Activities at Home

May 2024 Photos–Part 2

July 14, 2024 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Here are the rest of the pictures I have from May. This first one is sad. She was playing on the trampoline after church one Sunday and fell off onto concrete. She gave herself a black eye and a concussion. After we got home and she had rested for an hour or two she wanted to know what she looked like, so I took this picture. She looked a lot worse the next day, though, as her eye got blacker, and then over the next few days it turned green and yellow. Within a week, though, the color was gone; within a day she had no visible effects from the concussion.

I’m not sure what this was all about. I do know they were being goofy! This is Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie.

Someone got the idea that we should photograph all the tourists who stop to photograph our calf! We can’t now, though, because a fence has just been built along the road and we can’t see across there anymore.

I was working at my desk one evening and Little Miss brought me her rock creation, so I quickly snapped a picture of it.

Little Miss created this bouquet one morning, and then took a picture of it and asked me to print it. She then made it into a card for an elderly couple we were going to visit that afternoon at a rest home in town.

This is more of Little Miss’s artwork! She took this picture, too.

The Conking Donkey

July 7, 2024 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Mr. Imagination was assigned to write and perform a puppet show as part of his Language Arts program. He chose to adapt one of Aesop’s Fables from a book we have, and got his older brother to help perform it. This video was taken during a practice run, and then they performed it for our homeschool group the next day. The first few seconds are blurry, and then the camera got focused, so hold on till you can see what is happening.

This is the story he was inspired by:

May 2024 Photos Part 1

June 30, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It looks like we took a lot of random pictures during May that don’t share themes, so I’ll just do a couple of posts of those. One of the fads during that month was building Lego 4WD vehicles with a lot of flex. The creator of this one took this picture to show the flex.

When I work in the garden, there is often a fantail hanging around. One day I was able to capture this picture of it. Such cheerful little birds! They remind me of the chickadees we had in Michigan.

I took this picture one evening to show two of the older boys who weren’t home what they were missing: Homegrown roasted chicken, roasted potatoes and pumpkin from our garden, and coleslaw (also from our garden). It was delicious! One of the boys showed up in time to get some, but the other didn’t.

Mr. Sweetie discovered this when he went out to do his morning chores on a very cold morning.

This dress got ripped, so I got creative with a patch. I did talk the dress’s owner into using fabric that coordinated with the dress–she wanted to use some really wild fabric she found in my stash! I let her have that bit on the back to provide support there.

Three years ago, we let this little girl play with beans that were soaking–and she still occasionally asks to when she sees them on the counter!

This was the entertainment the evening we spent with friends in early May. He got a few levels higher before his tower collapsed!

Kea, the yellow and green budgie, does not like to be handled–but if Jo-Jo the cockatiel is on someone’s shoulder, she often lands beside him for a few minutes. Miss Joy loves when that happens!

Leaf Fun

June 23, 2024 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

When the leaves fell off the peach trees in May, the three youngest had great fun raking them up and playing in them. I remember loving maple trees when I was young, because of the wonderful leaf piles! This isn’t as good, but as close as our children are likely to get to that. While they were playing with the leaves, they got the idea of making a movie about it. I’m not sure what the plot was supposed to be, if any, but I put together the clips they got. You might want to turn it off when it starts getting crazy–when all three are tumbling together in the pile.

April 2024 Photos

June 9, 2024 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Here are the rest of April’s photos! A few days after Easter, our new cow, Maple, finally calved–three weeks after we thought she would, based on what the previous owner told us. I had started to wonder if something was wrong! No, just a late calf. Elijah took this picture when he went down to take care of the chickens and discovered a new calf, which another boy had overlooked when he went down an hour or so earlier. The calf is a bull, a Jersey/Dexter cross. These first two pictures are from the first evening; the third picture was a week or two later, after we started bottle-feeding him and he decided that people were all right. His name is Clifford, as in Clifford the Big Red…Calf!

Remember how much fun we had earlier this year hatching chicks? Well, we ended up with a lot of them. The roosters from the first two batches have moved into the freezer by now, and we sold the pullets. These are some of the pictures we took to advertise them.

We went to Reefton for church one Sunday, and before coming home, drove around to check out the project that has been ongoing for several years: rebuilding the hydroelectric plant. Reefton was the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to be lit with electric lights, but the electric plant fell into disrepair a long time ago. They got a grant recently to rebuild it as a museum. This is the water race, looking toward the building that will house the turbine.

What happens when a four-year-old hurts her foot? She gets to sit on the couch with her blankie, a big stack of books, and the recordings that Grandma made of those books! She spent a couple of hours listening to those stories after cutting her foot badly.

I don’t normally take my phone with me when I go down to milk the cows in the morning, but one day I did. On the way up the hill, I looked up the valley to the east, and saw this breathtaking sight.

Here were our record-breaking vegetables in April–a potato and a tomato. The weights are in grams.

I was surprised one day when the children showed up with a pukeko chick. I had them take it right back down the hill and try to give it back to the parents–hope it survived!

March 2024 Photos

May 19, 2024 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

And here are the rest of our photos from March! First, some pictures of the animals. I bought a new cow; she is behind Little Miss’s head in this first picture. She gives the type of milk we need, and was due to calve soon, so we needed to sell a couple of our other cows who don’t have the genetics we want. I took this picture to upload in an advertisement for Poppy, our old faithful cow. The girls were delighted to pat her while I was taking pictures–but there were a lot of tears the day we loaded her into a truck to go to her new home. We also sold her daughter Rosie, the one at the far left of this picture. Both have good homes, which I’m happy for.

These are the pullets from the first lot we hatched. We sold a few, but we need to sell the rest.

These are the turkeys. They are quite curious about everything! I took this picture the day Poppy went to her new home, while I was waiting for the truck to arrive.

And these are the house pets!

The garden has been outdoing itself this year, with bumper crops of almost everything. I’ve sent several boxfuls of zucchini we weren’t getting used down to the the cows. Here, the little children are cutting them up, having fun carving before the squash got eaten.

Mr. Imagination found this rutabaga in the garden. He wanted to know what it tasted like, so I cooked part of it. We didn’t like it, though (probably too old), so the cows got that, too. It didn’t go to waste!

This was one day’s harvest of tomatoes and beetroot. Since, we’ve had much larger harvests of tomatoes. We’re getting a bit tired of dealing with them.

Mr. Imagination turned 12 in March. He requested kebabs for his birthday meal, so the children had great fun assembling them, and then he got to help grill them.

Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her tower.

We saw this across the road one day. It’s apparently a hotel on wheels!

These four pictures were taken by Mr. Sweetie. He was intrigued by the artistry created by a foggy morning and steamy windows.

We went to Timaru for Easter Conference as usual. On Sunday afternoon I supervised our four youngest, and several children from another family, for an hour or so at a park across the street from the hall. This was a game of tag in which they couldn’t touch the ground. If they did, they were automatically it!

I got cold after awhile, so I suggested that the girls use the colored pencils an older lady had just given Miss Joy, and draw pictures. They spent the next half hour or hour, until the next meeting, drawing, while the older young people sang next to them.

February 2024 Photos

May 5, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We didn’t take many pictures in February, after we got home! I was too busy trying to catch up. This first picture shows part of what I had to catch up on. We harvested a couple of bushels of beans every week for about a month.

We had fun, too. This book that Elijah and Simon were enjoying is one that my mom sent along with a lot of other books that I had stored at her place. We went to the North Island to meet up with people who came from the States and other places to hold a conference, and it was a good opportunity to have books brought in suitcases. This book is hilarious, and I thought Mom would enjoy seeing it being enjoyed.

Kea, the budgie, does not like humans to touch her. She will not allow us to pick her up or hold her. However, we got home from church one day, and found her desperately trying to push out between the bars of her cage. We let her out to fly–but she wanted right back in! She was so focused on pushing through the bars that she let us hold her until she could go back to her cage. We ended up putting her in a smaller cage with narrower spaces between the bars, and the next day she was back to normal.

This cat is often found sleeping in very strange places. Anything confined is perfect for her–especially if it’s something new!

January 2024 Photos

April 28, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I’ve finally finished posting the pictures from our North Island trip! Now to catch up on the photos from around home. Here are the rest from January.

After a couple of four wheel drive trips, the boys’ trucks were in need of a wash. Miss Joy happily helped operate the power washer!

James spent more time working on his sleepout. This was the day he started cladding the outside.

The boys cleaned the carport and garage. They decided it was time to get rid of this old stationary engine that had been sitting there for about three years. Simon wanted to restore it and get it working again, but finally gave up. Elijah listed it on Trade Me for a $1 reserve auction, and it went up over $250! The next challenge was to load it on the buyer’s truck. This was the test run with the tractor-mounted crane that Simon and James built to hoist cattle they are butchering. It worked, so when the buyer came to get the engine, that’s how they lifted it! The engine had wheels under it, so it was easy to get it out of the carport, but too heavy to lift by hand.

We went to Nelson Creek for a baptism one Sunday afternoon, and of course the children wanted to swim.

See what James has on his feet to go swimming? They were actually very light-weight boots, full of holes so they didn’t fill up with water.

I think this was taken down at the river.

Little Miss wanted to make braided bread, so Esther helped her.

Part of the second hatch of chicks. It’s so fun to see them hatching!

Garden–December 2023

January 28, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I didn’t take very many pictures of the garden in December. I spent an hour one morning talking to my sister on the phone while I weeded this patch. That was a great way to pass the time while doing a job like this!

The entire bed before I finished…

…and after the weeding was finished and I mulched it.

One of the children took a picture of these roses by the house.

They also got a close-up of some of the strawberries!

While I was working in the garden one hot afternoon, the children had a waterfight with the neighbor, using his water guns, which he offered them the use of. It was pretty funny to watch!

I took this video the second week of January.

December 2023 Photos

January 17, 2024 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Here are the rest of the pictures from December! James worked on his sleepout for the first two days of the Christmas holidays. He and Mr. Sweetie got all the walls framed up.

Miss Joy busy doing school!

Elijah grew a beard for a couple of months. I got a picture of him just before he took it off.

The younger boys built this bike ramp and had a lot of fun doing jumps and taking pictures of it.

We’ve been enjoying watching the birds on the flax blossoms outside our windows. This is a tui; we have also see a bellbird and a lot of starlings.

We had a lot of rain the last couple of days of December, so the afternoon of the 31st, the girls and I walked down to look at the river. It had already gone down several inches.