Our Pumpkin is 11 months old!

Our little pumpkin, Ella, is 11 months old today! WOW!!
In the last month her little personality has sure changed. She is no longer a baby, she is turning into a little girl.
She talks to mom all day long. We have some pretty good conversations.
Ella and I get to visit an 82 year old lady 3 days a week and eat lunch with her. Ella LOVES going to visit her friend and gets so excited when we walk up to the porch and ring the doorbell.
She crawls ALL over the place and is into everything. She loves to pull herself up and walk around the furniture. She loves to take walks to the pond to see the ducks. She gets so excited when she sees them. She could watch them for hours if I let her.

Ella also loves all 16 of moms piano students. She gets so jealous when they come over and mom lets them play the piano and not Ella. She loves the attention she gets from them!
Ella also loves:
*Reading stories
*Singing songs
*chasing dad around the house
*eating almost everything
*apple juice
*talking on the phone to grandma
*brushing her own hair-every morning Ella has to have a brush in her hand and help mom do her hair.
*Mom's car keys

We couldn't ask for a better little girl! We love her and are so grateful to be able to raise her!

Picking Apples

Since we have been living in Ohio, we have been able to experience some things that we don't get to do in Utah. This year we decided that we wanted to go to an Apple Orchard and pick some apples. Because of the hot summer with little rain that we had, there were several orchards that had no apples or were not offering "pick your own." We found one orchard about 45 minutes away from us that still had some left. We bundled up and drove out to Tuken Farms one Saturday morning to pick a few apples and take lots of pictures! I really only cared about the pictures.
The only apple that is orchard had left to pick was the "Gold Rush" apple. It is a yellow apple that is really sweet (a little tart) and the skin is really rough (almost like sandpaper). Ella enjoyed herself. She picked one apple and held onto it the entire time! She also LOVED sitting in the wagon with the apple basket or on the ground digging through the apples. They even had a petting zoo. We walked past the animals and Ella laughed and smiled at all of them.
We now have SEVERAL apples to bake with! So far we have made 2 apple pies and some apple fritters. I think we picked a few too many apples but it was sure fun!

Getting ready for the apple orchard