Activities at Home

In Honor of a Man of God

December 22, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 3 Comments

Sixteen years ago today, my father moved from earth to heaven. I still miss him, and when my sister posted a picture of him on Facebook a week or two ago, it gave me the idea to post a few pictures of him here. My dad was a wonderful man who loved his Lord and Savior, and his family. This first picture was taken in 1992.

Dad thought this picture, taken in 1994, was a very good one of him. It does capture his personality very well!

Dad and Mom, that same day, at the Little Sable Point lighthouse in Silver Lake, Michigan.

Dad and Mom’s 26th anniversary, 1993.

Dad in 1990 with my second-youngest brother. Isn’t he cute?

Our wedding—Dad had looked forward for years to walking a daughter up the aisle. I am thankful he was able to be at our wedding.

Holding Esther, his first grandchild, in 1998. He got to see his second grandchild as well; he died 8 days after Mr. Handyman was born. He always liked 2-year-olds the best, it seemed, but he never got to enjoy a 2-year-old grandchild, as Esther was only a year and a half when he died.

This is one of the last pictures I have of Dad, taken 6 or 8 months before his death.

I learned so much from my Dad, and sure look forward to seeing him again someday.

Little Glimpses into Our Life

December 19, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, the boys noticed a peacock running along the fence on the north side of this property. The next morning, the peacock was in our paddock, preening and generally making himself at home. We frequently see him showing off his ragged, beautiful tail, and the sounds we hear multiple times through the day make it sound like a zoo here!

I got out this box of milk bottles so I could put milk in the freezer. Looks like the rats got there first. I was glad to hear that the bait we put out is gone; we haven’t seen signs of rats recently (these bottles have been stored in that spot since about March). Why they would eat empty, clean milk bottles, and the calf bottle, is beyond me.

Mr. Imagination

Gayle decided they needed to find out what exactly it was like in the underground water tank. The water level was down to about 2 feet deep, after watering the garden for a couple of days, so he tied a rope around Mr. Diligence and lowered him in. He walked around and reported that the floor is solid concrete, covered with a layer of mud and debris.

I liked this—all the boys laying around the hole, looking in.

The boys found this hedgehog while they were feeding the chickens one evening.

Little Miss was delighted to be able to see the hen with her four chicks!

Mr. Sweetie can read! I found a couple of beginning readers for him the other evening, and he didn’t want to go to bed; he wanted to keep reading. I told him he was allowed to get up early in the morning to read. He didn’t like that idea, but as soon as he was up in the morning he was reading!

Jellyfish

December 17, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On a recent Sunday, our nephew, who is working for a few months at a farm an hour and a half from here, spent the day and went to church with us. After church, we went to the Kaikoura Peninsula. We walked across the top, enjoying a beautiful overcast day.

This seal pup was along the walkway, just as we started up the cliff.

The view from halfway to the top. This is the bay in front of Kaikoura, on the north side of the Peninsula.

Walking along the the top of the peninsula. Little Miss was sound asleep when we arrived, so her daddy carried her till she woke up and wanted a snack. Then, I took her and Gayle went back to get the van and take it around to the end of the trail.

See all the black specks on the white rocks? Those are seals.

We made it to the overlook above South Bay! This is the other side of the headland on which you go back down to sea level.

And when we arrived at sea level, the boys who got there first had a surprise for us: They had found a jellyfish on the beach! In real life, the dark areas were somewhat bluer than this.

Then, we moved on and found another jellyfish…and suddenly they were everywhere! Mr. Diligence counted 130 by the time we were done. Some were totally clear, like this one:

And this one, with Mr. Inventor’s shoe for scale.

This was the biggest we saw; it was more vividly brown.

It’s hard to see them, but there are jellyfish scattered across the rocks and seaweed here, at the high tide line. Look for purplish, transparent blobs.

After enjoying the jellyfish, I took Little Miss onto the bridge that forms the end of the trail at South Bay. She loved looking through the bars.

Mr. Diligence brought me this handful of sand, gravel and tiny shells.

Disaster, Science, and Picture Books

December 15, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

The beautiful garden we had yesterday is no more. I got up at 5:30 this morning and went out to check for frost, since it was chilly in the house. Sure enough, there was frost, so I quickly grabbed some old sheets and covered the peppers, basil, and eggplant, then woke Mr. Intellectual up to help me get the sprinkler going in the tomato/corn garden. We ran it for about 15 minutes, until it broke, then hooked up another sprinkler. In another 5-10 minutes that came apart, so I started watering with a thumb over the end of the hose. The tomatoes, and the zucchinis at the edge, were still stiff and icy. We kept watering for another 20 minutes or so, till the sun was nearly to hit the garden. It didn’t seem to make much difference, though, as you can see by this picture.

I looked closely at all the plants early this afternoon, and, as I had hoped, found live foliage down near the ground on most of the plants. I’m hoping they will pull through and we’ll still get a crop, although we’ve probably been knocked back at least a month. I decided we’ll turn this into Science. I sent Mr. Sweetie out to get me a couple of step-in fence posts. Mr. Imagination asked what they are for. I told him, “For a scientific investigation. You don’t know those big words, do you?” He responded that he didn’t. I explained that we’ll do a science experiment. He asked, “With big words I don’t know?”

Our experiment will be to take pictures of one zucchini and one tomato plant, that I think will survive, each Monday for awhile, and see how they recover. The posts are to mark the ones I chose. So, here are the first pictures.

The older boys all had work at the vineyard today, so I only had Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Little Miss here most of the day. We have a lot of picture books from the library, which all need to go back, so we spent an hour and a half or so reading them together. The little boys loved that! Here are all the books we read today. They love this kind of school.

Little Miss is 11 Months Old

December 14, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

She has learned to do a lot of things in the past month. About two weeks ago, she started walking, and now she goes everywhere she wants. These first two pictures were from about three weeks ago, when she first learned how to go outside by herself without falling on her nose. She would sit down at the edge, swing one foot out, then the other, and then plunk down on her bottom. I love that look on her face! She was so pleased with her accomplishment.

Here, she was quite upset because she was locked out of the kitchen while the floor was being washed. She did her best to pry the door open, screaming in frustration the whole time.

Here, she was very pleased to be able to play with the broad bean pods after we shelled them. It’s so much fun to scatter things!

Just waking up from a nap.

She’s discovered the joy of playing in gravel and dirt in the past couple of weeks. She loves to push it back and forth with her hands.

She worked out how to climb into a box of toys.

All ready for church.

Mr. Imagination loves to play with soft toys, and he lined his dolls and stuffed animals up on my rocking chair one morning. Little Miss was delighted to play with them, too.

Now that she can walk, she loves to carry things around. Here, she found the handle of a croquet mallet. She wanted it in the house, so she threw it in the door, then climbed in herself and walked around brandishing it.

Checking out a Silverbeet (Swiss Chard) leaf.

Garden Update

December 13, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The boys and I have been spending an average of half an hour a day, each, on the garden. It’s really amazing how much can happen in that amount of time! The garden is thriving. We’re watering when we have to, from a large cistern by the house that collects the overflow from our half unit of water from the Council. We’ve had a little bit of rain lately, which does wonders. We also save all the water we can in the house, such as from washing lettuce, or Little Miss’s bath water, and bucket it out to the garden. We’re loving having all the lettuce salads we want. We’re going into my favorite time of the year!

These first three pictures were taken the last week of November.

I took this one a couple of days ago. The boys were finishing up their 30 minutes, with Little Miss’s help, while I fixed lunch. Left-right: Mr. Sweetie, Little Miss, Mr. Inventor, Mr. Diligence.

This isn’t quite the garden, but it is a plant! We were recently given a couple of pitcher plants. They are catching a lot of flies for us—so many, in fact, that the plant can’t digest them all and gets indigestion. We’ve had to cut off a few traps that were dying because of all the flies inside them!

Mr. Inventor

December 9, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Inventor has been very busy living up to his nickname lately. Here are pictures of some of his projects just in the past week.

He built a forge out of an old 20-pound propane cylinder. He had watched a YouTube clip online, and and added his own ideas. He cut off the top of the cylinder and attached a pipe to the lower side to which he attached an air pump. Then, he lined the lower 2/3 or so of the tank with an inch or two of clay and let it dry for a day. He started a fire in it with wood, and then added coal to get a very hot fire. He was able to get it really hot by pumping air in.

After getting the bar of steel red hot, he beat it on a piece of railroad rail with his hammer to try to make a chisel. He later ended up melting this end of the steel, though, when he was experimenting to see how hot he could get it! When he pulled it out of the fire one time, part of the bar was missing.

He made this handle for a chisel with his wood lathe.

He also built this hand-crank bench grinder one day. He spent a lot of time on YouTube trying to find directions for building something like this, but couldn’t find any, so he made it up himself, if I understood right. He wanted to make another, and make a video of it to post on YouTube for other boys to watch who want to make the same thing! He used the bike pedal that was originally attached to the gear at first, then made this handle on his lathe. He likes the bike pedal better, though, because it’s easier to turn. Actually, now he’s saying to take off the pedal but leave the bolt it turns on.

He’s also using his lathe again to make wooden bowls. There has been a lot of creativity here in the past week!

After the bowl is shaped and sanded, he oils it for several days with olive oil. These bowls are beautiful!

Of course, the boys had to have fun with the forge, too! Besides melting aluminum and making odd shapes with it (Mr. Intellectual has now made a clay mold in which he wants to try casting an aluminum signet ring), this short video shows some of their other fun. And by the way, after only doing this trick four times, the bucket of water was hotter than dishwater!

Dear Mr. Imagination

December 6, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I found a number of pictures of or taken by Mr. Imagination on my memory card when I went through it today, so I decided to give him his own post.

One morning during dishes, while I was reading aloud, he climbed into this tub and spent several minutes totally engrossed in his own little world. I took several pictures, and he never seemed to notice.

He took this picture, of me helping Mr. Sweetie with school, one morning.

Either he or Mr. Sweetie took this picture, of Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence working on a lawn mower.

Mr. Sweetie took quite a series of pictures of Mr. Imagination being funny.

Apparently, they took turns with the camera!

Last Week’s Science

December 4, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are on our summer homeschooling schedule now, which means that instead of school lasting all morning we only do about an hour, besides the hour or two of reading aloud (whatever they can get me to do!) we do every day year round. We’re doing reading and spelling, basically, through the summer, just so my dyslexics don’t forget everything they’ve learned.

We did do some science last week, though! On Monday, the vet came to pregnancy check our cow. He uses an ultrasound wand to check, and it has a button you can push to freeze the image so other people can see what he has found. We were very excited to get to see our next calf, just 40 days after the cow visited a bull! It was a round ball, about 2 cm in diameter. He said that by 60 days they have legs and a head, and he can tell if it is a heifer or bull if it’s laying the right way.

A couple of days later, we brought some water in from the mucky, stagnant pool that was left in the creek out front, just before the boys got all the rest of the water pumped onto the garden. We had fun looking at stuff through the microscope. There were a lot of these round green things floating around. They moved pretty fast, twisting and turning as they went. We also got a very close-up picture of a mosquito larva (second picture). The big circle by its head is an air bubble.

Then, on Thursday, I took the children to Christchurch. Mr. Sweetie had fallen pretty hard the week before, and two doctors here in Cheviot said he almost certainly had a greenstick fracture. To get an x-ray and a cast, we have to go to Christchurch. Sure enough, when we did the x-rays, he had a small fracture. The boys got to see the x-rays, and watch the cast get put on. Mr. Sweetie is now sporting a bright green cast! I paid extra to get the lining that is waterproof, and I’m glad I did; within half an hour of arriving at home that evening he had fallen into the duck pond!

Videos of Baby for Her Absent Siblings

November 28, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We predicted that Little Miss would learn to walk while her big sister and brother are in America. Until yesterday, I wondered if that would actually happen. Now, I am sure it will! These videos are for the two of you who are absent; hopefully you can see them in a few days when you have access to internet again.

First, she learned to push her stroller last evening–that was thrilling, as you can see! The laughter you can hear is Mr. Imagination.

Then, today, she started walking on her own.

She is also waving. She often waves with just one hand, but when she gets really excited she uses both.