Activities at Home

Kubb

February 27, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We have learned a new game this year. It’s very fun, everyone can be involved, and it gets people outside and active. Win, win! This game is called Kubb, and apparently originated in Sweden—possibly as far back as Viking times. Basically, you throw batons to try to knock over pieces of 2x4s, while avoiding a larger piece of wood set up in the center. It’s very easy to make the game—just get yourself a length of 2×4, a length of 1-inch dowel, and a chunk of 4×4. Read the rules on the Wikipedia page here. We’ve learned that Mr. Inventor is the man to have on your team; he almost invariably wins. This game is addictive. I’ve found that you want to keep going, hoping against hope that eventually you’ll actually hit a target! Here are pictures of the game we played together last week.

The spectators. We had to keep moving them out of the playing field. Once, they were stretched out on their tummies, watching us throw!

Sometimes you get to stack up several Kubbs. That makes it easy to knock them down!

We were all amused when Princess chased one of the throwing sticks!

It can be very difficult to get the stack to balance sometimes!

January 2017 Pictures

February 11, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Soon after the young turkeys were released into the paddock, a bunch of them got out into the yard and congregated here.

Right after Christmas I started a bunch of cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli seeds, and New Year’s weekend got them into potting soil. Now, they are in the garden and growing fast. I’m hoping for a decent fall/winter harvest this year—still trying to work out when the best time is to start that crop.

A family came to visit us the second weekend in January, and that Saturday Gayle took them out to Gore Bay. The boys took their inflatable boat, and the children had fun boating in a lagoon.

The young turkeys often spend time perched on this gate. They sleep in the tree above it at night. One morning I was in the garden at 6:15 to start a sprinkler, and saw the turkeys get up for the day—or rather, down! They flew out of the tree one after another, or a bunch at a time. So funny!

Mr. Inventor’s poultry flock: geese, ducks and turkeys. He must have 70 or 80 birds, or even a hundred, in that flock.

A few days after the family I mentioned above came to visit, I took our children and a couple of theirs to Gore Bay. Since the last time we had been there, sand had come in and covered the rocks on the beach, making a wonderful place to play at low tide. The children had a lot of fun!

It was fun to investigate a starfish we found.

The family who came to visit asked if they can stay here a few weeks while they wait for their visas to be granted. They are living in our shipping container/sleepout, and Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence built this gate to go across the driveway that leads to it so they can drive right up to their room. We had just had a section of fencing across it before, to keep wandering sheep out. They built it out of pallets and a few boards given to them by a friend who moved to Australia a few months ago, and hung it on the gate posts put in by a former resident of this house, using the hinges from the original gate.

Children—January 2017

February 9, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This is just a random collection of pictures I found on the camera of the children from the past month.

Mr. Sweetie picking cherries the second Sunday of the month.

Mr. Imagination’s reaction when I told him we were working on buying plane tickets to go to America in June. Think he likes the idea? We’re all excited!

To go to America, we have to get American passports for the two youngest. Mr. Imagination has one, but it will be expired before we go, and we haven’t done Little Miss’s American paperwork at all yet. So, one morning Esther and I worked on getting passport pictures taken. That’s a challenge!

We have a family staying with us for awhile. One day I was harvesting cabbage, with help from several children, and Mr. Sweetie found his head covered with cabbage leaves after I trimmed the head!

Mr. Inventor went to work again on his well. He got it dug down to about six meters below the surface, with about two meters of water in the bottom, but then the bottom caved in before we were able to try pumping out of it. I love his imagination and ability to make do.

Little Miss pretending to be asleep.

Mr. Sweetie wanted me to take a picture of him with this tower.

Kittens and Children

January 29, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are really enjoying our kittens! They are so fun to watch, especially for about an hour first thing in the morning when they race all around the living room, over and around the furniture, and over my lap while I’m reading the Bible. Little Miss loves to carry them around. Princess, the black one, is very patient and gentle with her, although she’s the roughest when she’s playing with the rest of us. Bandit, the gray one, though he’s a cuddler with the rest of us, hates to be carried by Little Miss, and sometimes scratches her! She’s offended—but it doesn’t stop her from doing it again!

Mr. Sweetie with Bandit

Little Miss with Bandit

and with Princess

A fight happening on top of Daddy

and another fight on top of Mr. Intellectual

Bandit tried to ride bike! I didn’t quite manage to get a picture of him trying to figure out our mirror, but it was quite funny.

Little ones love kittens! Mr. Imagination and Little Miss

One afternoon, these two spent several hours asleep on a chair under the table. As they moved around in their sleep, they took turns falling off the chair and getting back up.

Videos of Mr. Imagination

January 20, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I happened to notice some videos in a folder from October recently, and when I watched them to see what they were remembered that I had wanted to share them. So, here’s a little glimpse into the life and thoughts of Mr. Imagination! By the way, the background music is Gayle singing to Little Miss as he bathed her! He had no idea that he would end up being recorded, and said I’d have to put a disclaimer on. And, I do apologize for the way these fade out in places. Our living room isn’t very light at night, and the camera has a hard time with that.

End of December 2016 Pictures

January 16, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of our pictures from December.

Mr. Inventor dropped a piece he needed to work on a pump into our underground cistern, so he put on his swimming trunks and went down into that cold water to retrieve it. He was glad to be able to pick it up with his toes, so he didn’t have to go all the way under. Mr. Diligence took the picture.

Mr. Diligence also took this one. He and Mr. Inventor were perched in an oak tree. Mr. Diligence has a new camera, which he keeps in a case on his belt, so he gets some interesting pictures. I’m glad he lets me look at his memory card sometimes!

Mr. Sweetie, piling up long grass that Mr. Inventor had just mowed, to mulch the garden.

Mr. Diligence was pretty impressed with this egg, about twice the size of a normal hen’s egg! The poor chicken who laid it.

Gayle took Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence on a picnic one Saturday. They walked around a new trail in the Domain, and came across a family of ferrets.

Esther is tying the tomatoes up this year. That should make them easier to pick!

I was pleased to harvest all this the week before Christmas! We’ve gotten a lot more since then.

Little Miss was determined to go help Esther feed the calf!

All dressed up for the Christmas Eve service! Mr. Inventor was a scribe, Mr. Intellectual was Herod, and the other three boys were the Wise Men.

Charades one evening. This was a symphony. The kitten was a violin.

Parallel. No one could guess this one.

A bit of earthquake damage we observed on our way to our picnic on the day after Christmas.

Little Miss is Busy!

January 14, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our little girl is a very busy little person. She is on the go from when she wakes up in the morning till she reluctantly goes to sleep at night. Here are a few more pictures in which we’ve tried to capture her lovely personality! This first picture shows her sweet side—she does love to cuddle, when there isn’t something else more pressing to investigate!

When Esther arrived home from America, she brought some preschool books that I had bought for Mr. Imagination. He immediately started coloring pictures—so Little Miss wanted to color, too! I gave her an old school book, and she very diligently colored for a few days. The morning I took this picture, she had just delightedly told me, “Mommy, see me picture!”

This was a game of kickball. She loved running bases, although she couldn’t understand the rules.

Picking peas. I love this picture—looks like she’s telling off one of her brothers; he probably offended her in some way. She is very bossy, and does her best to keep her big brothers in line. This morning, she found a wet rag in the house and took it outside to wash the top of the little picnic table. She informed me that it was “Mess! Mess! Da boys.”

New Babies!

January 9, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our cat disappeared a few weeks after the earthquake, so we decided to try again. Some friends of ours had new kittens, so we requested two of them. They had the mother spayed when the kittens were five weeks old, and the kittens learned to eat dry food then. We picked them up a few days later, on Christmas Day. We are sure enjoying having kittens again! They were tiny when we got them, but now, about two weeks later, have grown a lot. They are also changing fast in behavior. They have learned how to play much better, and are getting friendlier all the time, especially the little boy kitten. The girl has always been friendly. She’s a fighter, though, and unless she’s sleepy she’s playing—which often means chewing on the person she has chosen to bestow her favor on at that moment! We named the black girl Princess and the gray boy Bandit. These first two pictures are on the way home. Those poor traumatized kittens! They were terrified.

They fell asleep on a chair as soon as we got home, and slept for several hours.

Later that evening, they woke up and played some.

Once, early on, Princess fell asleep on my hand. She’s too big to fit like that now!

Early December 2016 Pictures

January 5, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

There will be another post soon (I hope) with more pictures from December, but one of the children borrowed my camera today so I don’t have my memory card. These are the pictures I do have today, when I have time to post!

I was amused one day, when I looked out the door, to see Little Miss walking very carefully around and around the tree in the middle of the roundabout in our driveway. She kept it up for quite a few minutes.

I was not quite so amused the morning I looked out to see Mr. Inventor’s flock of 35-40 ducklings going across my yard! Thankfully, ducks are very easy to herd and he got them back in the paddock before too long.

The hills are drying out again. I don’t remember ever seeing it quite like this before, half green and half brown. Maybe we’ve just never gone south at the right time before. This picture shows so clearly how the hot, dry northwest winds suck the moisture out of the grass here in North Canterbury.

I’ve been puzzling over this field since May or June, when it was planted. It looked like they sowed rocks thickly in the rows, then didn’t cover them up. I couldn’t imagine what those things were. When the plants came up, I decided they must be elephant garlic, but now we can tell what they are. Apparently, someone is raising onions for seed! (Mom, this is the field we were discussing one day when we went past while you were here—probably the day you arrived.)

I’m not sure what the blue/purple is on those hills across the Hurunui River, but it was beautiful! I’m guessing it’s a noxious weed, though.

Coming home to Cheviot one afternoon, I was struck anew by the beauty of the mountains to the north of us. I love seeing the ranges, one behind the other!

Painting the Sleepout

January 3, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I have a son who is at his best when he has a big project underway. He thrives on working toward a goal, day after day. Right now, he’s building a moveable chicken pen out of lumber someone gave the boys. He’s been at it for several days, and has several more days of work on it. He can’t stand to be at loose ends.

While Esther was gone to America for two weeks, Mr. Diligence had a different project. He had actually wanted to do it last year while she was gone for six weeks, but didn’t get at it then. He’s now 11 years old, though, and able to do even more than he was last year. He set himself the goal of scraping and painting her entire sleepout before she got home this year! He didn’t quite meet the goal; the scraping turned out to be a lot harder than he thought. He got two walls done, though! Then, he ran out of paint. It’s going to be very hard to match those walls with what he finds at the dump for free, but at least those two look good.