NZ Filbruns

Fun Times

November 24, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Life in this family can be a lot of fun! Here are a few glimpses into the past few weeks of life here.

Our oldest two left for America the beginning of the month. This was our last glimpse of them, as they headed for their gate at the airport.

The lemon tree outside my kitchen window is blooming.

Mr. Sweetie lost a top front tooth—but this is the look I got when I tried to get a picture of his gap!

I had Mr. Sweetie clean out the container cupboard one day.

Little Miss loves to stand up by herself!

She also loves being carried in the backpack. This time, Mr. Inventor carried her for awhile, and then Mr. Intellectual took a turn. She is very happy in there!

Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie were busily reading How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. They had the story pretty close to right! Mr. Sweetie was taking apart a pallet last week and fell, giving himself a greenstick fracture just above his wrist. He still hasn’t had an x-ray and doesn’t have a cast on it, but two doctors have said that is the problem and we’ll be going to Christchurch in a couple more days to get the x-ray and the cast. They said there shouldn’t be a problem if we keep his arm wrapped and he doesn’t do anything silly with it.

The cat comes in to beg for food when the door is open. Little Miss was sure checking him out!

She is such a happy little girl!

Outdoors Fun

November 20, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Because it’s spring, and the temperatures are lovely and moderate most days, and the grass is green, the boys have spent a lot of time outside lately. I get out when I can—I try to get to the garden at least a little each day. Here are several pictures I’ve gotten lately. As you can see, Little Miss loves being outside. If she’s grouchy and nothing seems to suit her, asking if she wants to go outside will often make her happy. This week, she figured out how to get outside without falling on her nose out the kitchen door, so watch out—she won’t be contained in the house any more!

Little Miss wanted to go watch her brothers play in the water.

She stands up anywhere she feels like it, without support, although she hasn’t started to take steps yet.

Apparently, she didn’t want to go through the patch of bare ground; it was more interesting to follow Mr. Imagination.

He had a toy car!

I assigned Mr. Diligent to plant pumpkin seeds in the moist creek bed. We’ll see if they grow. He had a wetsuit on because he had been playing in the water.

Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie were still playing in the water. The boys built this dam across the creek after the 3-inch rain we had in September. The creek dried up behind it by mid-October, and the boys reinforced the dam at that point, and then when we got another inch of rain a few weeks ago, it filled up again. They rigged up a small sump pump below the dam to pump the water that leaks through back above the dam. That’s what the white pipe is for. The boys have spent a lot of time playing in that water, but by now it is starting to smell like swamp muck and I’m not very happy to let them “swim” anymore. Yesterday they put a bigger pump in and used the water to irrigate the garden—perfect use for it!

Ten Months Already!

November 15, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

This little girl is already ten months old. She is more fun all the time. All her brothers love to cuddle her and encourage her to walk, although she isn’t taking steps on her own yet. She stands up from a squat anywhere she is, though. She’s a very happy little girl unless she’s tired or hungry or gets hurt, and she’s very good at expressing herself.

A week and a half ago, we spent the whole day getting Esther and Mr. Handyman ready to leave for six weeks in America. Little Miss loved playing on the suitcases.

Little Miss loves her Daddy! She was overjoyed last Saturday afternoon when he carried her around this way for an hour.

Last year’s Swiss Chard (called Silverbeet here) is going to seed, so I’ve been pulling it and cutting off the leaves to cook. Little Miss “helped” me and tasted the stems.

When I washed the Silverbeet, she helped by pulling leaves out and throwing them around.

She loves her doll, as well as this one, which belongs to Mr. Imagination.

Mr. Sweetie was trying to sweep and wash the kitchen floor last week. Little Miss wanted to “help”, but I locked her into the living room with the help of two chairs. She was not happy about it–watch this short video to hear what she had to say! She often talks like this.

The Girl From the Train—book review

November 13, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

When I read a review of The Girl From the Train on a blog I follow, I was immediately intrigued by the story. Sure enough, it is a fascinating could-have-happened love story.

Gretl and her sister Elza were pushed out of a train full of Jewish people on their way to a concentration camp, by their mother and grandmother, who couldn’t fit through the sides of the car. The girls end up living in the house of a Polish family, but after Elza dies, Gretl ends up being rescued by Jakob, a Resistance fighter.

After the war, he sends her to South Africa,where she will have a chance at a better life. Years later, he is forced to flee the Communists in Poland, and ends up in South Africa himself.

Initially, I was disappointed to discover that The Girl From the Train is fiction. I had hoped for a true story, but this did turn out to be very real. It certainly could have happened! Another thing I noticed immediately was that the writing style seemed to be somewhat stilted. Either that improved as the story went on or I got so engrossed in the story that I didn’t notice! When I finished the book and read the author’s biography I understood why it seemed stilted—it was originally written in Afrikaans and recently translated into English. Anyway, the story certainly sucked me in and I had a hard time putting it down, by the time I was a fourth of the way through.

I found the psychological side of the story quite interesting. Gretl, or Grietjie as she was called in South Africa, frequently had nightmares which she couldn’t understand. Until she was willing to be open and honest about her entire life to her adoptive parents, she was never able to find relief. I also appreciated the Christian faith that is a very real and natural part of the story. I could understand Grietjie’s family and their distrust of Catholics, but I also understand how she was able to find Jesus through the work of the Catholic nuns who helped care for her in Poland—God has His people everywhere.

Finally, I appreciated this quote, spoken by Grietjie’s grandfather.

“Grietjie, love is not about excitement and physical desire and attraction. Those things are important, of course. But true love is the core that remains after the infatuation has burned out.”

I received this ebook free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. –

WARNING: Chapters 2, 4 and 6 each have one or two instances of someone swearing, and beginning in chapter 14 there are a number of times when a kiss is described. Physical relationships never go past kissing, however.

October 2015 Pictures

November 12, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of the pictures I saved from October but haven’t shared here yet—just a mish-mosh of random glimpses into our life.

One Sunday afternoon when we arrived home from church, a howling nor-wester was blowing. Mr. Inventor figured out a way to get a free ride. He had taken the engine off this old lawn mower (although now he’s put it back on and it works again!), and this time, he took a sheet of plywood to act as a sail. It didn’t work as well as he hoped, but every so often a particularly strong gust of wind would really push him along his track.

Since Mr. Handyman has a job in the afternoons now, we often have worship in the evening, in the kitchen while dishes are being done.

Story time. Little Miss just got out of her bath. Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Mr. Diligence were enthralled.

Mr. Inventor goes to the local dump (a transfer station) at least once a week to see what treasures he can find. This hand-crank washing machine was one. We scrubbed it out thoroughly and have used it twice now to churn butter. This was the first try, but I decided that the drill would probably end up breaking it so now we do it by hand. It works pretty well!

My two daughters! Little Miss was very upset because she had to sit still for worship. Pure torture—see that face?

Little Miss is standing up frequently without support right now. She also loves to be under the table, or a chair. Here, she had a shoelace and was trying to pick up the shoe.

One Sunday afternoon the boys were playing with snails. Mr. Inventor, especially, played with them for a long time.

This shed got crunched a year ago when a tree fell on it. A few weeks ago, Gayle and the boys fixed it; this is the before picture.

A turkey on her nest.

Two turkeys sharing a nest. It turned out that they didn’t have any eggs! Mixed-up birds.

We’re hoping to soon have the money to spare for plastic to cover a small greenhouse! Mr. Imagination here.

Choretime. I thought it was cute the way the ducks were all flocking around Mr. Diligence.

Busy Little Miss—she loves to be outside.

I have the boys work in the garden for 30 minutes most days, to help pay for the food they eat. This day, it was wet so I said they didn’t have to—but then there were enough spats that I sent them out anyway! This is Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Intellectual, and Mr. Diligence.

Baby Kittens

November 10, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

No pictures with this post; it’s hard to get a picture of something invisible.

Mr. Imagination came in the house while I was cooking supper, cuddling something in his hand. He told me he had a baby kitten. I asked him where he found it. “Out in the paddock.”

“Did the mommy cat leave it?”

“It was in another cave.”

I asked what color it was. “Blue.”

I asked if it had to have a bottle or if it could drink out of a dish. “It still needs a bottle.” I pretended to give him a bottle, and he pretended to feed it to the kitten, making sucking noises with his mouth. Then, after he told me there were actually three kittens, I told him that after you feed a tiny kitten you have to wash its bottom with a warm wet cloth to help it poo. I thought that might faze him, but obviously it’s no problem with an invisible kitten!

The next problem was where to put the kittens to sleep. He wanted to put them under a light to keep them warm, like we do with chicks, turkeys and ducklings. I told him that kittens just need a hot water bottle with a clean dry cloth over it in a box. “Where is the clean cloth?” I told him to see if there was a pretend one on the coal range—sure enough, there was! “Where is the hot water bottle?” I pretended to give him one, and help him fill it, and then he found a pretend box.

Now he had the problem of where to put his kittens. I suggested in a quiet corner of his bedroom, so he trotted off—but was soon back. The kittens had woke up! I told him to take them back, but “Mew! Mew! They will wait for me!” I suggested putting them on my rocking chair in the kitchen. “Oh, yes. They will not wait for me there!”

Then, when I called everyone to the table for supper, he brought his kittens along and started “feeding” them. A shred of meat went to the kittens…and into his mouth. A bit of bread—“They like the inside bread”—went to the kittens…and into his mouth.

I think he’s forgotten them now, an hour later, but it was awfully cute while it went on. I love being able to play along with him like that. It’s an easy way to connect with a three-year-old, and I don’t even have to stop what I’m doing to play with him. He is so much fun!

Today’s Major Fail—and God’s Mercy

November 6, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

In case you ever render fat, please let it cool down before pouring it into a container. That’s my advice for today.

We butchered two sheep last week, and they were the fattest sheep I’ve ever worked with. I put the ribs and flaps (meat and fat around the stomach) in my big stock pot and cooked it, and today was finishing dealing with the fat. I heated it enough to get out all the rest of the water, and then poured it into ice cream containers. The first panful was only barely above the boiling point of water, but the second must have been much hotter. Before I poured it in, the thought crossed my mind that I should probably let it cool down, but I wanted to get the job out of the way. Well, that was a major mistake. Half a minute after pouring it in, the container started melting! I grabbed a ladle and started frantically scooping, but got two ladlefuls out before the container was flat! Nearly two quarts of hot melted sheep tallow had spread over the contertop and down onto the floor. The worst of it was that I had an open box just below it, with rolls of tinfoil, plastic wrap, and baking paper in it. I don’t know yet how bad the damage is—I’m waiting for the fat to solidify before I try cleaning it up. This is what the container looks like, beside one that isn’t melted.

I am thankful for lots of hot water, and that the baby wasn’t close when this happened, and that it happened back in a corner where we can’t walk.

Within 10 minutes after that episode, I went to the bedroom to change the baby. When I went back through the kitchen to put the diaper in the bucket in the laundry room, I noticed that the peculiar smell I’d been smelling was stronger, and there was a smell of burning plastic now, too. Then I saw the source—the baby turkey’s light had fallen down and the straw was black and smoking, and the side of their tub was melting! Praise God, I saw it before it actually caught fire! Time for those turkeys to go outside before the baby knocks down their light again.

Leaf Jumpers…and a Cannibal!

November 2, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, I took the children to the Domain here in our village. It’s a piece of public land, and it’s fairly heavily wooded, with trails through the trees. There is a large open area, which is now a cricket playing field. The cricket clubhouse is at the edge of the field, and was built on part of the foundation of William “Ready Money” Robinson’s mansion. Robinson made a fortune on the Australian gold fields in, I believe, the 1870s, and came here with the money. He bought an immense tract of land, about half the size of a county in Michigan, and then built this mansion. If I remember right, all 3 stories and 40 rooms of it were finished in about 1881, and Robinson died the following year.

Anyway, we went there a couple of weeks ago to do some filming for a movie the children were making. (Watch for it to post here sometime in December, after Esther posts it on her blog, http://estherfilbrun.com.) The day was a perfect spring day, so after the filming was finished, we just spent some time enjoying the beautiful setting. While the boys played, and rode a bike very fast down a very steep hill, Esther and I read for awhile and played with Little Miss. The little boys (and some slightly bigger ones) enjoyed jumping in a big pile of leaves that Esther raked up for them. Esther put this short video together for me.

Exploring Creation With Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day–book review

November 1, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 7 Comments

This year, we used Zoology 1. Here is the review I just finished writing of it.

This is the second of Apologia’s elementary science books that we’ve used. We just finished it; last year we went through their Human Anatomy book. Several of my boys liked Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day a lot better than last year’s science. Apparently, birds, bats and insects are much more popular than the human body, among my sons!

I used Flying Creatures with five boys at once this year, ages 15, 13, 11, 9, and 5. I was very pleasantly surprised by how much the 5-year-old learned from this course! At the beginning of the year, he wasn’t remembering much of anything, but by the end of the year he was able to remember a fair amount from each lesson. His dictated narrations were longer and better as the year went on.

Exploring Creation With Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day is divided into 14 lessons, each intended to take about two weeks to complete. We averaged a week and a half to two weeks, and that was a very comfortable pace. The first six lessons are about birds, including a lesson about flight which my sons found quite interesting. Lesson 7 is all about bats, lesson 8 is about flying reptiles (extinct), and the remaining six lessons are about insects of all types. Ever since we started learning about insects, my 3-year-old, who often listened in and looked at the beautiful color photos illustrating nearly every page of the textbook, has been bringing me insects and wanting to study them.

This textbook is anything but dull and dry. The content is presented in an engaging, interesting way, with amazing facts about the various birds and insects sprinkled throughout. I loved going through it, and I just asked my 11-year-old if he had anything to say. He responded, “I loved it!” One thing we especially appreciated was the way God is honored all the way through this course. Before we discovered the elementary Apologia textbooks, we used a lot of Usborne books for science, and frequently I had to tell the boys that something wasn’t true. This especially bothered one of them, who then didn’t know whether to believe anything in the book we were reading. He hasn’t had that problem with Flying Creatures! We’re looking forward to working through Zoology 2 next year.

I purchased the Notebooking Journals to go along with the textbook. For me, they are very valuable. You could easily make your own by following the directions in the textbook at the end of each lesson, but for us it works best to have something preprinted. At the beginning of each lesson, the notebook has a couple of pages on which to take notes or draw pictures. I generally have each boy write a sentence about what he learned in each little section of the lesson as I read it aloud. After we’ve read the entire lesson, we answer the review questions. We don’t use the crossword puzzles for vocabulary practice, because of the dyslexia we have to work with, and we haven’t used the handwriting practice pages, because we had a different handwriting course. We almost always make the mini-books they provide as a final review for each lesson, however. They have been a good way to organize what we learned in the lesson. Each lesson also has a page or two of further activities for investigating the topic of the lesson, and suggested books or DVDs to go along with it. We were able to find a few of the suggested books in the library.

I am very thankful to have found Apologia and look forward to continuing through their books!

Exploring Creation With Human Anatomy and Physiology–book review

October 30, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Sometime last year, I wrote a post about this book, but I decided to share the review I just finished writing of it here anyway. I love Apologia!

exploring-creation-with-human-anatomy-and-physiology

For about 10 years, we used Sonlight Curriculum for our science. It was all right, but we didn’t love it. Two years ago, I discovered Apologia’s Young Explorer Series and was able to get some of the textbooks used, to take a good look at them. One look was all it took to convince me that these books were a better fit for our family than what we had been doing.

The first Apologia elementary science textbook we used was Exploring Science With Human Anatomy and Physiology. Looking back, I’m not sure I’d recommend starting with that one. It goes into a lot of depth and is more advanced than some of the other books. I used it with four of my boys, ages 14, 12, 10, and 8. The 10-year-old loved it; the 12-year-old had decided before we ever started that he would hate it, and couldn’t back down. I loved it! I learned a lot, myself. For example, I just opened the book at random and found where it talked about growth plates. Your long bones, such as in your arms and legs, have growth plates close to the end, where new bone is added to make you grow. Of course, once you are full-grown, these growth plates fill in with solid bone. If you are injured at a growth plate when you are young, that bone may stop growing and you may end up with one leg or arm shorter than the other! Right after we read that part of the lesson, we ate chicken for dinner, and one of my sons discovered a growth plate in a leg bone. Science at the dinner table!

Each of the 14 lessons in the book has around 15 pages of engagingly-written information about the topic for that chapter—bones or cells or respiratory system, etc—and then a few pages of activities to help cement the information in the children’s minds. The author recommends making a notebook to go along with the textbook, and taking notes as each chapter is read. There are also review questions in the last section of each lesson and an experiment to illustrate a point from the lesson. Throughout the book, you will be given instructions in making a “personal person”–a picture of a person, to which are added more and more layers as you go through the book. Each layer will be a different body system, such as the skeleton, the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and so on. Each lesson should take about two weeks to work through.

To go along with the textbook, Apologia offers Notebooking Journals. They have one for older children and one for grades 1-2. I used them to go along with this course, and found them to be very useful. At the beginning of each lesson, there are a couple of pages on which to take notes or draw pictures of what is being taught. I always read the textbook aloud, and at the end of each section (1/2-2 pages) I have each of the children write a sentence about what I read. After we have finished the reading for the lesson, we answer the review questions, which are in the notebook. There are also crossword puzzles for the vocabulary words in each lesson, which we don’t use because they are too much for my dyslexic sons, and handwriting pages with a Scripture verse that goes along with the topic of the lesson. Then, there is a page on which to glue a mini-book about the topic of the lesson (the pieces to put together for the mini-book are in the back of the notebook). The children write what they have learned from the lesson in the mini-book. There are also a few pages of suggestions for further study, such as books or DVDs, and other activities and investigations you can do. The Junior Notebooking Journal contains most of these features, with a few changes to make them simpler for younger children. Instead of the crossword puzzle, there is usually a cut-and-paste activity for vocabulary, and there are coloring pictures at the beginning of each lesson.

One of my favorite aspects of Apologia’s Science is the way God is honored! For the past several years, one of my sons had been asking me if this or that was true, in the Usborne books we were using. I had to tell him, every so often, that no, this part is not true. In Exploring Creation With Human Anatomy and Physiology, I never had to say that! Over and over throughout the book, the author points to God’s wonderful design for our bodies. I can’t recommend this book highly enough! Oh, one more thing I liked. The last chapter is titled “Growth and Development.” Even though it talks about the development of the embryo and growth of a baby in the womb, and about genetics, the author does not discuss how a baby is made. There was absolutely nothing in that chapter that I did not want to read to my young boys.