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October 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of my pictures from October! I took this first picture one rainy day near the beginning of the month when we were in Greymouth. The annual Bookarama opened that day, and we were waiting in line when the doors opened. An hour and a half later we walked out with around 80 books between six of us, and went out to the breakwall to eat our lunch. The waves were quite impressive as they rolled in in front of us!

A picture of Miss Joy taking a picture!

This was our third lot of chicks for the year. For this hatch, I bought two dozen Barred Rock eggs, and then filled the incubator with about a dozen Black Orpington eggs from our pair of those chickens and a couple of dozen of our mongrels. During the night about three days before hatching, Gayle found the incubator unplugged! He quickly plugged it in again and within minutes it was back up to only about 5*C below what it should have been. We wondered if we would get any babies. The next day, we left for the weekend, and arrived home that Sunday afternoon to find no chicks yet, on the day they were due to hatch. We wondered…. and an hour or so later the first chick emerged! We ended up with 32 babies out of 39 or 40 that had candled fertile, and only lost 1 or 2 that died just before hatching–one of our best hatches yet! (Only one of the 13 Black Orpington eggs was fertile.)

I came into the kitchen one morning to find my monthly meal plan in tatters. It looked like a mouse had gotten it, but no mouse could have clung to the glass backsplash to nibble on that! Then, I saw a bit of snail poo behind it. A few days later, I found an enormous snail in the vicinity. The chickens enjoyed eating our culprit!

We spent several evenings in October observing the sky. We tried to find the comet that should have been visible, but couldn’t find it. There is a mountain range only a few miles to the west of us, behind which the sun sets early but the sky stays light for a long time. I took this picture of the moon one of those nights. We did get to see the International Space Station go over one night!

We did a couple of interesting demonstrations for science in October. One day, we made a scale model of the distances between the planets by marking them out on a roll of toilet paper. To see the whole distance, we took it outside so we could see the whole length at once.

Another day, we made a model of the relative sizes of the planets. Elijah was home that week, unable to work because he had bursitis in his knee, so I assigned him to help the girls make the clay balls and blow up the balloons to the proper sizes.

Sunday afternoon naps! Simon asleep on one couch, Elijah reading something…

…and James asleep on the couch on the other side of the room! This boy has two speeds: either full-steam ahead, or crashed.

Flood!

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The last Saturday in October, we had four inches of rain in 24 hours–and there was a lot more upstream in the hills and mountains. That afternoon, I had to go down to the paddock where our cows live to work with them, and we discovered that the creek had flooded! We had to lead a cow through about eight inches of fast-flowing, muddy water; I discovered that I quickly get dizzy and disoriented with those conditions. I was thankful for a son who steadied me as we went through!

Water was backing up the small creek from the large one that is going through the center of this photo.

James is walking toward the water we had to lead the cow through. It was overflowing the banks of the small creek and going into the drainage ditch that runs through the length of the paddock.

This is the drainage ditch. It normally has a little trickle in the bottom!

This is a close-up of the flooding. The boys picked up the fence at this point, so it wouldn’t wash away.

This was the big creek, just upstream from our paddock, where it goes under the highway. There was a large log caught under the bridge, which is partly why we had a problem; you can see water being diverted to the right, where it went into the small creek and under the highway into our paddock.

I decided to walk down to the river at that point to see what it looked like. Quite impressive! By the next morning, though, the floodwaters had gone down.

Repiling the House

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Elijah got started renovating the boys’ bedroom this winter. The project is moving slowly because he works five days a week, but he’s making progress. About the time he started putting the new closet together in a corner of the room, James decided that the piles under that side of the house should be replaced before Elijah went any farther, so that the house would be level! So, the boys devoted a Saturday to replacing nine or ten of them.

The first order of business was to put a jack beside each original pile, and then adjust it until the house was level with whatever point was highest. James borrowed his boss’s jacks and laser level for this part of the job (sure is handy that his boss lives right across the street and is happy to let James use the tools!). Then, they cut off the old piles some of which were supported by the house instead of the other way around, and jiggled them loose. When they had the old piles out of the ground, they dug the holes out a little bit. You can see here how much headspace there was. Rather challenging! I did not go under the house.

To get the dirt out, they used a square 5-gallon oil jug cut in half, with a rope tied to each end. One person stayed outside, pulled the full tubs out, and dumped them, and then they were pulled back under.

When all the holes were dug, they put the new piles in the holes and fastened them to the underside of the house. Then, they borrowed James’s boss’s cement mixer and poured concrete around the new piles. They got the concrete under the house the same way they got the dirt out, with those little tubs. The grass beside the house got torn up pretty badly, especially since it started raining halfway through the afternoon, but that side of the house is now level!

September 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures we took in September! This was the one picture I took when I went to the HEART retreat for homeschool moms near Christchurch. The view over Lyttleton Harbour is so beautiful!

Bluebell had her calf while I was away that weekend–a little bull. He’s very healthy, unlike her calf last year.

When Gayle and I went to Christchurch, we had a little extra time, so we stopped to walk through a park. The flowers were beautiful!

Esther often reads aloud in the evenings. One evening I noticed how enthralled these boys were. They were both listening intently!

The older boys went hunting and got more venison for us.

The youngest three love playing and taking pictures of each other and what they are doing.

I always enjoy seeing and hearing the tuis when they come in the spring. One morning while I was hanging laundry I got to see these two.

Around the Garden in Early Spring

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Mr. Sweetie took my camera outside one morning in September to take pictures of the snow-topped mountains to the west of us across the Grey River. While he was out there, he took a lot of pictures around the garden and the house. I picked out my favorites to share here. Goofball likes attention, although she doesn’t demand it like her sister does. The chickens are Little Miss’s pets.

The chook house, where we brood babies, is in the middle of the garden. This was the first batch we hatched this year, at about three weeks old.

A fly on the new raspberry leaves!

Our back yard.

Miss Joy

The frame for a go-kart that Mr. Imagination is trying to build.

Snowy Mountains

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We were privileged to see a lot of snow on mountains late this winter. I took these first five pictures as Gayle and I drove to Christchurch one Saturday morning for an appointment. The drive over Arthurs Pass and through the mountains was spectacular!

Mr. Sweetie took these pictures one morning when the Paparoa Range, to the west of us, had a lot of snow on it.

And, to wrap this up, here are a few other pictures I took of mountains as we traveled home from North Canterbury in early September. This is heading toward Lewis Pass.

I was intrigued by this cloud formation and the rain coming down ahead of us.

This was a scene we enjoyed as we neared home that day.

August 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures I found from August. I finally had time to look at memory cards and phones again!

This is a normal sight at 9:30 each evening. Just before I go to bed, I feed the cats so that this one goes outside for the night. She won’t let me forget to feed them! She is friendlier at that time of day than any other time.

This was one of the t-shirt dresses I made for Miss Joy this winter.

Little Miss took this picture of her flower garden to send to Esther while she was in America.

One day, I noticed that the bag of kindling had a lot of pieces of wood that were nice for building blocks. I suggested that Miss Joy do something with them. She spent a couple of hours playing with those blocks, pretending various things with them. The piece leaning against the couch at an angle is a scanner for credit cards. Watch the video to see what else she was pretending!

Little Miss used some of the blocks, too, as well as all of the Jenga blocks, to make a line of “dominoes.”

Simon bought a hut that someone wanted to get moved off a local farm. We went one day to watch it be picked up and moved to his property.

The little girls like to make huts in the living room!

Elijah finished his apprenticeship! He is very happy to have that behind him and to be a fully-qualified carpet- and vinyl-layer.

Little chicks, a day or two after hatching.

Miss Joy wanted to have a candle-lit meal for her birthday celebration, so we did.

She also wanted candles on her dessert, which was ambrosia, a mixture of yogurt, whipped cream, berries, and chocolate. We don’t normally do candles, but I did get some for her.

July/August 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures I have in my computer from these months. It’s time to sort through everyone’s photos again!

This picture should have gone with the post about building the new library shelves. A few days before Elijah built them, the younger boys and I painted them. It was the middle of winter and very cold, so paint dried very slowly–unless it was in the sun. So, we set the boards in the sun at the end of our driveway and got started as soon as it was almost warm enough. That was about 11:00, and there was still frost in the shade. The paint dried fast enough in the sun that we were able to do another coat every hour, until about 3:00 when we lost the sun. At that point, we moved them into the garage and did the last coat in there, then locked the cats out for the night and left the boards to dry overnight. It worked!

Because both Esther and Simon had birthdays while Esther, James and Mr. Sweetie were in America, we celebrated them early on an evening when Simon was here. Esther made him a trifle, and I surprised her with meringues that I made while she was away the morning before. We rarely have dessert, so having two desserts was fun!

Little girls + flowers = beauty!

James has been working on his sleepout when he gets the chance.

Mr. Imagination has been helping me with the incubator this winter. Here are a couple of pictures he took when we candled the eggs for the first batch. The first is an egg that hasn’t started to develop yet; we candle them before they go into the incubator, to check for cracks in the shell. The second is an egg we took out halfway through incubation. It has a blood line across the middle, indicating that the chick started to develop, and then died. He tried to get a picture of a viable embryo, but it came out so dark I couldn’t see anything.

I found this picture when I sorted them–someone was playing!

Esther bought a game to take with her and play en route to America. Her little sisters love to make patterns with the blocks.

The first hatch was very successful–80% of the eggs produced live chicks!

Goofiness in July

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I didn’t realize how far behind I am at posting pictures of our life! This was the third weekend in a row that I have been away from home. Two weeks ago, I went to a homeschool mom’s retreat near Christchurch, and had a migraine virtually the whole time, so by the time I got home late Sunday evening I was exhausted. Last weekend our whole family went to some meetings at a church in North Canterbury…and got home just in time to make dinner. Yesterday, Gayle had a medical appointment in Christchurch, so he and I went over for that, leaving all our children here at home. We stayed at a friend’s house overnight because due to the nature of his appointment the doctor wanted him to stay reasonably close to the hospital for 24 hours. We went to church over there and then came home, beating our children home! They had taken advantage of us being away to go out to eat together, and one of the older ones treated them all to a visit to a fun aquarium. So, here I am with enough time, finally, to do some blogging about our life!

Near the end of July, Esther, James and Mr. Sweetie went to America for a month to visit family. Somehow, I ended up with silly pictures of the boys just before they went. Here is James with his favorite cat.

I’m not sure what the point was supposed to be, but he put the stool over himself!

Meanwhile, Mr. Sweetie was doing this!

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination spent several days trying to build a motorbike, with a weed whacker motor and a pushbike. It worked for a few seconds.

The girls spent a few days playing on top of this cage in the orchard at the edge of the garden.

The children found a pair of glasses at the dump, and Little Miss enjoyed playing with them.

And this is Goofball, the gentlest cat we have, and the best hunter of the three.

More New Shelves!

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We love books around here. We are addicted to buying books. That creates a problem. We keep running out of shelf space! The good part about that is that we have a person in the house who likes to build things out of wood, so I asked Elijah to build us more shelving in the library. The library is a very wide hallway in the center of the house, and we now have floor-to-ceiling shelves all around it. Elijah took advantage of a weekend when most of us went away for two nights to do the construction. He had been away a lot just before that, so didn’t want to be gone again, and Esther wanted to stay home, so they took care of the cows and the house, and built.

Esther helped take the books off the shelves as soon as they finished the morning work, and then he got busy. She sent us several pictures throughout the day to keep us updated.

After we got home, we put the books back on the shelves, and since then I’ve done a little tweaking to organize them better. Now, Esther and two of the boys just arrived home from a month in America, and brought a lot more books in their suitcases. We’re soon going to run out of space again!