Activities at Home

So Far in March….

March 27, 2022 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

We have not taken many pictures this month! I’ll have to be more intentional about taking some if I want to keep blogging. This was a potato someone found in the garden. It weighed an entire kilogram (over two pounds!).

We got our year’s supply of salve started. Packed into those jars is comfrey, plantain, lavender, calendula petals, and a bit of self-heal. We filled the jars with olive oil, and it is currently soaking for six weeks.

Miss Joy was delighted to figure out one day that she could tuck her doll inside her dress. That was her baby carrier!

James signed his apprenticeship papers, and to celebrate, his boss took him to the store and bought a bunch of tools.

Elijah took Mr. Sweetie on a trip to Dunedin to visit friends. They spent a day in Timaru with a friend, who took these two pictures of Mr. Sweetie using a giant slingshot at the beach.

They stopped at Moeraki Boulders, and Elijah caught a picture of Mr. Sweetie balancing this boulder on his head!

February 2022 Photos

March 13, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I don’t have very many pictures left from February. Guess we haven’t taken very many lately. I was working in the garden one morning when the neighbor asked if I had set that fire. I looked at him blankly, and he gestured to the south. I looked up–and saw this! Over the next few hours, the smoke drifted over us, making it quite hazy here for awhile. That evening, we learned that it had been just up the road from some friends of ours. It was set intentionally to burn off a paddock, and at the point that I took the picture, the fire was under control. Several hours later, though, it got out of control and they had a hard time putting it out.

Mr. Sweetie found this old coat in a box of rain coats that a neighbor gave us when she cleaned out the place where she lived for 50 years. It had been her husband’s. Mr. Sweetie loves it!

A cyclone hit us about a month ago, dropping around five inches of rain in 24 hours. Six or eight hours after the rain stopped, I walked down to the paddock with Mr. Imagination to see the flooding. Normally, the water is contained in a small creek to the right. It’s good that there is a drainage ditch to catch the overflow!

A friend sent a stamp collection to Elijah. He had great fun sorting his booty.

Apparently, someone thought Princess wanted to read a book!

These boys got home at the same time one afternoon, and I was amused at the contrast. James had been tearing down an old chimney, while Elijah was, as usual, laying new, clean carpet or vinyl. They are both hardworking young men!

January 2022 Photos

February 20, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I ended up with a lot of photos taken in January! I wonder why some months we take a lot and some months we don’t take many. This first one is of the bed that was supposed to be full of onions. Most of the onions died, so I left the volunteer potatoes, and then transplanted zinnias throughout it and portulaca around the edges. Lots of dill came up, too, and we ended up with quite a mix of colors. Now, a month later, the potatoes are dying back, but the zinnias are taking over, and this bed is really gorgeous! It’s right beside the driveway, so a good spot. I’m enjoying the flowers.

I was coming in from the garden one day when Esther was going out with her phone, and she grabbed this picture.

I took this picture to advertise the heifer that James is leading (she sold immediately!). We were moving the herd back down the hill to the large paddock we graze them in. They had been on the roadside above our town for a few days, but this day they wouldn’t stay in. One was in heat, and she was likely pushing the others out. Those of us who are home during the day locked them in this small paddock till reinforcements got home, and then I grabbed a quick picture before they headed down.

We needed another bed in the girls’ room so Miss Joy could move out of our room. The only way we could figure out how to fit her in there was to build a loft bed. I found several sets of plans online, and Elijah designed and built this. Little Miss sleeps up there, and Miss Joy sleeps in the queen bed with Esther.

One hot day, we took lunch down to the river bed and let the children play in the creek for a little while before we came back up.

The girls helped Esther make a rhubarb crisp one day. They enjoyed that!

The boys’ sleepout is no more. A couple of our boys had started demolishing it, and one day when a friend brought his children over for a little while they finished the job. That was great fun! Then, it had to be picked up and taken to the dump. That wasn’t so much fun.

Miss Joy loves being read to, and Mr. Imagination is learning the joys of reading aloud.

Little Miss had a birthday in January. She enjoyed opening her presents!

We finally replaced the grain mill that has been limping along for years. The little girls were intensely interested in how it worked when I tried it out.

So much fun to cover a salad with flowers!

Picking beans. I had a few bush/dwarf beans, but we got most of our crop from the runner beans on the trellis.

The joys of a crate, a blankie, and a thumb!

Jo-Jo is tame enough to ride on shoulders now. Mr. Imagination was thrilled the first time he could do this! At first, Jo-Jo bit anyone who tried to pick him up. Now, he might nibble, but gently. He keeps trying to fly, but since his practice time is limited to 10 minutes a day, he is still wobbly, and often crashlands.

Our House

February 13, 2022 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Just before Christmas, we started working on recladding the house. For a week, until we took off for a weekend over New Year’s to visit friends in Kaikoura, all the men in the family focused on pulling off the old weatherboards and putting up new ones. Then, Simon started work on his house, and Gayle kept puttering away at this one, with help from James on a couple of days, until they all went back to work.

See how rotten that sill is? It had to be replaced. Later, they also replaced the pile at the corner of the house.

This side is insulated, and the building paper is going up to keep the house drier!

One day, I saw several of them on top of the house. They had pulled the weatherboards off the end, and couldn’t put up a new fascia board because so much was rotted out up there at the top. So, part of the roof was pulled off, several purlins replaced and a new fascia board put on, and the roof replaced–all in one day

.Finishing up the gable end. We had to get the electric company out to pull the fuse so the cable could be safely unhooked, the weatherboards put up, and the cable hooked up to the house again. We had about two hours to do all that before they returned to put the fuse back in at the pole.

This was the most challenging part of the entire project. Gayle spent a couple of days working out the angles to cut the boards to get it to look right under the bay window, and then James took a couple of days off working on Simon’s house and helped him get it finished. They started all over again at least once. It came out looking good–but what a process!

In early February, Gayle had a day off work, so he started painting the house. With help from Esther and the younger children, they got the first coat on the two sides that were replaced. We need to get the other two coats on yet, but it’s a start.

We’re hoping for a warmer, drier house this winter! We should do the other two sides of the house, but not this year. These were worst, so they got done first.

Videos!

January 30, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I was sorting through memory cards this afternoon, and came across a lot of videos I thought some of you might enjoy.

Miss Joy loves to read. When Little Miss was this age, if I would tell her to sit down and read a book, meaning look at a picture book, she would exclaim indignantly, “I can’t read!” In contrast, Miss Joy takes the book and starts “reading” what the pictures are about or what she remembers from hearing the story read to her.

Esther took this video on Christmas Day at the end of the 4WD track where we stopped to eat lunch. Simon had taken his hatchet, so of course he had to chop down the dead tree he saw!

One afternoon, we took a lunch down to the riverbed and ate there, then let the children swim. They had a lot of fun.

December 2021 Photos

January 23, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Miss Joy found Daddy taking a nap!

I was reading aloud to the family one evening, and Miss Joy started bringing me books to read to her!

She informed Simon one evening that she was going to drive somewhere, so he asked her where her driver’s license was. She didn’t have one, so he gave her this business card. She got busy diligently signing it.

For Science, we made a model of a water molecule.

For a couple of days, the girls’ favorite activity was making soup, using flowers and leaves.

We bought a cockatiel for Nathan, since his budgie died. This little bird is named Jo-Jo. He’s still a baby, so he looked rather ragged when we got him. He’s looking better now, and getting slightly tamer.

The day before Christmas, we started working on the house. These are the before pictures of the sides we are redoing.

It didn’t take long to rip off the old weatherboards!

The flax bush in front of the house bloomed in December. We enjoyed watching the tuis come to drink the nectar.

When two or three tuis showed up at the same time, there were always raised feathers and arguing. It was pretty funny!

This is the view from our kitchen window. Actually, this WAS the view; all those pine trees at the left are gone now, and we can see the house behind them at the top of that hill.

Art Projects!

January 16, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Around the beginning of December, I was given access to some drawing and painting lessons online, so that I would write a review of the course. Mr. Imagination was very excited to begin the course, since he loves to draw and wants to learn how to draw better. He worked through 6 of the 12 lessons before we stopped doing school for the summer, and came up with some great pictures! He thinks they aren’t very good, but I think they are. (If you want to know more about the course, go to https://fragile-glory-impressions.teachable.com/p/how-to-draw-animals. My review is on The Old Schoolhouse Product Reviews page.)

This is his panda:

Little Miss did this one:

I think Little Miss painted this house while they had the art materials out.

Mr. Imagination did this jellyfish:

Mr. Imagination’s orca is on top, and Little Miss’s below:

Mr. Imagination’s toucan:

Mr. Imagination’s hummingbird:

I don’t know what happened to the tiger he painted. He was really not happy with it; it didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. I liked it!

I really like the way this teacher shows how to mix different types of art together—she uses pencils, colored pencils, oil pastels, watercolors, and acrylic.

Our Garden This Week

January 9, 2022 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

The garden is at its peak of beauty right now, so I decided to do a video walk through it. I was especially thinking of you, Mom, and hoping you can watch it.

I had fun photographing some of our harvests lately. The first picture was my harvest the evening of Christmas Day; the rest were this past week (the 3rd-8th of January). I love bringing in gorgeous fresh vegetables!

Science and Carpets

November 28, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I started going through a new science textbook with my three schoolchildren in October (sure seems strange to only have three in school! Technically, there are four, but Mr. Diligence is now working almost all the time, since he turned 16.). We are working through Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics, from Apologia. I’m finding it quite interesting. I think I may have done some chemistry in high school, but I really don’t remember for sure—and if I did, I don’t remember it! The children are struggling to understand what we’re learning and to enjoy it, but they love the experiments!

This experiment was to show how substances of different densities react. We mixed differing amounts of salt into these cups of water, and then put some into a straw. It was a lot of fun to figure out how to do this.

One jar held salt water, the other plain water—the egg floated in one of them.

What things float and what things sink?

Each of the children got to fashion a boat from a piece of foil. Which ones would hold up the most coins?

Mr. Sweetie was the winner! He shaped his foil over a bowl.

Elijah is enjoying his apprenticeship as a floor layer. One job he did a couple of weeks ago was to lay carpet tiles in the dining room/lobby of a seven-story hotel in Greymouth. He was given this diagram to follow. It is supposed to symbolize the Grey River, the sea, and the mountains. I was in town several days later, while he was working on the upper floors, and stopped in so I could see this amazing floor. It was still under plastic to protect it while renovations continue, but even so I could tell it is beautiful!

Here is a picture Elijah took from an upper floor. What a view! That is the Grey River, emptying into the sea in the distance.

Little Girls!

November 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It is so much fun having two little girls in our home. After having a lot of boys, I especially enjoy the girls. Miss Joy is old enough now that the two of them play together a lot. Playing house is now a thing in our home, something we rarely, if ever saw, while we had lots of young boys. This day, they had most or all of the dolls, doll clothes, and soft toys in the hallway, and were doing puzzles while holding their dolls.

Miss Joy loves to write and draw. She often spends a lot of time writing long letters or stories like this. The most recent example had a lot of circles, carefully drawn in the lines.

She discovered Little Miss’s pick-up-sticks. Her way of playing with them is to dump them on the floor and then carefully lay them back in the box.

I glanced out the window one afternoon this week and saw Miss Joy walking down the street in front of our house (it’s basically a driveway), telling Grizzly to follow her.