Lots of Helpers

May Pictures

June 19, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

First, a couple of pictures of Mr. Imagination:

We have some enormous carrots in the garden.

This stove is wonderful—we are warm this winter. I found this picture on Mr. Diligence’s memory card. That’s Mr. Sweetie on the right.

Our mobile flycatcher kept visiting until the weather got cold enough we no longer left the door open.

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence built this shed a few months ago. They recently put a door on it and built shelves inside to keep their tools organized.

Baby got her first “horsey rides” a few weeks ago, with help from Big Sis. The first picture shows her on Mr. Diligence, with Mr. Sweetie in the background, and she’s riding on Mr. Imagination in the second.

Mr. Diligence doesn’t always like to have his picture taken!

We recently bought The Timechart History of the World. It is a huge timeline in a book, which unfolds to 6 meters. I highly recommend this to any family! The amount of information in it is staggering. We’re using small post-it notes to add the books we’re reading so we can see where they fit into history.

Apple Cider

June 17, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One of Gayle’s dreams for the past five years, ever since the first year we were here, when he saw how many apples go to waste along the roadsides, has been to make apple cider. This year, his dream was finally realized. We bought an insinkerator (garbage disposal) unit on Trade Me and cleaned it thoroughly, and then he ground apples through it into a pillow case. Then, he put that between boards, and pressed it with a car jack. Yum! Baby thoroughly approved, too—but cider stains clothes very badly, for your information.

Cold

June 15, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We’ve had a very warm autumn, but one week was pretty chilly. One morning, especially, got very cold. I don’t know what the outside temperature was, but inside the boys’ sleepout it was 3.3°C. We kept the cold water running most of the night, so it didn’t freeze up until I turned it off at the kitchen tap at 7:00 (by 7:30 it was frozen), but the hot water line froze and we didn’t have hot water anywhere till 11:00. The boys found impressively thick ice on water troughs and the back creek, and had fun shattering it on the concrete outside the kitchen door. This was the view out my kitchen window that morning:

Mr. Intellectual, Mr. Inventor, and Mr. Sweetie

Mr. Diligence, Mr. Inventor, Mr. Intellectual, and Mr. Sweetie

That was the morning Esther decided to move into the house for the winter!

Five Months Already

June 14, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I guess you can tell I’ve been doing things besides writing blog posts. It’s already been a month! I thought maybe a couple of weeks.

My baby is five months old today, so I’ll start the catch-up process with some pictures of Her Royal Cuteness.

Early May, almost four months, with Mr. Handy Man:

Tummy time usually lasts only a few minutes.

A friend sent a mobile, and it was immediately loved. This is mid-May, when she was four months old.

Toes—the ever-present toy.

She loves to investigate the texture of various fabrics.

One evening, she was happy for half an hour or so, sitting up on Daddy and playing with her toes.

Late May, on a quilt a lady from South Africa, who lives in the North Island, made after visiting one afternoon.

Kissing big brother!

And now, on to June! Asleep on Daddy.

Kissing Mr. Sweetie.

Mr. Sweetie played with my camera one afternoon, and I found this when I looked at the memory card.

She loves to sit in her Bumbo on the kitchen counter and investigate everything within reach.

Her favorite place to sleep—in someone’s arms.

For a few weeks, we were treated to the sight of this cute little tongue all day every day. She’s pretty much quit doing it now, though, in lieu of sucking on her lower lip!

Checking out the cabbage I chopped for a coleslaw.

Happy Baby

May 16, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After she recovered from the trauma of a bath tonight, Baby was very happy. I was finally able to get a video of her talking–usually she quits and is silent when I get the camera! So, if you’re interested, here is 30 seconds of cuteness. (The background noise is the dramatized Pilgrim’s Progress the older children were listening to.)

Tour of the Mud Town and Our Garden

May 8, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On Sunday, when Mr. Sweetie had my camera, he also took a video outside. It is rather long (maybe 8 minutes), and shaky, but if you’re interested in the town my boys have been building all summer in the banks of the dry creek in our front yard, here is a guided tour of what they currently have and the place they did have a town before it was destroyed. He also gives you a glimpse of what’s left in the garden. Just please keep in mind this was taken by a 5-year-old–that explains a lot!

A Tour of Our House

May 7, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I stayed home Sunday with several children who had bad colds. Mr. Sweetie, the five-year-old, asked in the afternoon if he could use my camera. I took a look at the memory card this evening, and found a couple of videos. This one is a tour of the inside of the house, if you’re interested. Keep in mind that a 5-year-old took it! The background noise, other than the baby crying, is Mr. Inventor’s audio book playing (With Lee in Virginia); he listened to it most of the day.

Quinces

May 6, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Sometime around the end of March, Gayle and the boys went to pick plums from a tree at an old house on the property a friend lives on. There was a quince tree nearby, and they picked a few quinces. Those quinces sat in our windowsill for a week or two before I got around to cooking them. I just put them in a pot with some water and brought them to a boil, and over the next two or three days brought them to a boil again so they wouldn’t spoil. Finally I had time to peel them and take out the cores, and then they sat in the fridge for another week till finally one day I put them on the table at lunch because I knew they wouldn’t keep much longer! To my surprise, the children loved them. I had not cooked them with any sugar or even stevia, but they were sweet enough to be good, and with cream on top they were absolutely delicious! We decided we wanted to can some quinces this year, so went back to pick a banana boxful off the tree. By this time, a month had passed since the first ones were picked, and they were now quite ripe. I washed and trimmed a dishpanful and cooked them the same way as the half dozen a month before, but they went to mush! So, I took the cores out by hand and froze the mush to make into jam when we have jars to put it in. The next batch, I peeled, trimmed, and chunked before cooking them, and canned them with stevia (I use NOW brand Better Stevia, 1 teaspoon to two quarts of water). We decided to make sauce from the rest, so I cooked them to mush and then picked out the cores and canned it as I do applesauce, with a bit of stevia because it was rather tart. Quinces are a distinctive flavor; I think they taste like flowers smell. With cream, they are quite a treat, and nowhere near as sour as I used to think they were. If you have access to this old-fashioned fruit, give them a try!

Above-the boxful of quinces I worked up. Below-some finished jars of quince chunks and one of sauce to enjoy this winter.

Impromptu Lessons

May 5, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One thing I love about homeschooling: Learning truly happens at all hours of the day.

One evening at bedtime, Mr. Inventor was busy working on his math lesson for the next day. He likes to do his math after dark, when it’s harder to work outside, so that he can have more daylight hours for doing his own things outside. He asked me a question about what he was doing, and I suddenly had an inspiration for a way to teach him something he had been struggling with for a long time! He was not understanding the difference between perimeter, area, and volume, and when to use a plain unit (such as inch) and when to add a superscript to indicate square or cubed units. To illustrate, I asked him if he had a string in his pocket, and being a boy he did. I took the string, a piece of paper, and a wooden block that was laying on the floor, and illustrated the different dimensions. It was so fun to see his face light up as he got it! He actually understood a concept that he hadn’t grasped before.

Another evening, as I was cooking dinner, Mr. Diligence came along and asked if there was a way to tell if something was heavier than water. We had just read Archimedes and the Door of Science, and one chapter talked about how Archimedes figured out that the king’s crown was not pure gold. I told him that if something floated in water it was not as heavy as water, but if it sank it was heavier. He grabbed a cup of water and started dropping things in to test them—mustard, ketchup, honey, a raisin—all sorts of things! He would guess if they would sink or float, and then check his guess. When one of his brothers showed up, he had great fun getting him to guess, too! I loved that informal science lesson. The picture isn’t very clear, but there are a lot of bits of things at the bottom of the water in that jar—things that are heavier than water!

More Harvesting

May 4, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This was the zucchini we found in the garden after our trip to Timaru. It ended up being nearly the end of the zucchini for the year, too, since we had a killing frost a few days later. We were happy to have these, since I’ve discovered a way to cook zuchini that everyone likes. I dice it in about 1/2 inch cubes, then toss with salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, and oil. Then, I spread it on a cookie sheet and bake at about 350°F for an hour or so. Yum!

Last week, Gayle and the boys dug all the potatoes. It wasn’t a very good harvest, but we’re thankful for what we got—and thankful that they weren’t rotting in the ground like they did last year! This is Mr. Handyman, Gayle, Mr. Diligence, and Mr. Inventor.

This is Mr. Diligence running away!