Activities at Home

Here are the rest of the random photos from November.

Princess tried out the bag of walnuts for a bed one evening. She soon decided it was too lumpy and hard, and moved to the laundry hamper.

We got home from town one evening, and immediately Little Miss got her school book and got started coloring pictures. She loves her preschool workbooks!

We enjoyed watching the tadpoles grow and develop legs.

The lemon tree outside our door was covered with blossoms for awhile. They smell so good! There are still some flowers, but also a lot of baby lemons.

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination in the garden. We left strips of sod between beds to make nice paths to walk on. Because it rains so much, I didn’t want to be walking in mud.

Our rhododendron bush.

Living on the main road, we see all sorts of interesting vehicles. Some of the motor homes/ house busses are fascinating! Usually I don’t have the chance to get a picture, but this one stopped for a minute. It’s just a shed on the back of a truck.

Mr. Sweetie brought this huge bug in one day. We concluded, after some searching, that it is a huhu beetle (correct me if you know what it really is). That’s a lid that fits on a standard large-mouth preserving jar, so you can see how big the beetle is.

November was a busy month! I ended up with a lot of photos that don’t really work for their own posts, so I’ll divide them in half.

The strip canoe is coming along nicely. This was early November; by now most of the hull is finished. I’ll have to get another picture soon.

The boys were in a hurry to have a boat and couldn’t wait for the strip canoe to be finished, so they cut open four barrels and welded them into a boat.

After the boat was finished, they attached the motor that was given to Simon, which he fixed so it would work, and asked their dad to take them down to the river one Sunday afternoon. The three oldest boys boated down the Grey River to the next town, 10 km (6 miles) by road but I’m sure farther by river. It took twice as long as we estimated, because they often had to get out and push it over shallow areas, and they sheared a pin once and had to fix it. (They didn’t have a spare, but found an old fence with loose ends of wire hanging off, cut a piece of that and used it for a pin!) They came back soaked, both from pushing the boat through the rapids, and from the rain that fell for awhile, but excited and ready to do it again!

We had quite the rain storm the first week of November. Here, we got 127 mm (5 inches) of rain in two days; up in the mountains there was twice that much or more. The river was raging from bank to bank. The younger boys and I drove across the bridge and back in the van just to see what it looked like. A woman drowned in a tributary of this river the evening of the day we took these pictures, far upstream, when the bank gave way under her as she and her family were looking at the flooding.

We also drove down to the creek below our town. It was flooded, too, of course.

Mr. Sweetie succeeded in opening a mango seed. I had never seen what is inside!

When we were in Christchurch in November, we went to a bulk foods store, and one of the things I was excited to find was corn masa flour! It’s yellow, rather than the white I’m used to using, but to find it at all was special. I made tortillas out of it, and then decided to make them into chips.

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss enjoyed brushing the tortillas with melted coconut oil, and then I cut them into chips. We sprinkled them generously with salt, and baked them for about 15 minutes. They were delicious—but quite hard. I think next time I’ll bake them for a shorter time.

Chautona Havig’s free Kindle book this week is Allerednic, which is Cinderella in reverse. I haven’t read it—but since it’s free I will now!

We have a problem. This problem takes the shape of seven very cute little kittens—but there are seven of them!

We came home from Christchurch on the 13th of November, and when I was walking into the house Grizzly called to me. I went to see what she wanted, and she was proud to show off her brand-new kittens. She had them on an old sheet that was laying on top of an old freezer in the carport. Two were with her—and two were blindly crawling on the ground. I quickly got her a box and a towel. Those little kittens are now learning to walk around and play, and my little people are enjoying them so much! They also add drama to the day. A couple of days ago, Grizzly decided they had to move. She brought all of them into the house, to a corner of our bedroom, when we weren’t watching. We put them back out in the box. She brought them in again over and over till we shut the doors. Then, she moved them behind a pile of boards in the carport. The little boys got some practice tracking down a cat, put the kittens back in the box—and then repeated the process! Yesterday, she moved them all to a spot under the lemon tree by the door. I was afraid they would be stepped on, so after dark I put them back in their box. Today, she’s happy for them to be there!

One week old:

Two weeks old:

I let the little ones bring the kittens inside this morning. We tried hard to get a picture of all of them, but they move too fast!

I was trying to get a picture of this tabby tortoiseshell, and the ginger one pounced on her!

This little tortoiseshell seems to be the gentlest of the lot. She also looks like she might turn out to be fluffy.

Two weeks after Grizzly had her babies, Goofball’s turn came. She was desperate to have her babies in the boys’ sleepout, and woke the boys up at midnight. She managed to push her way through the window and had one on the bed before they figured out what was happening. They got up and got her a box. She had three babies in the box, but come morning she wouldn’t stay with them. She would pick a kitten up and carry it around, searching for a way into the house. Several times we laid her down with them and held her still till they started nursing, and finally by lunchtime she had accepted the box and was staying with her babies. They have just opened their eyes now, so I’m letting the little ones hold them occasionally. Here they are at two days old. The one in the middle is a female; the other two are males.

So, that’s our current problem: Finding homes for seven cuties! Anyone want a kitten for Christmas? Grizzly’s will be six weeks old then.