Away From Home

We’re Home!—Photos From Michigan

February 14, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Six of us arrived home late last week after a three-week visit to Michigan and Ohio, visiting family (the other three stayed home to take care of things here). It was a wonderful trip…and an awful trip…and we enjoyed it immensely…and we’re very glad to be home! The time spent with family was wonderful. The stomach bug that laid all of us low for our last week and a half, and which came home with us to infect a couple of the ones who did such a wonderful job taking care of things here, was awful. I don’t have a lot of pictures I can share, because most of the ones we took are of other people, but there are enough to make a couple of posts. I’m always amused at some of the pictures my sons take!

Either the first or second day in Michigan, my mom and I both wanted a nap, so I sent the three boys outside to explore the farm I grew up on. I gave them guidelines so they wouldn’t get lost, and they had fun finding the creek and the woods. Mom’s cat followed them the whole way! There was no snow, but it was very cold; they had fun sliding on the ice.

The wedding was beautiful; I really appreciated the simplicity of everything, and it was so good to see my sister making her vows to a good man.

The little ones enjoyed playing with Grandma’s toys.

It started snowing in earnest, and got very cold, after the wedding. My boys loved playing in the snow! We enjoyed watching the birds come to the feeder.

When I stripped my bed to put on fresh sheets, I recognized the mattress protector! It was one of two Hudson Bay Company blankets that were in the house when my parents bought it in 1972. I had to call the children in to see this bit of history. It’s not in the best shape anymore, but still works as a warm underlay!

Our trip to Ohio started out very snowy, with slick roads. After seeing 9 accidents, we were thankful to get south far enough to have drier roads!

New Year’s Tramp

February 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Gayle took the three oldest boys, and two of their friends, on a long tramp just after New Year’s Day. They started at Windy Point, and finished at Lake Taylor. They reckon they did 59 kilometers in two days—that’s a lot of walking over rough terrain! Unfortunately, Mr. Diligence forgot his camera, so the only photographic record of the trip is a few photos Gayle took with his phone, which are not very good but do help to preserve a few memories! This was a stop for lunch. They cooked 2-minute noodles.

Some scenery along the trail.

Resting along a stream.

They crossed four of this style of bridges.

Sometimes the track was easy….

…and sometimes it was not! This creek was a series of waterfalls, much steeper than the picture shows.

I went across the mountains the second day to pick them up, with the three youngest children. We stopped for 40 minutes at the beginning of the track and walked to the first swing bridge.

The Boyle River is so beautiful!

The road back in to Lake Taylor to pick them up was incredible! It took me well over an hour to drive the 35 kilometers on the dirt road. The scenery was amazing—when I could look at it! The road took most of my attention. I managed to grab one quick photo on a relatively safe stretch (I was driving very slowly) and got another on the way out. This is part of the Hurunui River.

Even though I have never seen my boys so tired, they loved it and want to do it again—but they say they will allow three days next time so they can enjoy it more.

Christmas at Lake Haupiri

January 26, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

For our family’s Christmas celebration, we took a picnic lunch and ate it beside the Haupiri River. Then, we went back down the road a couple of miles to the boat ramp into Lake Haupiri. The boys launched their barrel boat and spent the afternoon boating around the lake and playing in the water. I enjoyed sitting in a camping chair in the shade and looking at the scenery! The second picture shows Gloriavale, directly across the lake.

Boats

January 16, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Intellectual continues to work on his strip canoe. He finally got all the strips glued together, and has been working on sanding it. It’s beautiful! Here it is nearly finished, and then with the last strip in place and part of the sanding done.

Meanwhile, the boys have been enjoying their barrel boat. Here it is after the first use, when they went down the Grey River.

This was the day they used it next, when we went down to the creek below our town with some friends to spend a Sunday afternoon in the water. They punted up and down the creek a number of times, but then that got boring, so they decided to sink it. The only way they could get it to sink was to take the plug out of the end and let it fill up with water—and even that took a long time!

Then, they used it on Christmas Day on a lake—I’ll publish a post in a few weeks about that. The most recent time they used it, Simon took Esther and one of her friends, and our two little boys, down the Grey River. They sunk it, and now they have to rebuild the motor—or dry it out, or something. It ended up quite dented, as you can see in this photo that Mr. Intellectual took to show someone.

Nelson

January 5, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

We have some dear friends who live near Nelson. We don’t get to see them very often, but always enjoy being with them when we can. One Sunday in December, we decided to make the trip up there to attend church with them, and then spend the afternoon together. It suited our friends, so we left here earlier than we usually get around on a Sunday morning and headed north! This was one of those times that Google Maps gets it right about the time it takes to get somewhere, so we ended up only a minute or two late for church. We had a great time reconnecting with people we know and love, and got back home that night tired but thankful for the gift of good friends.

Some of the scenery we enjoyed along the way was spectacular!

We ate lunch at a reserve on an estuary near our friend’s home.

After lunch, we walked around a small pond at one side of the reserve. I was amused when we came across Simon washing his boots in the pond. One of his brothers had gotten him muddy.

It almost looked like snow all over the ground—it was actually fluff from the cottonwood trees!

I think this was a shag sitting over the pond.

On our way home, we stopped for fuel in Murchison. Simon spotted this old truck across the way, and had to go take a closer look at it. He’s under the sign in a blue shirt; Mr. Imagination is standing next to the sign, in another blue shirt.

As we drove through the Buller Gorge, we were surprised to come up behind this horse and wagon!

We’re guessing the people were headed back to this picturesque farm.

Brunner Mine

December 28, 2018 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Every time we go to town, we pass the Brunner Mine memorial. We’ve been wanting to stop there ever since we moved in February, but never took the time until a few weeks ago. We read a book titled The Mine’s Afire a few months ago in preparation; it tells the story of the explosion that claimed the lives of 65 miners in the Brunner Mine in 1896. Reading that story made our tour of the mine site much more meaningful.

First, we saw the shaft of the Tyneside Mine, on our side of the river.

This is where the mine actually went down.

A nice walking track has been formed from the carpark at the Tyneside Mine down to the footbridge over the Grey River.

I don’t know what this structure was, but it was interesting!

The return airway of the Brunner Mine. They had to have a very good ventilation system for the mine, but even that wasn’t enough to prevent the tragedy.

This was ruins of the brickworks that was part of the mine complex.

This wheel was used for crushing the fire clay that was used to make fire bricks.

The clay came out of this mine.

A huge roof covers the remains of the beehive coke ovens. These ovens were packed full of coal, which was then burned for a couple of days with no or minimal air to remove impurities. Then, it was quickly cooled with water and pulled out to be sold as coke.

There are piles of bricks on both sides of the shed. I’m guessing these are the bricks that were used to close the doors of the ovens when they were making coke.

Looking across the river from the Brunner site. It’s hard to believe now that this was the biggest town on the Coast at one time!

We saw this dragonfly resting on the ground.

The entire Brunner site from the Tyneside side.

From the mine, we went up the road a couple of mile to the cemetery at Stillwater. This is where a large percentage of the miners who died in the 1896 explosion were buried. We were fascinated with the old graves.

The white fence surrounds the mass grave where 33 miners were buried together, many burned so badly as to be unrecognizable. It was very sobering to visit this place where so many people mourned at once on that day. Having read the book we did, we could understand better what it was like for them; the book was narrated by the fictitious son of a survivor, whose best friends had lost fathers or brothers.

Arthur’s Pass

December 15, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

About a month ago, the children and I had to go to Christchurch to renew our American passports. We left the city in good time and headed back across the mountains to our side of the island. The plan was to drop the older four children off at a Bible Study we often attend, to go home with Gayle, while I took the younger ones home. We thought we had some extra time, so when we reached the top of Arthur’s Pass we decided to stop at a nature walk we had enjoyed a couple of years ago. The older ones all went ahead, and I stayed behind at Little Miss’s slower pace. We thoroughly enjoyed the scenery and the flowers, and the break from the city and the van where we had been all day—but ended up arriving half an hour late at the Bible Study. It was worth taking the time to stop anyway!

Some of the scenery we enjoyed driving up to the pass:

This is a very noisy creek we crossed on the way from the carpark to the walking track.

The road had only reopened that morning after a rain storm washed out bridges a few days before. I think they got 3-400 mm of rain in two days (that’s about 12-16 inches). Normally, we would have driven through here to another car park, but we decided the van wouldn’t handle this washout very well!

We enjoyed the many alpine flowers that were in bloom.

These huge leaves belong to the Mount Cook lily, which was in bloom farther along the track than I reached.

Looking back along the highway towards the Canterbury side of the pass.

Little Miss ran ahead of me. She was enjoying her freedom!

Orwell Creek

December 1, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are able to walk to a creek in about 5 minutes, and reach the spot where it empties into the river in 10 minutes. The boys found a spot that is deep and calm enough for swimming, so twice in the last several weeks we’ve walked down there on a Sunday afternoon. One of those days, they took Mr. Imagination’s boat along, and Simon floated in it down to the swimming hole. Then, they played with it and swam for awhile. It is a beautiful spot down there!

This time that we went down was two days after a torrential rain (we got 5 inches in two days; some places higher in the mountains got 2-3 times that much). The river obviously ran over this place—see how the grass is laid down!

Notice how the creek was still high. It had gone down about 6 inches since the day before, though.

When it was time to go back, Simon and Mr. Diligence twisted a grass rope with which to pull the boat up around a couple of bends, so they didn’t have to carry it so far.

These pictures were from the second time we walked down. Foxglove is in bloom everywhere now.

We crossed the creek just above its mouth. I liked this scene, with Gayle carrying Little Miss.

Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie, and Mr. Imagination didn’t need help!

Simon gave Little Miss a ride home in his bike trailer, but going up the hill to get back to town was hard work. He stopped and had her push a little ways!

Here’s a video of the boat ride. Somehow, the quality turned out pretty poor; don’t try to full-screen it.

Poppies!

November 25, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, most of the children stayed with me over in Canterbury for a couple of extra days so that we could spend a day with our homeschool group. On one of those days, we visited a family who have been dear friends for a long time. While there, we walked down the road from their house to a dry river bed. There were poppies growing everywhere we looked in this river bed—such a beautiful sight! Little Miss got to pick flowers to her heart’s content, and then we gave her bouquet to the next friend we visited. A couple of my boys dug up some plants to bring home; they are taking root in an old wheelbarrow full of dirt that we have. We greatly enjoyed that lovely day!

This was the view from our friends’ house.

One of her favorite activities is picking flowers! We’ve had to forbid her to pick any without asking first, because she’ll pick any and every flower she sees, otherwise.

More Pictures From October 2018!

November 17, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Well, I should have looked at my memory card again before publishing last week’s post of pictures. There were several more good ones.

Mr. Diligence made the lions for the skit they performed at the concert. I found him a picture of a lion online, and Esther enlarged it. He glued them together, cut them out, and painted them. Then, he glued them to cardboard and made them stand up.

Simon learned to ride a backwards bike when someone loaned them one many years ago. He has wished for one ever since, so when he had a couple of days off work on a recent long weekend, he built one. When you turn the handlebars right, the wheel turns left, and when you turn the handlebars left, the wheel turns right. So far, all three of the older boys have learned to ride it.

I looked in the living room recently and saw Mr. Imagination telling Goofball to hold still. He wanted her to pose for him to draw a picture of her, but she wouldn’t cooperate. I suggested he hold her still while I took a picture, and then he could draw from that.

Here is the picture he drew and cut out.

Some of our friends from Dead Boring came to see us a few weeks ago. We met in Moana, and had a picnic together beside Lake Brunner. They had two 9-year-old girls along, and Little Miss, once she warmed up to them, had great fun helping them build a “hut.” It was basically an outline of grass, with flowers arranged artistically in it.

I wished I had taken a picture of this scene earlier. When we first arrived, the lake was calm and the mountains were mirrored in it, but then a wind came up. It was still beautiful!

This coal train came along, and stopped on the side track. Soon, we saw the passenger train come from the other direction and pass it, and then the coal train started moving again.