The Schmidgalls

We took our annual trip to Cox farm with the cousins, aunties, and grandmas!  It was cooool…but so fun!  We did all the traditional activities…including the favorite, corn fights!

It is Zeke’s first fall, first pumpkin farm, and his first hayride!

Then, Aunt Lo-la (Lora) took Zekey on his first hay slide!

Ellie rode with Parker

Seriously, I am always super-duper thankful for how amazing the cousins are with our kids.  They take them everywhere, entertain them, just love them up and down!

Ella had a first of her own…first pony ride!  I was not about to pay even more money but Mimmy wouldn’t let her miss out!  Her eyes got huge when I set her on…and then walked away - but she loved it!

Ummm…let’s pause here for a word about the socks.  Those are Mimmy’s socks that she REALLY wanted to wear.  And THEN she insisted on wearing them this way, with her pants tucked in.  I am having style disagreements already?!  She borrowed Summer’s sweatshirt to top off the outfit.

And, of course, I couldn’t resist a bunch of pics with the pumpkins (”pump-ins”, as Ella calls them)!

My own little pumpkins!  (Or, as Grandma Schmidgall says, “punkins!”)

Big boy!

My little ham…

Flashback - Here is a picture of Ella during her first visit to Cox Farm two years ago.

The cousins…minus a couple (darn school!)

Our buds, the Batts

Mimmy with her munchkins

And two of my favorites dudes ever!

See ya next year Cox Farm!

Here are a few random pics from time at home.  One afternoon, I promised Ella we would have a tea party.  I made scones and we had tea and cookies and muffins.  We had cousins Summer and Siah and Aunt Lo-la over and got all fancy.

Tea and cookies…hold the tea please.

After tea-time, Summer played dress-up with Ella.  She was in heaven!  Here she is as her idol, Snow White of course!

And here is a pic I took of Zeke when he was first sitting up on his own.  It has been weeks and weeks now (as you can tell by the warm weather attire) but he is still lookin’ cute!

And SHAME on me that I never posted Ella’s first day of playschool this fall!  She missed the first week of class because we were in California but we still took a picture of her with her school bag.

Little Learners Playschool, Fall 2009 - 2+ years old

Joel had the privilege of dedicating our little Cali Michelle to the Lord recently.  The Borjas are so important to our family and our kids just adore each other.  We love little Giovanni (”Go-Go”) and Cali like family.  It was so great to take some time to offer Cali to God.

She looked right at Aunt Nina and gave a little smile for the photo!

“Uncle Joel, why are you talking so loud?”

Love you Cali!

I can’t seem to keep up with posting.  Maybe it is because we are having too much fun! Fall is my FAVORITE time of year and we go a little crazy with fall activities.  Joel took a half day from work so we could do apple picking as a family.

First, we just had to enjoy the land.  It is kind of funny that we live in the heart of the city because my husband is a farmer in his mind.  Whenever we are near farmland, he starts to walk with a swagger and talk with a twang.  I know he dreams of making our kids learn work ethic by working the the land.

Ella has been a SUPER jumper lately.  She will jump off of anything and everything.  She found some haybales and would have been content to skip apples and just jump all day.

Her smile shows how much fun she had at the top of the haybales.

Big jumper!

Daddy decides to take it to another level.

We finally convinced her to go get some apples.

She did more eating than picking.  I seriously think she ate like five right there.

I tried to get Zeke involved.

We had to visit the animals, of course.  Shhh…we slipped these guys some apples.

It was a wonderful day.  The only downer was that a nasty BEE stung my precious little girl as we were paying for our apples!  I kept seeing them near her and I would wave them away.  So I knew exactly what had happened when she screamed in pain and grabbed at her chin.  Poor baby!  “The bee stinged me Mommy!”

This was the final photo with smiles…pre-sting.

After meeting in Union Station for 13 years as a church, we just found out that the theaters are closing! So this Sunday was our last meeting there. Please be praying with us as we try to figure out next steps. I had to run over and pay last respects…

My nephew Noah is playing Peewee football this year. STUD!!! He’s a little tank!  Today he got his first start at running back - here’s his highlight film from today (3 runs). Go get it Noah!