All Things Supercinski

Blogging has been a little sparse these days. I have been spending almost every spare moment finishing up my lactation educator requirements and they are done! I hope to get them in the mail this week. You can imagine how free I feel! Now I have a few little projects to start (and finish)–taxes, landscaping in the front yard (with the help of Big Event), and repainting the laundry room.

We gave Josiah a bicycle with training wheels for Christmas, but it was a little too big. We put it away since it was too cold to ride anyway and pulled it out two weeks ago. He grew enough for his feet to reach his pedals and is enjoying riding it. He has improved so much in such a short time and is getting better about stopping on his own.

Thomas and the kids enjoyed the snow last week in their non-waterproof winter-wear. They built a little snowman, which Josiah crashed down shortly after it was finished.

And lastly, a cute picture of the kids.

Josiah had a pirate party last weekend in honor of his fourth birthday. We originally planned to have his three sets of grandparents present for a small and simply family party, with lots of fun games. Two sets of grandparents were unable to come at the last minute, so we invited our homeschooling buddy. It was such a fun day!

Our little pirate:

Our big pirate:

Yes, Thomas dressed up as a pirate. It was hilarious, and thankfully none of the kids were afraid of him. He borrowed the costume from a coworker.

Josiah and his pal had a lot of fun with the games. We had a bean bag toss into a treasure chest, pin the flag on the X of the treasure map, a coin hunt (coins hidden all around the room, the kids hunted them, this was great for Annalise and her little pal), walking the plank (pictures below) and a treasure hunt. For the treasure hunt, I gave them a clue which led them to their next clue and so forth until they found the treasure. For example, “Even pirates have to eat. Look for your next clue in a place where your family keeps food.” It was taped inside the refrigerator. Their treasure was a chest full of party favors. Here is Josiah walking the plank:

I had too much fun burning the edges of this paper greeting:

The birthday boy with his pirate ship cake.

And another shot of the cake. It was much easier than I expected.

It was so fun! I’m glad we are still keeping the parties simple–I’m not ready to entertain masses of kids yet. Just keeping these two in line was hard enough. :) They are sword-fighting here:

Since Annalise was a few months old and wanting to be upright at all times, I have always held her that way. However, she still lets Thomas hold her like a baby. He says, “Can you be my baby, Annalise?” and then cradles her and walks around talking to her about her day. It is so precious. She babbles to him and answers his questions with rapt attention and sweet little grunts and words. They do this almost every night. I finally got a few pictures of it. And this was just some snuggling and reading time the other night.

We have been traveling a lot this month (one more trip to go tomorrow), and we have had a great time with family and friends. We have enjoyed visits with friends from far away…

and farther still (and Elizabeth didn’t drop them!)

We reflected on our Savior’s birth and the events leading to his coming. The Jesse Tree was a hit and will be carried on next year.

We have been busy baking and making…

and taking time to sip some tea.

Speaking of tea, I must show off my mom and Woody’s amazing craftiness. Isn’t this table the cutest?!

The children of our fellowship put on a Christmas play earlier this week. Josiah was the youngest child involved and played one of the wise men. His line was, “Gold I bring, for the newborn king!” I was too busy listening to record him saying it, but it was just precious, as you can imagine.

The older children wowed us by singing Andrew Peterson’s “Matthew’s Begats” song from memory, as well as a recitation of Luke chapter two.The younger children sang a sweet song about Joseph not being able to find a place to stay except for in the stable. From left to right, Josiah, a shepherd, an angel, Mary’s donkey, Mary and Joseph.

And a little clip for the grandparents and anyone else who wants to see Josiah playing a little air guitar on stage.

I should be plowing through some light reading, but instead, I am uploading pictures and posting an assortment of photos from the last few weeks.

We were enjoying some beautiful harvests from the garden (have I told you how much I love a fall garden?), but then we got a deep freeze this week and lost our green bean and tomato plants (not a shocker, they are not frost-tolerant). We picked off every last green tomato, and we now have a huge canvas bag full. Check out these plump green beans!

We braved the freezing temperatures and visited a living Nativity scene and our city’s Christmas light display. It was freezing, but fun, and Josiah had his first hay ride, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Annalise and I were decked out in coats, hats AND the baby-wearing poncho, and we were still cold.

Speaking of Josiah, I had a middle-of-the-night-brilliant idea (they always seem to come to me then, a silver lining to night nursing), for Josiah to conduct some experiments in mixing colors. I had found an extra medicine dropper while cleaning out a cabinet, gave him some water colored with food coloring, and set him to mixing. This kept him busy for HOURS! He asked to do it all weekend long, then finally got tired of it. I highly recommend it as a rainy day activity. We had just read this book, so that is probably the source of the idea.

I enjoy reading about other families’ traditions around the holidays, especially families with preschoolers. We want to be purposeful in our Christmas traditions in that everything points our children back to the true meaning of Christmas–that God became a helpless baby, born in a barn of all places, as a part of his plan to redeem us to himself. In seeking this goal, we have chosen not to do Santa, but that is not the point of this post. Many of these ideas are from the book, Treasuring God in Our Traditions, by Noel Piper. Thomas gave me this book when we were engaged, and I highly recommend it.

Every night during Advent, we read a bit of the Christmas story, repeating the previous nights’ portions so that by the end, everyone has just about memorized the story. We read an adaptation of Noel Piper’s advent calendar story (DG used to sell a simple Nativity scene calendar and Noel’s readings. It was discontinued a few years ago, but I got the readings from a friend) and use this magnetic Nativity Advent calendar. We keep it on our kitchen table on a cookbook stand for the month of December.

We started a new tradition this year of doing a Jesse Tree. Every night during Advent, we also look back at many events, beginning with Creation and ending with the birth of Jesus, looking at the big picture of waiting for the promised salvation of God. We borrowed a little tree from my mom, but a branch would suffice. We are doing these child-friendly readings . Each night we read a Scripture, discuss, and hang the related ornament on our little Jesse tree. I bought many of the ornaments at Hobby Lobby–they have little painted wooden cutouts that go perfectly and are nicer than cardstock. The rest I have made from felt or painted little wooden squares to go on the tree. Here is a sample for inspiration:

We also keep kid-friendly nativity scenes out for the kids to play with, but I think we need to hide Baby Jesus and only bring him out at Christmas because he is a highly coveted item between these two kids! I also like Kendra’s idea about leaving an empty cradle under the tree.

On Christmas morning, we bake a cake for Jesus as a way to celebrate His birth. This may be Josiah’s favorite part!

In an effort to steer the focus away from gifts and teach about giving, we assemble Operation Christmas Child boxes each year. This was an easy thing for Josiah to understand and we talked about and prayed for the little boy who would receive the box of items Josiah had helped pick out for him.

From Noel Piper, “May our decorations, gifts, and festivities–or lack of them–never block our view of him (Jesus) but always point us toward him.”

If you would like to read our advent calendar readings, you can read on. (Thanks again, Megan, for typing them up for us.) Read more »

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends this year. We managed to see a lot of people and do a lot in just three days. We spent Thanksgiving day and Friday with my mom in Athens. My little brother and sister-in-law and my younger sister (pictured here with my brother) were there, too.

Josiah loved playing in Nana’s huge yard and kicking up leaves. He watched some of Disney’s Robin Hood last week and is now really into sword-fighting.

He was a bit apprehensive of the tire swing, but would ride with Thomas or myself.

Annalise wanted in on the action. She sure loves her Nana!

We couldn’t go all the way to East Texas and not see our friends, the Eylers, so we met halfway for dinner. It was too brief, but great to catch up for a bit.

Saturday morning we headed to Homestead Heritage for their annual Children’s Craft Fair. We met friends there and Josiah enjoyed building a boat and then immediately had to test it out.

Annalise’s favorite part was the animals. They had a petting zoo area filled with puppies and baby goats. She had a great time. Josiah even held a puppy and petted a goat. He was so brave! Thomas’ favorite part was seeing them making essential oils from rosemary. My favorite part, once again, was the apple cider donuts.

I saw some timely ideas for preparing our family for Thanksgiving on another blog this week. I decided to do a thankfulness tree, and Josiah is loving it. I love hearing what he wants to say “thank you, God” for every night at dinner. Mine is a little, um, shabby (packing tape visible everywhere), but it was free and took 15 minutes. I used brown paper bags. In the middle it says, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever. Psalm 118:1″

The pumpkin patch near our house arrived Monday (via a big rig truck), and Josiah just had to go as soon as he knew it was there. So the kids and I walked to pick out a few pumpkins to paint yesterday afternoon–it was 90 degrees out and extremely humid, note their red, sweaty faces. We’ll have to go back sometime when it is cooler and more fall-like.

This was my favorite pumpkin:

Josiah came home and immediately painted one of the pumpkins. He also painted the paper I put underneath the pumpkin. On the right you will see the three little pumpkins we bought. The green is some grass, and on the left are three little people. They are orange and yellow–Josiah, me, and Annalise.

The artist, posing with his picture.