All Things Supercinski

One of our friends from college got married last weekend here in College Station. It was a great time of visiting with friends we hadn’t seen, some in several years, some in just weeks. The wedding was a blast–one of the best dancing receptions in some time–though did anyone expect less from Jared?

We had some friends and their kids over for lunch on Saturday.

All of the kids posed for a picture. The baby that Josiah and Annalise are holding together is only three months old, can you believe it? He is huge! (Way to grow him, Erin!)

Last week, we had a most disturbing visitor in our garage. I opened the garage, and the kids were running around as I gathered our belongings and ushered them to the open car door. Suddenly, Josiah yells, “I see a snake!” I follow his pointed finger to see a HUGE snake just outside our open garage door, slithering (I’m gagging just remembering it) INTO our garage! I am shrieking and grabbing children and hurling them into the open car door. Thankfully, I already closed the door into the house. I cannot stop shaking and shrieking.

The snake curls up into the corner of the garage behind some old chicken wire and fishing poles. I still cannot stop shaking, and Josiah says, “Momma, call Daddy! He will know what to do!” So I call him. I don’t really remember what he said except that he was coming home and that we should stay in the car and watch to see where the snake goes. I back the car up into the driveway and the kids and I sit there watching to see if the snake moves, and in our rear-view mirror, I see our neighbor across the street, watering his grass, having witnessed everything, but not offering to help. Anyway, I end up calling Thomas and he calms me down and I talk with him until he gets there.

He ends up poking around (apparently the snake moved to the other side of the garage on my watch, I’m not sure how I missed that, unless there were two snakes and I cannot believe that or I will go insane). Thomas pokes at it with some garden tools, but the snake keeps striking at him, so I call animal control (which I have programmed in my cell phone for both CS and Bryan, you never know when you will need it–I have actually called three times in the past year, but I digress.) Thomas gets impatient waiting, so he ends up taking care of the snake himself with the hoe and some other hoe-like garden tool. The animal control man arrives shortly after to identify the slain–a rat snake, the third one the CS Animal Control man has been called about that morning.

Watch where you step, folks. Watch where you step. I kindly (and hurriedly with no editing experience) edited this photo to spare you the blood and dismemberment of our intruder. You can click it to view it larger. I’m second-guessing this whole live-in-the-country-and-grow-our-own-food idea.

For reference, that raised area of the garage where the snake is lying is about 2 feet deep.

I saw this on my friend, Megan’s, blog, and I thought it was so interesting that I had to do it myself. Our blog tends to be a little kid-focused these days, so perhaps this will give some of you a bit more information about me than you ever wanted to know.

2000
Celebrated Y2K asleep in a recliner at my best friends’ house on my first outing after back surgery.
Spent about four months in a fog recovering from said surgery.
Started my freshman year at Texas A&M University, majoring in education, thinking I was going to be a math teacher or go to nursing school.

2001
Spent spring break in London.
Decided teaching wasn’t really what I was supposed to do, changed my major to community health intending to go to nursing school someday.
Spent eight weeks in Nepal that summer. Got worms, made some great friends, experienced an earthquake and was robbed at gunpoint by Maoist rebels who stole all our stuff and attempted to burn down the house I was staying in. It was a life-changing summer, if you couldn’t tell by my brief description.

2002
Junior year of college, got really involved in the college ministry at our church, met Thomas and made more wonderful friends.
Applied to a bunch of nursing schools to transfer to a BSN program. Didn’t get into a single one though my grades were really good. God firmly closed that door, though it was shocking to me at the time.

2003
Lived with a wonderful family who taught me a ton about marriage and family.
Thomas and I started dating in November.

2004
Internship at Hope Pregnancy Center the semester before graduation.
Thomas and I got engaged in August.
Graduated in December.

2005

Thomas and I were married on January 8th. Had an awesome two-week honeymoon in Paris.

Found out we were pregnant in early May.
Bought a house in September.

2006

Josiah was born in February.
Made some great mom friends who helped in the transition to motherhood.

2007

Lived it up with one kids and lots of fun friends (that picture is horrible, but one of the few I have of most everyone.)
Started training to become a Bradley Method childbirth instructor.
Found out I was pregnant with Annalise in October.

2008

Annalise Claire was born in May.

Became fully certified as a Bradley instructor.

2009

Enjoying life with two beautiful kids and a wonderful husband.

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 am hoping to run the White Rock Half Marathon in December. There are a few reasons I am really excited to run this specific race. One being that I got to cheer on Thomas as he ran the full marathon when we first started dating six years ago, and the other that the race benefits Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (TSRHC). TSRHC provides extremely high quality medical care for children with orthopedic problems and dyslexia, all free of charge. TSRHC is very near and dear to my heart, quite literally, but more like my spinal region than my heart.

I found out I had scoliosis in junior high, and I was treated at TSRHC for several years, ultimately having a rod placed in my spine to straighten me out. The care I received at TSRHC was amazing (and free!), and I am so thankful for all they did for me. I want to start giving a little back through this race and any sponsorships I receive.

The half marathon I hope to run is only three days before the tenth anniversary of my back surgery. Cool, huh? All that to say, if you feel like sponsoring me in my race and donating to TSRHC, just go here. Thanks!

Some of you may be shocked to hear that I am hoping to run a half marathon since I’m not much of a long-distance runner. This spring, I had a really difficult time getting the kids to sleep at the same time so that I could have time to workout. So I started jogging with them in the jogging stroller. As my friend Sally says, jogging is one of the fastest ways to burn a lot of calories while your kids are awake. So true!

When I first started jogging again in April, I could barely run for two miles (with both kids), but kept with it and began jogging two or three miles most days a week. This continued through the summer, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, I started to enjoy running more. Which brings me to seven weeks ago when I decided to train for a half marathon–13.1 miles from a gal who barely finished the last 10K (6 miles) I attempted in college. Training is going great. I love my alone time running longer distances. I think running with kids in the jogging stroller got me in shape so that running alone is so much easier.

Two weekends ago, Thomas enjoyed a nice, long weekend of camping and rock climbing at Enchanted Rock with his friend, Elijah. Thankfully, Elijah’s wife was willing to come and stay with me to keep me company and help with the children. On Monday, we packed up and drove to Austin to meet the menfolk and spend the night in a hotel in downtown Austin.

We Supercinskis splurged on the hotel and got a huge two room suite with windows all along two walls overlooking Town Lake. The view was amazing–Josiah woke up early on Tuesday morning and spent a full hour looking out the window and observing the city, water, rain and rainbows while I slept. We also got to see the famous bats flying out from under the bridge on Congress Avenue–that was incredible. I never imagined that there were so many of them–the black swarms in the sky in the picture below are all bats. You can imagine the smell.

Tuesday morning, we packed up and headed a few blocks over to the Austin Children’s Museum. We could have spent all day there, if we didn’t need to eat, Annalise didn’t need a nap and we lived in Austin. If we are ever traveling to a bigger city, hitting the children’s museum there will be on our list of activities. It really made our local museum seem so tiny in comparison.

Josiah enjoyed working in the construction zone. He refused to let me take his picture that weekend, so this is the best you get.

Annalise loved playing with this tube in the science room. It was constantly blowing air out of it, so we gave her little objects to drop in, but they kept flying out. She thought it was hilarious.

Annalise played in the baby area and climbed into the pretend bed in the little house and pretended to sleep.

The response to the Composting class coming up this Saturday has been great. So good, in fact, that the class is now closed. If you are interested in learning more about compost and composting and didn’t make this class, contact me and I’ll set up another class sometime this fall.

At various times the last couple of years having a 6 foot step ladder would have been handy, but I’ve managed to borrow one, improvise, or just do with out. On my Wednesday morning run last week, I came across a wooden 6 foot step ladder on the curb for trash pickup. I didn’t inspect it closely, but went back on my way to work and picked it up. It had one broken back leg that was missing about 5 inches. Otherwise, the ladder was in excellent condition and didn’t appear used much at all. Clearly, this would be an easy fix. I had to contain my excitement.

So, what do you get out of a discarded 6 foot step ladder? After about 45 fun minutes working with your son, lots of instructional measuring and a few cuts, a perfectly useful, roughly 5 foot ladder.

Our favorite place to eat these days has become Shiraz Shish Kabob. If you only eat the flat bread and hummus your trip will have been worth it. I’m sure there is better bread, hummus, and lamb kabobs somewhere, but this is here and good.

There is good hummus in Dearborn, MI, as you’ll see below. Also, I wonder if Matt could do any research to find out if Thomas Jefferson was a hummus fan.

If you liked that one, check out Tabbouleh Song.

For those of you who are interested in starting or just getting better at gardening, Producer’s Coop in Bryan holds classes on Saturdays throughout the year on a variety of topics, both for the ag producer and the homeowner. The fall schedule is available here.

Next Saturday, September 5th, Producer’s will hold a Fall Gardening Class.

Gardening is booming in popularity everywhere in the country. This is especially true here in the Brazos Valley. This past spring, it was tough to find many popular sets and seeds. Many garden vegetables can only be (or are best) grown as cool season fall crops. This class will cover how to best prepare your soil, what crops fit our area, and how to deal with disease, insect and weed pests, as well as the top ten mistakes people make in vegetable gardening. We will also offer a break out session for young folks and we plan to let them get their hands dirty actually planting some things to take home with them. This class will be taught by Dr. Doug Welsh, Professor and Associate Department Head of Horticultural Sciences at TAMU as well as Texas Agrilife Extension Horticulture Specialist . Dr. Welsh hosts the popular radio show Garden Success! on KAMU-FM. Copies of Dr. Welsh’s book Texas Gardening Almanac will be available for purchase and he will be available for autographs for his book purchases.

The class is from 11-12. I plan to be in attendance to pick up a few tips and to get my copy of Doug’s book autographed.