So it's been TWO yeas since I posted anything... No real excuse, just lazy. So I thought I'd give a sort of year in review... but if you got out Christmas letter, you've read most of this already. As the new year starts, though I do hope to get a few more posts in on here - in case anyone still looks and/or cares. And with a new baby (BOY) on the way, I'm sure that somebody will want a few updates (then again, I don't know). So here's our annual Christmas letter, which is also a sort of year in review... it's a long one :)
~~~~~~~~~~
Well I suppose it’s that time of the year again. Time to tell all of you our family and friends, what we, the Rankin’s have been up to this past year.
This year got off to a kind of slow start. Late in February, Faith came home from school with a paper that said they had done regular vision screenings and that we would need to take her to an eye Dr for follow-up. This resulted in Faith getting glasses. We think she’s really cute with them! She liked them at first, she could see better, after all. Now, though, the novelty has worn off and she’s kind of tired of them.
 |
| Faith's new glasses |
|
In March we celebrated 8 years of having Faith in our family. She got many presents, but her favorite of the day was a guitar! She has tried to learn a bit how to play, but quickly put that aside. She will still get it out from time to time to pick at it a bit.
In May Faith and Megan got baptized! This is a very big deal for us, as it shows our church family that they have previously asked Jesus into their hearts and lives. Also in May we decided that Faith could have her own space. What this really meant was that since our upstairs doesn’t keep temperature very well (HOT in the summer, COLD in the winter), we cleaned out a corner of our basement (much more temperate) and did the corner up so that Faith has her own ‘room.’ We painted it pink, and had intentions on doing blue and purple circles and dots all over, but as of this writing, they’ve yet to be done... we’ve gotten a little side tracked. And now Faith and Megan have decided to switch rooms, Faith is upstairs again with Holly and Megan is in the basement.
Another thing that happened in May was the birth of a very special little girl. Christina’s boss, Sara, at the daycare where she works part time, was having problems with her pregnancy. She was 27 weeks along when some issues from the complications came up and the Drs in Pittsburgh (where Sara was) decided that both lives would be saved if the baby was born. Makayla Hope came into the world 13 weeks too soon (that’s three months)! This little girl is such a trouper, though, she has been through 2-3 surgeries in her tummy and bowels. She has only been home (as of this writing) a grand total of about 4 weeks during her short 7 months of life (and is currently
back in the hospital). This doesn’t come close to telling her whole ‘story,’ but it’s important to Christina. If you think about Makayla, please a say prayer for her and her family, she has a big brother in kindergarten this year and a big sister that will be in kindergarten next fall. They are such a sweet family.
 |
| Makayla's family - May 2012 |
|
 |
| Makayla - Christmas time 2012 |
|
In June Steve and Christina had a bit of a surprise as we found out that we are expecting another child come February 2013. While this wasn’t a planned pregnancy, we know that God has great things in store this baby, or HE would not have let this pregnancy happen. Christina had an early ultrasound to determine an actual due date (Feb 24th), but we haven’t had a baby on a due date yet, so we are not counting on it being that late in Feb. So far it’s been a pretty uneventful pregnancy (a bit more later though).
The rest of our summer consisted of feeding some ducks at a nearby ‘spring.’ Picking Strawberries with Christina’s mom group. Grandmum visiting! We always love it when she come to visit!! Picking blueberries with Christina’s mom’s group, this time we took Grandmum! Christina’s brother Michael and his wife Morgan giving birth to Cousin James. A bat getting into the house, yikes! And a big trip!
 |
| Uncle Mike and cousin James |
|
The Bat Attack (OK, not really an attack)... It seems that somehow a bat got into the house and found it’s way downstairs (remember, Faith’s room is/was down there). As Christina was giving kisses to Faith this night we noticed something flying around. We thought it may be just a big moth or something like that, but it was enough to drive Faith to sleep upstairs with her sisters anyway. After Christina went to bed, she was AWAKENED by something flying about. Once she figured out that this was NOT a moth but a bat, she screamed and high tailed it out of the room, turning on every light she could without waking any kiddos. When Steve arrived home a bit later, he found the culprit lying on the floor of the bedroom rather stunned by all the light, picked it up (with gloved hands) and escorted it outside. He thought the whole thing was fairly comical, and was more sorry for the bat. In retrospect, Christina supposes it was comical, but at the time it was rather scary. Upon further inspection of the downstairs, there doesn’t seem to be any more or any other way for such a critter to get in. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again!
 |
| The poor bat... |
|
Our big trip! In August, the church got a group of folks together for a trip to Kentucky to the Creation Museum (http://creationmuseum.org/). From the websight: “The state-of-the-art 70,000 square foot museum brings the pages of the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form and placing them in familiar settings. Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s Rivers. The serpent coils cunningly in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Majestic murals, great masterpieces brimming with pulsating colors and details, provide a backdrop for many of the settings.” There is so much to tell about this trip, our suggestion is to click around the websight. We have SO many pictures and could have stayed a couple of days to take it all in, but our group was only there the one day. Someday, if anyone visits, we did make a memory book of our adventure at the Museum you’ll have to see it! We had a blast though and would love to get back someday!
Shortly before school started for the year we announced to Faith, Megan and Holly that they were going to get a baby brother or sister. We, the parents, thought we’d be clever about telling our girls about this, and put a shirt on Holly that says “Big Sister.” Faith and Megan didn’t really get it till we actually said ‘Mommy’s pregnant.’ It was cute, and the girls are excited.
 |
| Big sisters 1, 2 and 3 :) |
|
At the end of August, school started yet again. Faith is in third grade this year. She has two different teachers, as they have the third graders switch around for math, language arts, and science. She will say that her favorite subject is reading, and her least favorites are history and math. But, we had her parent/ teacher conferences just as of this writing and Faith is excelling in all areas, she is the teacher’s helper (first born, yeah she’s always been that way) and a joy to have in class. Megan is in first grade this year. Megan also loves to read and is getting very good at sounding out words and using many reading strategies. She is also excelling in all areas. We are a bit concerned about some hearing issues with Megan, though, and that seems to effect some things at school, but the Drs say she is fine.
October was fairly busy. We, well Christina, had an ultrasound to check out all the parts of the baby and to make sure everything is functioning right. Before the ultrasound, as a family, we (the girls mostly) had decided that we should all find out the gender of the baby at the same time. So at the ultrasound Christina had the technician put the baby’s gender in an envelope for later.
One weekend in October the town has a pumpkin festival, where venders or non-profit groups set up a table and sell pumpkin related things and other things too. Some of the booths are just games for the kids to play. Steve gave Faith and Megan $5 for the festival to do with as they pleased. They play a lot of the games for candy. They had a lot of fun. Later that day we headed to a place called JB Tree Farm (about 30-min drive from home), where they were also having a pumpkin fest. Here they have a play area for the kids, a hayride through the trees (that will be used for Christmas Trees later), and a corn maze where you can figure your way through. Then you can pick out and pay for your pumpkin. We had a lot of fun there. We have never paid so much for a pumpkin though.
The Thursday before October 31 is “trick-or-treat night” around this area. The church we attend does a fun take on that and does Trunk-or-treat, gathering cars ‘dressed up’ in their favorite theme and has them hand out candy to the kids that come to the church. The girls all had a lot of fun that night. Christina even got in on the fun a little bit and made a shirt tailored to her belly, a pumpkin with a pacifier.
 |
| Mommy's 'costume' |
|
Christina finally decided to give the envelope with our baby’s gender to the grandmother of a friend of Faith’s. She makes cakes as a side business. We thought she would just put the appropriate color frosting on the inside of the cake... boy were we wrong, but in a good way. What she did was make the cake, frost it and decorate the top appropriately. She put it in a box so that we couldn’t see what the top looked like. When Steve woke up that day, we called our moms and opened the box to find out that... It’s a BOY!
In November we packed Operation Christmas Child boxes. OCC is an organization that gives boxes of essential items (toothbrush, toothpaste, combs, etc), toys and educational items to underprivileged children in other countries. Our church had a combined goal of packing 12,000 boxes, we as a family went to the packing party. The girls packed a few boxes, while Christina sat and stuck labels (‘boy’ or ‘girl’) to boxes, and Steve moved boxes – empty ones and packed ones. When the packing party weekend was all said and done our church packed more than 12,160 boxes!
To finish out the year we did a few more things that we planned. Faith and Megan are in the community choir that Faith has been in past years. Megan is excited to join Faith and they are having a good time. The concert was the first weekend of December, they did a great job. The next weekend was the annual Christmas play at our church. Steve and Christina opted out of participating this year, Christina is tired enough haha, but we did go to watch two (Steve only went to one though) of the performances. That was the same weekend as Holly’s birthday, it’s still hard to believe that three years ago
she played baby Jesus for one of the performances. My how time does fly! Steve also saw the Hobbit when it came out in the theater mid December, he went with a group of guys from church. He said it was good, didn't follow the book - of course, and is bummed that it will be three movies. Christmas was good, nice and low key. New Years will also be somewhat low key - at least Steve can take the night off. In the past we have all gotten up and ventured out to his work sight to celebrate. Now we just wait for our baby boy to be born in Feb.
