NZ Filbruns

January 2021 Photos

April 18, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had a lot of things going on in January after we got home! Gayle decided to paint the garage roof. He went over all the rusty places with a wire brush, and then painted them with something to stop the rust. He got two coats of paint put on all those places, and one coat on the rest.

Little Miss turned six in January! She was delighted to have a birthday! We had chocolate cake and lime ice cream for dessert.

Esther stripped our dining table and refinished it with teak oil. It’s pretty now!

We were given a deer! It was a huge red deer stag, and we got 39 kilos of meat off it. What a blessing!

Mr. Imagination put a bowlful of meat through the mincer.

Then, Simon took over and put a lot more through, faster!

The boys fried up some of the meat immediately, and pronounced it delicious!

Simon was doing exercises for awhile to strengthen his knees. One evening, he tried pushups with a load on his back!

Baby turkeys!

An apple tree at Simon’s house. I still haven’t gotten over there with a camera, and now the house is full of furniture, being stored till it’s needed by other people.

Esther took some friends to see the old dredge at Ngahere one rainy day.

They also went down to our picnic spot by the river. Near the end of a week of torrential rains, this is what it looked like!

Later that week, also on a rainy day, we took some other friends to Shantytown, a historic village. We got to the school in between lessons on using old-style pens, but with the supplies laying out on the desks, we figured out how to use them.

More exercises!

Elijah spent a few months building himself a desk (he finished it just when he quit school to start his apprenticeship!).

This was our second picking of cucumbers. The next four weeks or so, I got twice this many each week.

Our salad one evening. Mr. Imagination and Little Miss decorated it for us!

Product Review—ARTistic Pursuits

April 15, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I have a son who loves to draw and dreams of becoming an artist. I want to encourage his dreams, so when the opportunity came up to try out a course from ARTistic Pursuits, I requested Beginner Level, Art Core 1, Drawing with Graphite Pencils. We worked our way through the first unit, Outline Drawing.

The first lesson described what an outline is. We watched a video lesson in which the instructor showed us how to find the outline of an object, trace it with our eyes, and then draw what we saw. Then, we were supposed to choose a selection of small objects, such as teacups or small toy animals, and draw them. I did this activity along with the children (Mr. Sweetie, age 11, Mr. Imagination, age 9, and Little Miss, age 6). I think we all agreed that Mr. Imagination did the best! Here are his drawings from the first two lessons, and mine and Little Miss’s from the first lesson.

For the remaining three lessons in this unit, we read a page or two from a book. Because we live outside of the United States, we had to use a digital version of the book. It works, but I think the physical book would be much easier to use. Lesson 2 talked about line as an element of art. Mr. Imagination went outside and drew several objects he found. Lesson 3 showed a painting by George Catlin, who painted many American Indians, and focused on the way the blanket draped over a chief’s lap. The assignment was to drape a cloth over something and draw the folds of the cloth. The last lesson in this unit gave the assignment to draw a person sitting on something. Mr. Imagination chose a picture of a child swinging and drew that. Unfortunately, the picture he drew got lost before I photographed it!

Each unit in this course focuses on one particular aspect of drawing, and each lesson builds on the ones before. As I mentioned already, Unit 1 teaches how to draw an outline. Unit 2 talks about space—showing what objects are closer than others—and then the units go on to teach about shape, texture, value (light or dark), and form. The last three units help students draw human, animal, and man-made forms.

Each unit begins with a video lesson, and an assignment to practice the concept that was introduced, using objects found around the student. The second lesson expands slightly on the first one. The third lesson studies a painting by a famous painter, and gives an assignment based on that study. The fourth lesson gives another assignment to expand on the topic a little more.

This course, the way we received it, did not work very well for us. I believe that if we had the physical book, Mr. Imagination would have used this course a lot more. He tends to pick up art books that are laying around and work through them, but if it’s online it is a lot harder for us to use. I am quite impressed with this course myself, though. I like the idea of learning to draw objects around you, rather than being shown a picture and walked through the steps of drawing it. This seems quite useful to me. So, bottom line? If you have an aspiring artist, and can get the book to go with the video lessons, or have an easy way to access the digital book, ARTistic Pursuits would be a great choice. Check out what several other families experienced with it by clicking on the image below!

December 2020 Photos

April 12, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Now that I’ve finally uploaded all the pictures and stories about our big trip over New Year’s, I can go back to sharing photos of daily life. Here are the rest of December’s pictures.

Princess loves large black-and-white stuffed animals. Does she know she blends in with them?

I had a miscarriage in early December, and spent a day in hospital. That evening, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss put a lot of flowers on my night stand!

After many years of struggling to teach dyslexic children to read, I love seeing scenes like this. Mr. Sweetie is reading a Hank the Cowdog book here. I bought several of them when someone was selling them used, and they are quite popular!

I’m not sure what was going on here, but this is all of my children except Esther—in one photo! From left to right are Mr. Sweetie, Miss Joy, Simon, Little Miss, Mr. Imagination, Elijah, and Mr. Diligence.

This little girl loves to sit on or in anything!

When he was cleaning, Mr. Imagination found this white-tail spider. They are somewhat venomous, so he made sure it died.

My sister sent a packet of Koolaid and a recipe for playdough made from it. Once I finally got around to making the recipe, Little Miss had great fun playing with it!

Goats are quite amusing.

One afternoon, this tractor stopped in front of our house, and Simon, the mechanic, went out to see if he could help. It turned out that the fuel line had been turned off, so the man got about two blocks from the local garage, and ran out of diesel in the lines. Simon helped him bleed the lines. Esther and I were amused at how many boys it took to help! (This isn’t all ours; two neighborhood boys also stopped to help.)

One really exciting thing that happened just before Christmas was that we got “new” carpeting in the living room! This is what we had on the floor before—a very wornout carpet on the bottom, with several pieces patched together to make a top layer.

After supper the evening before the big day, we pulled out the carpet. This was the old carpet underneath.

This is the subfloor.

The day before Christmas, a friend came right after breakfast and started laying the underlay. Since then, Elijah has started an apprenticeship with this man, laying carpet and other floor coverings.

The finished carpet! We shampooed it and left the furniture out till the next day.

There was still somewhat of a cat smell for a day or two. Princess was extremely suspicious, and wouldn’t enter the room for a couple of days.

From Haast Pass to Home

March 31, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

On Day 12 of our big trip in December and January, we made it home! The trip was wonderful, we really enjoyed it, we saw amazing scenery and we spent time with many wonderful people—but it was time to get home. We packed up that morning in the DOC campground not too far from Haast Pass, on the West Coast side of the mountains, and then headed for the coast. It was clear and sunny that morning, and we enjoyed the amazing views of the mountains and rivers as we drove. Here we were, packing up the vans for the last time. We had put the fruit we brought on top of Simon’s van in case possums would come around during the night. We put the laundry up there, too.

When we reached the coast, it got foggy for awhile. I think this is the mouth of the Haast River.

This is Bruce Bay, if I remember right.

Another river—I don’t remember which one.

We drove up to the carpark for Franz Joseph Glacier. We ate lunch there, in the vans, because it started pouring. We had talked about walking up to the glacier, but because it was raining so hard we viewed it from the carpark and left again.

It rained off and on till after we went through Hokitika—see the rain coming down in the distance? We made a stop for fuel, but otherwise just kept on driving, and in the end we were glad we hadn’t stopped anywhere, because it took long enough to get home as it was.

From Te Anau Over the Haast Pass

March 28, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On Day 11 of our big trip, the second-to-last day, we left our friends’ house in Te Anau fairly early and started our two biggest days of travel on the entire trip. We first drove to Queenstown, which took a couple of hours. It poured for awhile, and was cloudy the rest of the day, but the scenery was still incredible.

We drove along this lake for a long time. Queenstown is on the far end of it.

Notice the name on the brown sign? We were were going up the Devil’s Staircase here!

We stopped for a few minutes at a lookout. We would have stayed longer to enjoy the scenery, but a small person in the family had an emergency need, so we got moving again quickly.

Almost to Queenstown!

I think this is the other side of Queenstown, on our way to Cromwell.

Cromwell is a fruit-growing center, so we stopped at a few shops to buy peaches, apricots, and plums. At one, we bought ice creams for the children. Can you tell that Miss Joy loves ice cream?

This place had incredible gardens we could wander through.

This lavender farm was right outside Cromwell.

Mr. Imagination always kept Miss Joy happy when he rode beside her. They spent a lot of time playing with wet wipes. Miss Joy scrubbed her face, neck, hands and feet very thoroughly, over and over!

We stopped in Wanaka just long enough to fuel up the vans, and then headed across Haast Pass. We were no longer in the mood for any sightseeing!

Heading up into the mountains!

After we crossed the pass and were again on the West Coast (notice the difference in vegetation?), we stopped at a waterfall. We saw this log covered with piles of rocks!

The boys enjoyed climbing on the rocks and skipping small ones.

The rocks were all like these.

We debated for awhile about driving the rest of the way home, or camping in a DOC campground a little way down the road. We had about five hours yet to reach home, and it was 3:00 in the afternoon. What a hard decision! We finally decided to stay at the campground and go home the next day, according to our original plan. At the campground, we discovered a creek along a track in the bush. I let the children play in it, and they had great fun! The older boys skipped stones, and coached the little boys in building a dam, and the girls played in the water. It wasn’t very warm, but not cold, either. We had enough clothes for the rest of the way home, so I decided not to worry about wet clothing—we had watertight tubs to put them in for the last leg of the trip!

This was our last night camping with the vans!

I cooked a stew on the campstove in the small picnic area, and we thoroughly enjoyed being by ourselves again!

See how the beds were set up? It was surprisingly comfortable—and quite cozy!

Esther took several short video clips of the fun at the creek—enjoy this glimpse into our evening!

Milford Sound—Part 3—The Trip Back

March 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After we walked everywhere we could around Milford Sound, we gathered at the back of the vans to eat our sandwiches. It was raining, so some of us stood under the open back door; others got inside and sat in the seats. Wherever we were, the sandflies were BAD! They came in clouds, attacking every inch of exposed skin. We didn’t waste any time eating, and got on the road again quickly to escape the hungry hordes.

This is what we saw as we got on the road again. The mountains were absolutely spectacular, even through the rain.

Here we were heading up to the Homer Tunnel again, from the seaward side. Again, there were sheer rock cliffs going straight up. It’s nearly impossible to get a feel for it from a photo. I was absolutely awestruck by these mountains.

There’s the tunnel! I was quite disappointed that the light had just turned green. I was hoping we would have several minutes to sit there waiting, and soak in the grandeur of the scene.

Have you noticed the water streaming down the rocks all around?

Going down the landward side.

We stopped at a pulloff beside a waterfall. Miss Joy was asleep, so I stayed in the van with her while the others went to the viewing platform. This kea was on top of a motorhome; it rode for a little ways, and then flew back to our vans.

Miss Joy didn’t sleep long, so I got out of the van and went to see the waterfall, too.

When we moved on, the red van went ahead. Maybe I needed to feed Miss Joy? I can’t remember for sure. That left Esther and the two little girls and I together when we stopped at another overlook where we could see this spectacular valley. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was an amazing sight.

Our next stop was the Cascade Creek Nature Walk at Lake Gunn. Miss Joy needed some time to play, so I stayed in the gray van with the two little girls while everyone else went on the walk. These are Esther’s pictures.We also stopped at Mirror Lakes. A nice boardwalk led along the edge of a beautiful pond.

We were trying to get a picture of all the children, and another tourist offered to take our family picture, so we quickly organized for this.

Then, we went back to work on the children’s picture.

Miss Joy didn’t want to be separated from Mommy.

Finally, Daddy had to help keep her in place while I took the picture.

When we got back to Te Anau, we still had a few hours of daylight, so we stopped at the bird sanctuary. This is a takahe, a very rare bird. They have a couple of pairs there.

These are blue ducks, also very rare.

Paradise ducks aren’t exactly rare, but we enjoyed watching them. The mother (the one closest to the camera) was very worried that we would hurt her babies, and kept trying to get us through the fence.

This is a relative of the kea, some sort of a parrot, but I don’t remember what it’s called.

This is another parrot.

A table and chairs just her size!

A little house for her, too!

This is the view from our friends’ house. I would love to see it on a sunny day!Here is a video put together from several clips that various family members. The first clip was taken in the Eglinton Valley, on the way to Milford, by Mr. Imagination. Next is Esther’s clip of going through the Homer Tunnel, and then of going down the mountain from the tunnel. After that is a clip from sea level at Milford Sound, followed by one of the waterfall where we saw the kea. Then, there is one of Lake Gunn and a few from the nature walk.

Book Review—I Prayed for Patience, God Gave Me Children

March 18, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

About the Book

Book: I Prayed for Patience, God Gave Me Children
Author: Linda Wood Rondeau
Genre: Non-fiction
Release date: Second Edition 2019

God indeed has a sense of humor. He chose children to teach us too-smart adults what it means to be his child, the very special relationship the believer enjoys with our Heavenly Father. We adults experience the same chaos, misadventure, and heartaches as our charges. Through a child’s example, we learn how God nurtures us with his infinitesimal patience. This easy to read, often hilarious treatise, uses cartoons, witticisms, anecdotes, quotes, and scripture study to bring home these truths. A veteran social worker, Rondeau draws upon her many experiences in working with families as well as her personal experiences as a mom. “You will want to keep this book close at hand for those moments of weakness and pass it along to your friends.”

My Thoughts:

When I saw the title of Linda Wood Rondeau’s book, I Prayed for Patience, God Gave Me Children, I was immediately intrigued. Haven’t all of us, as parents, experienced that? I’ve often thought, and sometimes said, that my children have taught me a lot of patience—especially the ones who had dyslexia, and seemingly couldn’t learn to read (but that’s a story for another time).

This short book is divided into six sections. They are titled Persevere, Teach, Lead, Order, Protect, and Serve, and each one has several short devotionals in it. These each include a funny or wise saying, such as “Sometimes we lead only because everyone is behind us.” After this saying, there is a Scripture verse, and then a short story. It might be a story about parenting from the author’s own experience, or some other story. This is followed by a list of Scripture references to look up, and then some thoughts and study questions. Each devotional is wrapped up with a prayer. Each section begins with a comic that gives a bit of a chuckle—I liked the one about not being able to teach driving because I can’t parallel park myself! It was very true-to-life for me.

I was given an ebook for this review, but I think a hard copy would be much more useful. This would be a good study for mothers to go through; there are many good thoughts to meditate on, and each entry is short enough that it won’t take a lot of a busy mother’s time. I appreciated what I read in I Prayed for Patience, God Gave Me Children!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author, and these are my honest thoughts about it.

About the Author:

The author of the acclaimed Hosea’s Heart and Miracle on Maple Street, LINDA WOOD RONDEAU, a veteran social worker, writes from the heart of personal experience. Her blog, Snark and Sensibility, embodies her sense of humor, a trait she believes God gives parents for survival. A resident of Hagerstown, Maryland, the author shares her days with her husband and best friend in life, Steve. Readers may visit her website at www.lindarondeau.com. Contact the author on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Excerpt from the book:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.

And by him we cry, Abba, Father

(Romans 8:15)

JUST LIKE MY DADDY

The courtroom was silent, waiting for the judge to make a decision—a decision to determine not only where little Joshua would live, but also what his name would be.

Not able to have children of their own, my son and daughter-in-law have adopted five children through the foster care system. Each addition to the family has been considered a blessing—especially so with Joshua. Joshua, who had been in foster care since early infancy, was free to be adopted. When the agency called my son and daughter-in-law who already had one adopted son and another whom they hoped to adopt, they opened their hearts to welcome the youngster into their burgeoning nest. Finally, all the legal work was over, and the family accompanied Joshua for his day in court.

The judge motioned Joshua to approach the bench. From his austere heights, the magistrate pointed to someone in the room. Each time, Joshua was asked, “Who is this?”

“Those are my brothers,” Joshua said, referring to the other adopted children. “That’s Mommy,” he explained as he pointed to my daughter-in-law.

Then the judge’s attention focused on my son who positioned Joshua in his arms, allowing the child to see the judge at eye level. “And who is this man holding you?”

Joshua’s eyes widened. He took his little hand and touched his father’s face as he squealed in delight, “THAT’S MY DADDY!”

The judge, assured of Joshua’s placement in a loving family, told John and Melissa that Joshua was now their legal son. Then the judge asked Joshua, “Do you know what your new name is?” Joshua hugged his new father and blurted with excitement, “Joshua John Barringer, just like my daddy!”

Sad are the indictments against Israel’s kings who “walked in the ways of their fathers” to commit vile acts of murder and idolatry. Sadder still are the descriptions of those sons who choose evil over the Godly example of their fathers. David was revered as a man after God’s heart because he cherished the relationship he had with his Heavenly Father more than any earthly treasure. When he sinned, he could not rest until his spirit was one again with the God he adored.

When we received Christ, God adopted us into His family. He holds us in His arms so we can touch His face. We are privileged to call him “Daddy, God.”

He asks us to be holy as He is holy. He asks us to look inside our hearts and say, “I want to be just like You.”

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here.

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Product Review—Superstar Spelling

March 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew

When I was offered a choice of several products from The Crafty Classroom, it didn’t take much thought to decide that Superstar Spelling would the be most useful. Mr. Imagination uses his imagination fairly freely when he’s writing, and I was hoping that this would help him learn to spell better.

I love that I can choose the words that he practices. I have chosen the words for him by looking over things he has written, especially in his workbooks, and making a list to practice from the words he misspelled. The pages are editable; I simply open the PDF, type in the 20 words I want him to practice this week on the first page, and the words are filled in throughout the document. Each day, he works on a few pages of various activities, and every couple of days does either a practice or a final spelling test. (One thing I really like about the spelling tests is that he gets to grade them himself! He is supposed to either color or fill in an emoji for the ones he gets right, and copy the wrong ones correctly.)

There is quite a range of different activities. About half of them, I would say, are done alone; the rest are to be done with a friend. We have mostly used the ones that are done alone, since it’s hard to come up with someone to do the others with—no one is very excited about playing spelling games! Mr. Sweetie played Battleship Spelling with him one day. The two boys enjoyed it, but it took much longer than a regular game of Battleship. The words for the one board were all short ones, and the other board had long words; it was quite hard to fit all of them in, and then the boy who was guessing them had a hard time figuring out what the words were and which direction they were supposed to be going. It would have worked better to have a mix of longer and shorter words, but I guess that might be hard for a computer program to figure out. Little Miss played Bingo with Mr. Imagination one day, as I called out the words. They loved that, and especially playing with the new game markers we had gotten a few days before.

Robot Roll was one of Mr. Imagination’s favorite pages. He was to roll a die and write the word for whatever number was rolled. He loved seeing which robot won the game! Other pages had him figure out the words by identifying the letters with signs from American Sign Language, or a picture that began with that letter. On some pages, he chooses words he struggles with to practice.

Overall, I would say that Superstar Spelling is worth using. It’s a great way to add some fun to spelling practice. If you had two children using the same list, it would be even better, as they could play games together. I like that it’s editable, and can be used any number of times, with exactly the words that need to be learned. And now, I need to give Mr. Imagination a spelling test with his latest list!

Twenty-five families have been using various products from The Crafty Classroon, so click on the image below to see what they have to say about their experiences!

Milford Sound–Part 2

March 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

We were excited to go through the Homer Tunnel. Around eight years ago, we read a book titled Below the Mountains, about digging this tunnel, and have wanted to see it ever since. It is about 1.2 km long, and was blasted out of solid rock. It goes down at a 1 in 10 gradient. It is only one lane wide, so there are lights at each end. At times, people have to wait up to 20 minutes to go through. We only had to wait about a minute and a half—just long enough to get out, stretch, say hello to the kea who was keeping an eye on the traffic, and jump back in.

The mountains surrounding the south side of the tunnel are incredible! As far as we could see through the mist and rain, there was roughly a horseshoe of cliffs going straight up, with waterfalls coming down here and there.

This kea was hopping around beside the road, looking for handouts—we didn’t give him anything!

Into the tunnel!

And out the other end.

On the north end, toward Milford Sound, the road goes down sharply in a series of switchbacks. The tunnel is at around 900 meters above sea level, and it takes only 15 minutes to get to the sound! That is a fast descent.

We have arrived at the Sound!

The sheer cliffs are incredible.A duck on top of a campervan.

Some of the cruise ships tied up at the dock.

Mr. Sweetie under a tree.

Sometimes we got to see Mitre Peak, the famous mountain out in the fjord.

That large white splash in the center is a huge waterfall.

Gayle and James figuring out where to go next.

We walked out on a strip of land that goes a ways out into the sound.

We got a good view of the spectacular waterfall from out there.

Elijah, Mr. Sweetie, Simon, Mr. Diligence.

Me with Miss Joy, Gayle, Mr. Imagination, Little Miss

An oystercatcher

Paradise Ducks

The mist about half way up the right side of the picture is from the waterfall.

Mr. Imagination found this crab.

Baby Paradise Ducks

We climbed to an overlook above the township, and were rewarded with this view.

I was fascinated with the plants growing out of the cliff.

The next post will show what we experienced on our way back to Te Anau. So much spectacular scenery! It about overloaded me.

Milford Sound—Part 1

March 14, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

Near the end of our trip, we spent a day driving to Milford Sound and back. We have wanted to go there for a long time, and especially to see the Homer Tunnel, which is part of the highway going out to Milford.

We started out around 9:00 from Te Anau, where we had spent the night with some friends. There were low clouds; we could see the water of Lake Te Anau, and the lower slopes of the mountains.

As we drove on, the clouds thinned little by little, and we caught glimpses of the towering mountains lining both sides of the road.

This valley with farmland opened up as we came over one hill. Most of the way, we drove through a valley with mountains fairly close on either side.

Lake Te Anau is long! I think this is near the end where the highway goes away from the lake shore.

After about an hour of driving, we left the farmland behind completely and were driving through wild country.

This is the Eglinton Valley, where we stopped at a pull-off for a few minutes.

The weather soon closed in again.

We stopped at another pull-off to swap drivers. This would have been about an hour and a half after leaving, just before we reached the Homer Tunnel. There was a beautiful little creek, and a lot of interesting vegetation.

…to be continued. After my first sorting, I got down to 141 pictures for this day. I got that reduced to around 120—still too many for one post!