Old-Fashion Cider Donuts

Old-fashion cider donuts right out of the fryer our mom's favorite past-time from when she lived in Michigan. Now that it's fall, we definitely were ready to get a taste of these from our favorite old-fashion cider mill here in Missouri, Dunn's Cider MIll. It's not too far from Papa and Gigi's house, so Papa met us for some pre-lunch donuts.

It was neat to watch the donuts being made. I got to stand at the window and watch each one come out, get flipped, and then go up the conveyor belt. It was so fascinating. The ladies even let us pick out some of the ones that had just come out of the fryer!

From The Rankin Family

These donuts are finger-licking good!

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

I love the donuts coated with cinnamon and sugar. Actually, I love lots of things with cinnamon and sugar: toast, apples, donuts, cookies, and anything else I can convince mom to put it on! We'll be going back for sure at least once or twice this fall, mom, baby, and I ate almost 6 donuts! We should probably spread our our donut feasting.

The Apple Orchard

Mom's favorite time of year is the fall. There are a lot of outdoor activities she likes to do, and as she's told me about them, I get more and more excited. So, to officially welcome fall, we made our first trip to the apple orchard. We went to Weston Red Barn Farm in Weston, MO. They have all sorts of fun things and learning activities for kids to do. Weston Red Barn Farm will surely become a staple of our fall activities in the coming years.

This farm has animals, a corn maze, hay rides, and all sorts of things. They even have geese roaming free which really kind of scared me. Here I am by a hay horse and antique tractor. This was one of the few times I got close to the geese.

From The Rankin Family

At the farm, we picked apples. A lot of apples! Truthfully, mom did most of the picking. Apples are on trees really good and I'm not quite strong enough yet to twist them off. I fell down a few times trying to pull an apple off a tree. I became an official helper and put all of the apples in the basket. (Mom told me "gently" a few hundred times.)

From The Rankin Family

We also got to eat some of the apples while we were put there. They tasted so much better than what mom usually gets at the grocery store. I've been asking for a picked apple each day at lunch.

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Another highlight of the day was my caterpillar. I found it on our basket and despite my fear of flies and all other flying creatures, I loved this little guy. I carried him around for about half an hour before finding an appropriate home for him in the garden on a leaf.

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

Our trip is ending. Here I am at the end of the day. Picking apples is sure hard work and it was pretty hot outside.

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

I was really excited when I heard we had picked a bushel of apples! (Or perhaps it was the old-fashioned candy buttons I got.) We'll be going to a different orchard in a few weeks when their picking starts. This time though Dad is coming! I love mom a bushel and a peck.

From The Rankin Family

Outdoor Girl

I have struck quite a delicate balance between the girly-girl playtime and the tom-boyish types of activities. Mom is really thankful for this and loves having opportunities to enrich both sides of my character. Today was an especially big day for me and dad (mom was there, but acting as photographer only). We went to a very good friend of dad's house on acreage not too far from our house. They have horses, a pond for fishing, a garden, dogs, and cats! This was the highlight of August for me and I can't wait to go back.

Here are some great pictures of some of my favorites of the day. I loved feeding the catfish off the dock, and fishing. I liked looking the part as well in my frog galoshes.

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

Here we are getting ready for fishing! I've been practicing with my pink fishing pole all summer on the driver, now we''re really going to try it out, lure and all. We're going in a John Boat and I'm excited.

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

From The Rankin Family

We didn't catch anything but it was still a success. One fish actually took my lure! And my friend Miss Hannah caught two fish and I got to touch one! The other part of the day that I really liked was the horses, Malachi and Blue. Malachi is brown and I've named my horse at home after him. I got to pet them and watch them swat at flies, I even saw Malachi buck. Even thouhg I can't ride these horses, I loved them a lot.

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Rankin Reunion - Year 2

The Rankin family has started doing annual reunions. This has been really great for me as I get to see and play with my other cousins Sophia. Sophia, Chanie, and I are all the same age! This year we met in Kansas City and we went to Deanna Rose Farmstead. Here's a picture of the three of us along with my older cousin Will.

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And here's a whole picture of the Rankin family. The opportunity to get a whole family picture doesn't come around often. Thanks Nana, for sending us this one!

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Budding Engineer?

One of my favorite things to do right now is be a little helper. I love to help dad with anything he's doing, especially if it involves tools! Here we are trying to fix the sprinkler control system at our house. The sprinklers, our home phone, and some of our smoke detectors had a run in with a lightning strike and now they're broken!

I loved playing with the digital multi-meter. The parts were all really small, but this LCD screen was interesting.

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I'm proud of the work I've done. Now we're off to Lowe's to buy a new one.

From The Rankin Family

The Best Dentist

I had my first dentist appointment today and entered the office saying, "The best dentist.". Thankfully I left the dentist feeling the same way. Mom had prepped me for this all week. She told me how they were going to count my teeth, look in my mouth, and maybe take pictures. So, I was ready.

Here I am in the waiting room. The ladies there love me, I had met them before. They had some magazines out for me already and said it would be just a few minutes.



Here I am in the chair. Miss Diane is my hygienist. She gave me a pair of latex gloves like hers and got all my fingers in the right spots, that way I knew what they felt like. I loved the sunglasses, they protected me from the big flashlight. I thought the dentist bib was a bit big for me though. I was ready to get that off at the end. The ride in the chair was the only thing I found a bit scary. In all of our prep talks, mom had neglected to inform me that the chair moves! So, it took me a minute to relax once the chair stopped.





So, once I was in the air this is what happened. Miss Diane counted my teeth...I have all twenty teeth I'm suppose too! Then she used this special spinning brush that tickled to polish all of my teeth. Then, my dentist came in and he checked my teeth. He said I had good spacing and used this metal pick to tingle my molars, it sounded funny. After that, Miss Diane painted my teeth with flouride and said only healthy food for the day.





I didn't get any pictures taken of my teeth, they said I was still too little. Overall, I had a great report! I got a new bracelet and I new toothbrush that I carried with me to the car. After all that, mom and I went to lunch together at my request. After being such a good patient mom couldn't refuse a request to go to Chili's, my favorite restaurant! And of course, when we got home I used my new toothbrush.

It's a Baby!

On Mother's Day mom and dad found out that our family is expecting a new addition. I had informed them the night before, "There's a baby in your tummy." Not really thinking I knew what I was talking about, mom thought she would take a test and just see what was up. To everyone's surprise, it came back positive. Cautious as mom and dad were at first, they decided to take me to the hospital with them for the first ultrasound. On the way there, they said "We are going to see what is in mommy's tummy." I responded with, "Is there a dead bug in your tummy mommy?"

You can only imagine my surprise when I saw not a dead bug but a real live baby! Here's a picture of our first look at what will, on my 3rd birthday, be my baby brother or sister. Yes, mom is due on January 19th, 2009. A day that is filled with so much significance and so many blessings for our family. Not only is it the day that I was born in 2006, but my sister Talitha Grace was taken to see Jesus that day in 2007, and now it's the possible day that our family will be given another wonderful blessing with the birth of another child.



This is a long awaited and greatly prayed for moment for all of us. We have been very excited and God has shown us so much mercy as the pregnancy has progressed. We saw the heartbeat at that first ultrasound which gave us confidence in the blessing the Lord has bestowed upon us. At our first Dr.'s appointment, 8 weeks, this baby had the earliest heartbeat our Dr. has ever heard externally with a doppler, another glorious mercy given to us. And then yet again at the 11 week mark the ultrasound revealed that we have been blessed with a healthy baby.





It was such a relief to see the miracle of life, perfectly created by God inside mommy. Though we know that every child is perfectly designed by God, we were very thankful to hear that he had blessed us with a healthy baby. Mom is doing great and the Dr. has said this is a textbook, perfect pregnancy! Praise be to God.

Summertime Fun

This summer has been a blast so far and mom has taken me all sports of places. This is great for me, bad for her, my expectations each morning have grown for the amount of excitement I'm in for. We start off the day with, "We go bye, bye now mama?" But, we're managing. Water parks, play groups, berry picking, and then one of my favorites...Loralei!

This summer mom took on an extra child, Loralei. She's 4 years old and she stays with us every Thursday. I love playing with her and frequently will ask, "Where is my friend Loralei, mama?" We go to a nature story time together in the morning and do a craft. Then, it's usually off to the park and then home for lunch and naps. But the best part of the day is the sprinkler and pool in the afternoon. We both look forward to it and have a blast together!







This works out for mom to. She usually gets a break and gets to relax in a chair :) She has to watch out though, sometimes we get more then her feet wet trying to cool her off!

Adventure Oasis

The water park is open, and I've been going. Mom found out through some friends that Monday through Thursday they're open to 5 year olds and under for 2 hours! This really cuts down on the crowd and makes mom feel much more comfortable about going. We met my friends Kennedi, Blake, and their cousin Torey there this past week and I had so much fun! I was timid at first, but once I found the water sprinkles that I can walk under, I was going crazy. I would run through them, around them, under them and I was laughing all the way.



I even started sticking my head right in it!



It was a really fun morning but it sure was tiring.





I am so blessed that mom and I have found such great friends to play with!
(Torey, Kennedi, Ainsley, and Blake)

Blueberry Picking

This summer has been all about favorite past time activities for mom. This week we went to The Berry Patch. It was a drive, and we tried for two weeks to go, each time they were picked out. But, this week we made it. Off to blueberry picking for the two of us, bushes full of sweet blueberries that are free of thorns. It was the perfect recipe for a lot of fun for us both.

Here we are at the beginning. I carried my bucket all the way out to the patch. I had to bring my cool Go, Diego Go gardening gloves with us and got started right away. I lost the gloves after a few minutes.





Mom must have told me a thousand times, "only pick the blue ones." I figured this one out for myself after I ate an unripe, green blueberry. It was quite sour. I had picked about two pints of blueberries and then mom let me eat one right off of the bush. After that, the hunt was no longer for blueberries for my bucket but ones for my mouth. I probably ate as many as I picked!





It was hot out there, good thing mom brought along some refreshments. The apple juice wasn't cutting though after Ainsley got a taste of fresh, homemade blueberry lemonade.



Here we are with the 2.69 lbs. of blueberries we both picked. It was really rewarding for Ainsley to see them weighed. She showed off the bag to everyone.





At lunchtime, I ate a little and then said, "I'm done. My tummy is full of blueberries." I showed mom how big my tummy was and she just laughed. We both agreed that we should do this each year.

Summertime Treats

Summer is officially here and we've had our fair share of hot and humid days. The heat of the day is right about when I wake up from nap and mom has been great in treating me to some cool down treats. Today was special though. I woke up just in time to hear the ice cream man coming by. His bell was ringing and we were running in an effort to catch up to him. We had to go all the way to the end of our street. Which is a long way for my little legs to run. Needless to say, mom and I were both ready for the cool treat at the corner.

I got my first bomb pop (though not the traditional red, white, and blue) and still have not mastered the art of eating a popsicle on a stick. Thank heavens mom had my smock on me, she could dump out the melted popsicle from my pockets by the time we were done.







I've gotten better at eating popsicles since these pictures. However, I think I'm cheating a bit, my favorites are icee pops. The treat from mom's younger days that's just frozen juice in a plastic sleeve. The plastic helps keep it all in. I thought choosing those at the grocery store was pretty clever.

Spring Dress

Here I am ready for church in my new spring dress complete with matching barrettes. Aunt Trish's significant other, Mr. Steve, left the dress for me right before he left for Scotland. (That's where he's from.) He'll be back in about a month but left me this to send some sunshine my Aunt Trish's way. Thank you Mr. Steve!

Here's an up close look at my barrettes. This was a new thing for me. I love them though! Mom's going to have to get some more to coordinate with some of my everyday outfits!



Standing pretty. I love to say cheese for pictures but I never seem to be looking at the camera.



Ahh, there's that smile. I love flowers, of all types. Mom has some by our porch that I would love to pick; however, I mostly stick to the clover in our yard. But these daisies sure are pretty. Maybe mom can plant some of those for me.