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Videos–Cattle and Tractor

November 16, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Last Friday evening, the boys moved our heifer Pansy, her calf Iris, and our other heifer calf Bluebell, down to the bottom paddock. I had been milking Pansy, but her teats are so small my hands were not holding up to the job, so we put the calves on her for now. We tried to get her to feed our steer, too, but she hates him with a passion and if he’s around she won’t let the others near, either. It’s always amusing to watch calves being led on a rope for the first time–it’s a good thing Simon is so strong! He had quite a fight with Iris.

Simon moved his tractor and his vintage car to his house last weekend. In preparation, he moved them around the evening before, and Esther got a video clip of him driving the tractor. It runs well, but he was having trouble getting it stuck in 1st gear, and not going into reverse, when he was using it to move undriveable vehicles around at his place (he also acquired a Land Cruiser, which he’s storing in his old chicken coop at his house).

Dead Boring Concert 2019

August 31, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Because of the imminent arrival of our new baby, we were not all able to go to this year’s Dead Boring Concert (Dead Boring is the homeschool writing group we were part of in Canterbury before we moved here to the Coast). However, since Esther has her full license now, she was able to take four of her brothers over to it. They sang two songs and performed a skit.

The first song was, “I Am Thine, O Lord.”

Their second song was, “I Have Decided,” and Mr. Intellectual narrated the story behind the song.

They named their skit “A Gift for the King.” It is based on an old story. One morning a few weeks ago, Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence came up with the idea. They told Simon about it when he got home from work that evening, and asked him if he could play the part of a guard. He immediately came up with an even better idea; he wanted to be the one bringing the gift, and when he acted out his idea, we were all in stitches at his goofy accent and what he called his gift! He did make one mistake when they performed the skit on the day; at the end, instead of saying he wanted a goose from the king, he intended to say he wanted a REAL goose. At the very end, they were throwing candy out over the audience for the children.

Memories of Seth

December 15, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Yesterday was Seth’s birthday. He would have been 17. Naturally, I was thinking about him a lot through the day, and decided to share some pictures from when he was little.

The day Seth was born was a day I’ll never forget. He was due the middle of January, so we had Gayle’s family’s Christmas gathering early. We were going to go home on Monday. Our car needed new shocks, so Gayle and his dad worked on that first. We finally left his parent’s place around 3:00 in the afternoon and headed home (they lived in Ohio, we lived a 6- or 7-hour drive away, in Michigan). After an uneventful drive home, uncomfortable for me because of constant Braxton-Hicks contractions, we walked into our house at 10:00 at night to find it “peopled” with mannequins! My sisters, who didn’t get to decorate our car at our wedding two years before because we hid it, had gotten revenge by decorating our house while we were away. (I was going to insert a picture of it, but apparently one of our photo albums is missing.) We spent a couple of hours tidying up, then went to bed at midnight. I woke up at 6:00 Tuesday morning in labor—a month early! We called the midwife, and she came as soon as she could. She allowed us to stay home to have the baby. Around 4:00 in the afternoon, I started to bleed. The midwife started really praying. About two hours later, around 6:15, Seth made his appearance. He was very blue, but started breathing and pinked up within a minute. We were thrilled to have our first boy! Esther wasn’t sure about him the first day, and was mad at me, but she soon learned to love him. She was only 16 1/2 months old when he was born, but she was determined to pick him up and carry him around. One time, I had left him asleep on a chair in the living room and went into the bedroom. She picked him up and carried him to me, dropping him at my feet. Thankfully, we had a thick, soft carpet, and he never even woke up!

Two weeks old

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Nine months old

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Five years old

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Eight or nine years old

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Ten years old

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