Activities at Home

The Two Littlest

February 7, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Imagination woke up early one morning, but by 7:00 he was asleep again on my chair!

She did it! Little Miss figured out how to get a cloth over her head. She worked on that trick for a long time.

One morning after a rain, Little Miss found a puddle just her size and had fun stepping in it.

She also thought it was fun washing her hands and feet in the milk in the cat dish. Mom was not impressed (and neither was the cat!).

Little Miss is a Daddy’s girl! She wants to be with Daddy whenever she can be. Just before I took this picture, I saw her standing there with her hand on his back, watching intently.

Mr. Sweetie took this one.

Everyone likes to play with Little Miss. One evening, she was “throwing” a ball and chasing it, to the great delight of everyone. Another time, Mr. Handyman brought her into the house in a bucket. She frequently gets bucket rides. This picture with a ball was taken on her birthday.

Mr. Imagination didn’t finish his breakfast, a pancake with applesauce, cut up into bite-sized pieces. Little Miss found it and ate about half, then scattered the rest across the floor.

Mr. Imagination found this dress in the closet one day and badly wanted Little Miss to wear it. The boys love seeing her dressed in really girly clothes.

While I was shelling peas one day, Mr. Sweetie got the camera and took some pictures of the two little ones. This is what I was enjoying watching while I shelled the peas.

That turkey is as big as she is! Mr. Inventor thought it was pretty cute to see her investigating the turkeys. He said she walked right up to them.

While we were eating outside where it was cooler one evening, she stuck her foot in Daddy’s plate. That wasn’t what she wanted to do!

One day, she spent half an hour or more sitting on this box, playing with her empty pill bottle and one or two other things.

After I emptied a jar of yogurt, she took it and the spoon and cleaned out more!

January Garden

February 3, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The garden is doing splendidly! My boys have been a great help again this year. We’ve picked cabbage twice; this is the first harvest—30 heads! We made 110 pounds of sourkraut that day, more than we need for the year. It took only about 4 hours from picking the cabbage to finishing the cleanup.

Another day I picked a bushel and a half of peas. It was a lovely day to sit under a tree to shell them.

Little Miss loves to eat peas!

Mr. Intellectual has his own beautiful garden at the edge of the big garden. Here is Mr. Imagination showing the size of his brother’s sunflowers and corn.

This is our corn and pumpkins, with cabbage just beyond, and potatoes on the other side of that.

Little Miss likes zucchini, too!

Mr. Intellectual has been harvesting dandelion roots as well, and making them into “coffee”. He looked up directions and figured out how to roast them. Yum!

Breakfast on the Go, and links

February 1, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We went to town a couple of days ago. Going to town, meaning the nearest city to us, is an all-day affair. We have nearly an hour and a half drive to get there, so we try to leave early in order to get everything done that we have to do and get home before too late in the evening. We usually eat breakfast on the road on those days, and the current favorite breakfast-on-the-go is egg sandwiches.

We start by scrambling eggs; we ask each person how many eggs he wants and scramble the total, with salt and pepper. Then, take a piece of bread for each egg and spread it with mayonnaise (we make our own). Put about one scrambled egg on the bread, and top with a thin slice of cheese. Put it under the broiler or in a hot oven for a few minutes, just long enough to melt the cheese.

We usually do all that the night before, and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, we pull them out and put them on baking trays again, then reheat just a little while. For my share, because I feel better if I eat Trim Healthy Mama-style, I make my own bread substitute. I grind 2 Tablespoons dried coconut and 1 Tablespoon flax seeds in the coffee grinder, add 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and a pinch of salt, and stir in one egg. I put a piece of baking paper on a small tray and bake in the toaster oven for 6-7 minutes. You can also cook in a microwave for 1-2 minutes, but I like it better baked.

Esther has posted on her blog several days this week, and I love the pictures she has posted. For some really great pictures of our boys, please go here and here and here and here and here and here.

Videos of Little Miss

January 25, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Little Miss has some brothers that love her. She is also becoming quite a chatterbox. It’s really hard to record her talking, because when she sees the camera she quits. I did manage to get this clip from behind. Looks like Mr. Imagination wanted in on the video, as well! In the second one, we had leftover whipped cream from a special treat one evening (waffles served with cherry pie filling and whipped cream), so Mr. Diligence fed some of it to her while he cleaned out the cup.

Memories

January 24, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

For a number of years, from 1986 when I was 11, until 1990, when I was 16, I wrote and printed a small family newspaper, called The Starr-Hill Gazette. Actually, I wrote the news items, and begged family and friends for other stories. I got the folder of those papers out one evening last week so I could find one I especially remembered, and we had fun reading bits from them. Here is the one I was looking for, written by my mother:

OOPS!

Neighbor Mike makes his living moving and setting up mobile homes. Apparently he had a rough day recently….
Mike’s brother-in-law Dan was moving, home and all, and Mike was helping with the move. The mobile home had an addition which needed to be removed, so Mike used Dan’s saw to cut it away. The saw burnt out. “Cheap saw,” said Dan. “Oh, well.”
There was a gas line to disconnect. Mike gave the fitting a turn. Easy! He pulled off the wrench and went for another turn. The jaws of the wrench fell off in his hand. A brand new wrench. “Cheap wrench,” said Dan. “Oh, well.”
Time to jack up the mobile home. “I’ll go close the door so it doesn’t get caught on the way up,” said Dan.
“Ready?” asked Mike.
“No,” came the reply. Sounded like “Go.” Mike started to jack.
Once. Twice. Moving nicely! Three, four…crunch. Five, creak, crunch, “Whoa!!” Sounded like, “Go!” Six, crunch. “Whoa, whoa! STOP!”
“What happened?” inquired Mike.
“You’ve got to come and see this!” was the reply.
Mike went. The door had been open. It had caught under the roof of the addition. It was, to put it mildly, warped. Oops. Mike let the jack down again. The door straightened out! “Cheap door,” said Dan.
Apparently the rest of the move went without mishap, but we were roaring too loudly to actually hear the conclusion. After awhile, everyone subsided. Mike picked up his cup of coffee. He leaped up from his chair. The handle of the cup was all that he had in his hand. The coffee was all over him.
“Cheap cup,” someone said.

(Names have been changed to protect privacy, but this is a true story. The picture shows how the cup broke.)

One of my sisters drew comics for several issues. This is the funniest one I came across the other evening:

This Afternoon and Last Night

January 22, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It’s pretty hot today, so I’m letting my little people cool off with water. They would love to go to a swimming pool, but the big boys are all at work so I’m giving them the next best: cold water in a bathtub, with a plastic tub for Little Miss. This is when I really like having a laptop, so I can watch them while still getting something done! This is what I see as I write this:

When I went outside last evening to take a few pictures for the post I did featuring the garden, I got to enjoy a brilliant double rainbow. It was much more beautiful than these pictures show.

This is one of this year’s experiments. Right after we planted the tomatoes, I had broccoli and cauliflower that also needed planted, but didn’t have any space for them. I put some between rows of tomatoes. A chicken ate most of them while they were tiny, but some of the broccoli survived. It’s getting taken over by tomatoes by now, but I noticed that some are starting to form heads!

The sunset was gorgeous, and I always enjoy seeing the Indian Runner ducks running in single file across the paddock. The geese were pretty active, too, but the turkeys were going to bed. It was dark enough that my camera flashed, and in this picture, the second one I took, they were getting nervous.

Tonight’s Shopping Trip, and Frost Recovery

January 21, 2016 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I had great fun cooking dinner tonight. My first step was to make a shopping trip. I walked through the garden collecting ingredients to put with some cooked lamb I had in the fridge, to make a delicious stew. This was what Mr. Diligent and I picked in a few minutes:

I love this time of year! We eat so well.

Our late frost was five weeks ago already. The zucchinis are completely recovered; within three weeks they were the size they had been before that frost. The tomatoes, on the other hand, while they are the same size again, have really been knocked back. They are finally blooming again now, but I’m afraid we won’t get much of a crop. Here are pictures of the same zucchini plant and the same tomato plant, the day of the frost, three weeks later, and tonight.

One Year Old!

January 15, 2016 by NZ Filbruns 5 Comments

Little Miss turned one yesterday. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other, but we are having a hard time believing we’ve already had her that long. We don’t do much of anything for a first birthday, but some of her brothers wanted to give her gifts. Mr. Imagination was sadly wanting to know what he could give her, so I suggested he pick a few peas in the garden and shell them for her. He happily did so, and they shared a bowl of raw peas! Here are the pictures we’ve taken of our precious little girl over the past month.

One evening when everyone else was away, she checked out the lawn mower, then went to investigate the ducks.

This was when she had just learned to walk and was thrilled to be able to transport things. She must have decided I needed the nearly-empty jug of molasses for the cow in the house, so she threw it in the door.

Here she was absolutely thrilled to have figured out how to climb the stepstool. Don’t ask how many times she’s fallen off by now when we forgot to turn it over!

One rainy day, her daddy and brothers rigged up a swing in the living room for her. She loved that!

Thrilled again to find a way to the top of the stool!

A family with seven children spent a day with us right after Christmas. The two babies started playing together late in the afternoon. We loved watching them “working” together with this toy computer!

She spent a couple of weeks playing with towels and washcloths and Mr. Imagination’s neon-green shirt, trying to get them onto her head. It takes a lot of work and concentration to accomplish that goal! Once she figured out how, she quit doing it!

It rained! She found a puddle just her size.

Another puddle! She likes to “wash” her feet and hands in the cat dish. I have to push it way back under the grill if the cat is to get any milk.

The faces she makes!

December Fun

December 30, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I was thrilled one evening when I came across this scene! This is only the first or second time ever that Mr. Diligence has voluntarily read a book! Mr. Imagination loved listening, of course.

We saw this impressive cold front on its way up from the south as we came home from church one Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, it blew over without dropping anything, although we did get a bit of rain later that night.

Is that a kiss—or a bite?

For our last homeschool gathering of the year, we went to a campground by the Waipara River. We were the first ones there, so the boys spent some time building dams while we waited for others to arrive.

Little Miss tasted rocks.

The boys discovered Little Miss with a jar of jam she had managed to get open. Instead of cleaning her up (we were supposed to be leaving in a few minutes for a barbeque!), Mr. Inventor started snapping pictures. It was cute, I’ll have to admit, to see her dipping in for yet another handful of jam! Thankfully, it was sugar-free, so not bad for her.

Mr. Sweetie was happy to get his cast off. The boys were all very interested in how it was done.

When Esther and Mr. Handyman came home, they brought gifts from the grandparents. This was Mr. Imagination’s favorite. He needed help putting it together a few times, but now he can do it himself.

Little Miss discovered an empty cupboard, and then Mr. Imagination joined her in it.

Christmas Day

December 28, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Christmas Day here is sure different from anything we ever experienced in Michigan! There, most years, we stayed holed up inside the house, with snow blowing outside. Here, most years, it’s warm—if not hot—and sunny, and we like to go to the beach! This year, we took a picnic lunch to Claverley, to a beach we went out onto for a few minutes, once, several years ago. It turns out to be a wonderful beach for the children to play at, at low tide anyway. The beach is covered with tiny gravel, all worn smooth. It’s a dark color, so really attracts the heat of the sun, which felt good in the chilly wind that was blowing. Above the high tide line, the gravel was too hot to walk on comfortably with bare feet, but below that line there was moisture just below the surface and it felt just right. There was an area of rocks going out into the sea at one spot, and it made a perfect place for children to splash and play, until the tide came up about halfway. We found a lovely pine grove to eat our picnic in. The thick layer of pine needles on the ground made a lovely soft floor to sit on, and we were shaded from the bright sun. After lunch, we went and sat on the beach again for a couple of hours while the boys played in the water and then buried each other. It was a great day! On our way home, we picked cherries, but I never got any pictures of that.

Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie running into the waves.

Looking north; the area with all the kelp is where we spent the most time. You can faintly see the Kaikoura Peninsula sticking out from that point of land.

Looking south.

As long as she wasn’t looking at the water, Little Miss was very happy. She loved playing in, and tasting, the gravel.

Our picnic grove. Our nephew who is spending a few months in New Zealand was with us for the day.

Mr. Inventor brought his boat along—half of a barrel! He sort of surfed with it.

The boys had fun being buried by Daddy. This is Mr. Diligence, Mr. Imagination, and Mr. Sweetie.

Little Miss helped bury Mr. Diligence, too.

Mr. Sweetie wasn’t feeling the best that day. He stayed buried in the warm gravel for a long time.

Esther was teasing Little Miss! The scared chuckling noises were pretty funny, as was the way she tried to climb higher on you.

Mr. Sweetie decided he wanted to stay buried until the waves came up to him. We watched as the tide crept higher and higher…

Mr. Inventor wanted to be buried sitting up. Daddy wore himself out burying so many sons in one day!

The waves have finally come up far enough that Mr. Sweetie got wet. He jumped up and ran to safety.

Check out Mr. Inventor’s expression!