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Activities at Home

Truck is Out!

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I know it’s been awhile since I have posted.  I was without my computer for a week, since when I took it in for servicing they found that the hard drive was failing.  No wonder it was so slow and so many programs no longer worked!  It’s like having a new computer now.

The biggest event of the past two weeks was getting the truck out of the river last Saturday.  All the children except the baby went; I didn’t want to be there to see it happen so I stayed home and had a quiet hour.

First, he tried to hook the chain to the front.

The front bumper didn’t work, so they had to hook to the hitch at the back. Gayle took a hot shower as soon as he got home!

Out it comes! Just after this photo was taken, an eel slithered out of the engine compartment. The boys dug around inside for treasures!

Goodbye, little Nissan truck!We also bought a “new” truck nearly two weeks ago, but I don’t have a picture of it yet.  It’s a Ford, in case you wanted to know!  We also got a lamb since then–baby was quite fascinated the day he got to go outside when it was tied out!  We had a week of sunny, warm weather, with the north-west wind blowing almost constantly, but this week has been winter again, cold and wet.

Esther got out her singing doll and baby loved it!

Baby and the new lamb.

Boys diligently doing school.

Supermoon

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After a full week of rain, we figured there was no way we’d be able to see the full moon last weekend.  However, the skies cleared just in time!  We got to enjoy the brilliant moonlight as we drove home from a midwinter dinner Sunday night–we could even see it shining on the snow-capped mountains off in the distance!  When I went out to milk the next morning, the moon was about to set over the hills in the west and was so beautiful that I ran back in to grab the camera. Last glimpse of the super moon.

First rays of sunlight hitting the snow-covered hills to our west.

And, here are some random shots from the week. Sunset through the trees in our front yard.

New way to play piano: When your clothes are being changed, jump up and run away to big sister, lay down in her lap, and play the keys with your feet!

Elijah made a pinata this week, in honor of Daddy’s birthday.  We had great fun cracking it last night.

After the Storm

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We got 4 3/4 inches of rain in about 30 hours, a total of around 9 inches for the week.  The clay ground here was already saturated, meaning lots of flooding!  Esther got a few pictures of it, so I thought I’d let you see what we’ve been seeing.

One note about the post Monday, the day the truck washed away:  There are two pictures there of the ford.  One is from a slight distance and the other is from the edge of the water.  Both were taken the same time–the one shows how deceptive that ford is, how deeply it dips!

Water pouring off the oat field into one of our paddocks.

This is how deep the water was, flowing through our paddocks–it’s normally dry!

Poor cows are suffering from the wet. This was the only shelter they could find from the howling southerly, coming straight from Antarctica.

Several hours after the rain stopped, the children rode their bikes down to the ford where the truck still sits, and Esther got some beautiful pictures of a clean, waterlogged world with the sun peeking through for a few minutes! The Jed River has gone down some already.

More Rain!

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It’s raining more and more.  While we ate breakfast this morning, we watched the water rise in the paddock in front of the house.  It rose over 2 inches in about 20 minutes!

Our landlord going out to feed the cattle.

The lake out our kitchen window.

On our way home from Dead Boring Tuesday, we stopped to see the truck again. The water level had gone down enough that one boy was able to safely get on top of it and salvage a few things from inside–I was glad to get Gayle’s lunchbox out!  We were hoping to get a digger to pull the truck out of the river today, but it’s likely underwater completely again, since it rained all night.

Adventures Never Cease!

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Most of last week was pretty tame.  We did the normal stuff–school, working outside a few minutes a day, taking care of things in the house, doing laundry–all that good stuff.  Saturday night the second-youngest gave us an anxious time when he tripped and fell against a doorpost.  We were pretty worried about his head for awhile, but we prayed over him and watched him for a couple of hours, along with a naturopath friend who came over and checked his reflexes.  He showed no signs of swelling in the brain or concussion, so after a few hours we put him to bed and other than a large bruise he seems to be fine.

I made a couple of loaves of sourdough bread Saturday. Baby grabbed part of one and happily took off, chewing on it!

Baby loves to read, especially laying on his back!

Our 8-month-old steer, the Jersey/Belted Galloway cross.

I love those chubby, dirty legs!

This morning, Gayle drove into water flowing through the ford he crosses every morning on the way to work, not realizing that it was too deep, and we’re thankful he was able to get out of the truck!  It was washed downstream a ways.  The children went to look for it this afternoon, and found it 50-100 meters from the ford.  Next adventure–getting it out of there!  I think we’ll be looking for new transportation to work for Gayle.

This is what is left of the truck.

Up close, the ford is obviously very dangerous right now.

The ford doesn’t look too dangerous from this perspective!  And by the way, this pictures was taken at the same time as the one above.  That’s how much the road dips down!

Our waterlogged world today, after the storm.

 

Whale Watch

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We had a wonderful experience this morning on our way to church–so great that we decided it would be all right to be a few minutes late for church to enjoy it!  As we were driving along the coast, I suddenly noticed, not too far offshore, a small cloud of mist shooting up!  A whale!  We immediately pulled off and watched for awhile.  A couple of times a minute, the whale spouted, and we could see a bit of its back and occasionally some of its tail as it went back under.  There was a crowd of seagulls in the area where the whale was, so apparently there was a shoal of fish there, too.  We watched for several minutes, then started on our way, but just around the next curve we saw our friends from Cheviot who also go to Kaikoura to our church, pulled off and also watching.  We pulled off again beside them and all watched for awhile.  What a special experience!  We didn’t get any pictures, because it was just far enough offshore that it would have been very hard to pick up with the camera; this picture is from when we went on a WhaleWatch trip three years ago and shows what we saw this morning.

Monkey see, monkey do? This was yesterday.

 

Winter Harvest, and random pictures

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One thing I really enjoy about our climate here is being able to grow things year-round.  Right now, it is the equivalent of early December in the Northern Hemisphere.  I harvested our salad and some vegetables for soup today, and spent some time weeding.  After spending six hours teaching the children, weeding is a great way to relax and reset.

Today’s harvest–lettuce, radishes, green onions, parsley, and celery.

He was waiting for me to fill containers with weeds, so he could dump them into a larger container for me.

There was snow on the hills around us early last week.  We went to Dead Boring that day, and enjoyed the beautiful snowfall on the way there.

The Hurunui River, looking towards the sea.

Farmed deer near Greta Valley.

Coming over the Omihi Saddle into the Waipara Valley. You can see the Southern Alps in the distance.

A hill to the west of us.

And, some pictures of the children. Elijah was doing school, and baby wanted to do the same.

Jealousy–I was holding Mr. Sweetie, and baby had to get in between!

Tired baby–he fell asleep being pushed in a stroller outside, and couldn’t wake up for supper.

One of baby’s many funny poses!

Baby thinking about the hat someone put on him!

James dumping a container of weeds.

Our Week

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This has been a pretty normal week–lots of school and other real life, too.

Baby wants more kombucha!

Baby loves his daddy! These Usborne puzzle books have been very popular this week.

Part of school every day–the most popular part–is practicing math facts with a game on the computer. I forgot to include these two pictures last week! Our hedge was trimmed.

The children have been bringing in heaps of these field mushrooms. They are delicious!

The hills to the north-west of us.

We see a lot of these cows in the paddock next to the house.

Baby fell against the wood stove Sunday night. Ouch!

After trying in vain to get into this laundry basket, and squealing in frustration, he picked it up and brought it to me. I put him in–and he was delighted!We enjoyed the sight of snow blowing off the tops of the mountains north of Kaikoura as we drove to church this morning. Finally, here are some of the pictures Esther took when we stopped at the beach on the way home this afternoon.  One boy was moving so fast all the pictures of him turned out blurry!

Messy Faces!

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Baby showed up at the door this afternoon, in the tow of Big Brother who was saying, “Be prepared!”  It took awhile to figure out what he got into, but eventually we found that he had been playing with a bucket of mud, and obviously decided to paint his face!  He enjoyed the clean-up, once I quit turning him upside down to wash his hair. Tonight, he painted himself again.  This time, it was easier to clean up!

I haven’t been doing well at keeping this blog up, so I’ll just put in some more miscellaneous pictures from the past week or so.  Maybe I’ll aim to do that in the future–just go through the memory card once a week or so and put up pictures of the highlights of the week.

Our landlord put 180 dry dairy cows into the paddock next to our house over the past week. He keeps them here for the winter to allow their home farm to rest. They arrived in big double-decker stock trucks.

The paddock he put them in is planted in kale, which is 4-5 feet high! Notice how the cows are dwarfed by it!

This is the first section, after 24 hours of grazing by about 120 cows. By the next day, nothing was left except short stubs of stems.

This enormous spider was on a cupboard in the laundry room one night when I was putting laundry in the washer! It was 1 1/2 inches long.

Simon invented a stir-fry one evening, with goat meat, onions, mushrooms, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and an egg. It was delicious!

At the same time, Elijah was mixing up apricot-chocolate chip muffins, and Seth was making coconut bread, which I didn’t manage to get a picture of before it disappeared. Both were scrumptious!  The kitchen was quite the busy place that evening, as all three boys were cooking while I was trying to fix supper.  Also during that time, a friend dropped off my cell phone which had gotten left somewhere, and someone else came for milk!