  Elsa continues to play softball, enjoying playing on the Orange Cheetah team.  They have had several fun games.

 

One of the great things the team did was a team skills clinic after a Stanford softball game.  Elsa got to work on sliding:

catching:

and get some pointers from the Stanford coach!

Another night, there was a run-the-bases night. 

Liam managed to go for a second round!

 Liam is playing on his first soccer team. 

Arne made a great video of the highlights.

The other big excitement in the house is Elsa now has a skateboard! She picked out her board and all its components at a local skate shop.  We now sometimes skate to school, and also go out to the skate park.

What is really nice is when she helps Liam learn. 

Easter Fun 2018

 We had a wonderful Easter Holiday.  We enjoyed a fun egg hunt at my mom's house in Millbrae.

 The kids really do love searching around for eggs. 

 Summer just watches the fun.

 They also like hiding eggs for the rest of us to find!

 This year, Liam also put on a show - showing off his new Easter LEGOs and telling everyone a story.

Liam and Elsa both got exciting Easter Baskets filled with eggs and LEGOs.



The day before Easter, they also got to hunt eggs, at the Menlo Park Egg Hunt.  A yearly favorite that Elsa was particularly excited to attend, because as you leave the hung, you get a big candy.  She picked Skittles. Liam doesn't really like candy (besides vanilla and maybe peanut butter candies), so he gave Elsa all of his candy.

On of the highlights for us of the Easter season is blowing out eggs and decorating them.  This year, on Palm Sunday, we had friends over to do that!  It seems this is also a big German tradition.

Legoland March 2018

On March 10th we headed down to San Diego for a quick trip to LEGOLAND!

The trip started off with Liam and Elsa getting a tour of the cockpit.  Liam was in heaven "driving" the plane.  

Once we made it to LEGOLAND, it was a bit wet, but that did not stop us from wandering about the park and checking out the rides and LEGOS.

 Arne enjoyed the dry Ninjago ride!

 And Elsa enjoyed creating things in the creativity lab.

 Back in the room, the kids loved their Pirate bunk beds.

The next day was sunny and warm.  I went on a crazy ride with both kids, because Arne was too tall for it!

After a morning of rides, we headed over to the waterpark.  This was our first visit with the waterpark open!  It was good we had suits on for the one ride - we got splashed by a wave of water.  

 Liam was very excited by our purchase of the Saturn V rocket.

 All in all we had a great time exploring and enjoying LEGOLAND.