Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

Extra April Pictures

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Mr. Sweetie dressed up to go “tramping’IMG_0561

I’m not sure what is happening here, but this is Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination.IMG_0564IMG_0565

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Our sweet baby girl likes the Bumbo we just got for her.IMG_0651

She rediscovered her tongue, and spent several days sticking it out. It’s a good thing that baby tongues are cute!IMG_0654

She discovered her feet a week ago—but forgot about them again.IMG_0680

Sunrise one morning; I think Mr. Handyman took this.IMG_0681

This little girl was practicing making funny faces Sunday evening, and her brothers and sister were in stitches!IMG_0690

When Martha was about six weeks old, a friend brought some of her friends, who were visiting from the North Island, when she came for milk. The woman she brought was from South Africa originally, and got started telling stories about the wildlife there and some safaris she had been on. The boys were all ears, and apparently the woman really liked the audience she found here. When our friend was up north recently and visited her friends, she was given a bag of gifts for us! The South African woman had made a small quilt for each of our two little ones! This is Mr. Imagination excitedly naming the African animals on his quilt; our little girl’s quilt is on the back of the chair.IMG_0693

Creativity

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Mr. Inventor has been very busy living up to his name lately. He designed and built two bike trailers, after finding a picture online; the welder was used a lot over the past two weeks! He also figured out how to carve a wooden spoon. That was after the wooden knife carving contest between three boys; I didn’t get a picture of those creations, but they were very good.IMG_0574IMG_0575IMG_0576IMG_0581

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Diligent Students

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I thought Grandma might like to see pictures of my diligent students! These were not all taken at the same time; it’s hard to get this kind of picture, because I’m busy teaching lessons at the same time.

Mr. Handyman

Mr. InventorMr. Intellectual

Mr. Diligence

Mr. Sweetie

Mr. Imagination

And this is how Little Miss does her schoolwork! We’re all glad when her eyes are closed during school hours.

This was another day. She was happy in her new Bumbo for a long time, and Mr. Imagination was quite entertained as well, putting her socks on top her head and then making them fly off. Thankfully, he never hit her head!

And, just for fun: The one picture I took at the Waipara River when we went there for a fun day with our homeschool group (not the fossil walk but a different day). When we first arrived, Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence found this tree they could walk up. I told them they couldn’t do it with other children around, though.

Finishing the Harvest

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We are getting close to the end of harvesting food for the year. Gayle and the boys are digging potatoes today. That is quite different from last year! It was so wet last year that there was water in every hole made by the fork when they dug up a potato plant. About half the crop rotted in the ground, and I had to deal with rotten potatoes in the bin all winter. Yuck! This year, the soil is bone-dry! We’re hoping for heavy rains soon, though, so Gayle decided it was time to get them dug.

The shelves in the jar room are very nearly full. The freezers are mostly full—even the “new” one we bought to put a steer in in another two weeks is a third full! Onions are braided and hanging beside the jars of food, and the pumpkins are piled in there and on a porch. We won’t go hungry this year!

Apple Picking!

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Every year, we like to take an afternoon in April and drive around through the hills to the west of us, looking for wild apples along the road. We never get over there otherwise, and it’s a beautiful drive. The apples are the excuse to take a family drive! We all enjoy it. We went last Saturday, and it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. We ended up picking or picking up about 7 bushels (14-15 banana boxes full) of apples, mostly for the cow. We have plenty for ourselves already, and since it’s so dry, we’re feeding her apples and pumpkin to supplement the dry grass she has.

This little girl is learning to accept her car seat.

Mr. Diligence with a huge apple—we always stop at that tree!Mr. Intellectual with his two apples from the special tree.

Notice how dry the landscape is. We have not had significant rain since about August. Even so, it’s a beautiful place!

Mr. Diligence and Mr. Intellectual, climbing a hill to check out a tree we normally pick from—it has fallen over, though.

Mr. Handyman, doing what he does best! (Growing, teenage boy.)

We couldn’t resist doing a mini photo shoot of this beautiful baby!

While we were at it, we got a nice picture of Mr. Intellectual……and of Mr. Sweetie.

They found a dead hawk on the road.

Esther spent a lot of time trying to get a picture of this curious, friendly fantail.

Gum trees are so beautiful, with their white trunks and branches.

At one place, five or six bulls were grazing the roadside. All that kept them in was an electric tape! Those massive creatures seemed quite placid, but I was glad to be inside the van.

My Laundry Helper

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Mr. Imagination has been unloading the washer for me for quite awhile now. He does a very good job of it. This morning, I had him load it for me with the next batch to be washed. He loved getting to push the buttons to start it going!

 

Sonlight

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We have been using Sonlight Curriculum ever since Esther was six years old. This week, I started using it with Mr. Sweetie. He was thrilled: Stories just for him (and Mr. Imagination, when he feels like joining us)! Today was our third day, and he was happy to have me take a picture with them holding the books we read from today. This is my fourth time through this level! You can tell that some of the books are pretty worn! The Boxcar Children is falling to pieces; I need to use some glue on it one of these days. It’s been quite a favorite. I love Sonlight because it gets me to spend time reading with the children when I otherwise would probably let it slide.

Fantails

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In other words, flying flytraps! Since we leave the doors open for ventilation on warm days, and have no screens, we often have fantails in the house these days! They are such cheery little birds. They are so friendly they remind me of the chickadees we had in Michigan in the winter. They eat insects, though. As they swoop through the room, you can often hear a sharp little click as they catch another fly! That makes them welcome guests, you can imagine. I’ve been trying to get pictures of them in the house, but they move so fast it’s hard to catch them. That’s how I ended up with a picture of one taking off in flight. If you listen closely to the video of one, you can hear a faint twittering. It was a lot louder in real life, but apparently the sound capture isn’t real good on my camera. If you want to hear it better, go to this page, click on the sound icon, and choose “South Island fantail, male song.” Oh, and by the way, we’re studying birds, insects, bats and flying reptiles this year for science. We recently had a lesson about feathers, and one type of feathers is bristles. Bristles are found around the mouths of insect-eating birds. When we looked closely at the fantails in our house, we could see the bristles! They apparently help the bird to catch insects in flight. The bristles touch the insect and then the bird can turn to grab the insect.


Fossil Walk in the Waipara River

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Two weeks ago, one of the dads in our homeschool group led a walk up the gorge of the Waipara River, to look for fossils. There are a lot of fossils in the rocks there, and they wash out in floods. He has an extensive collection of fossils, and has found some pretty interesting animals—one was even named after him!

We started with a picnic in the river bed. After everyone was done eating, we started walking. The first thing we did was cross the river in a place that was about a foot deep, then walked through a very rocky area. For a ways, we walked in the river, where it was only a few inches deep, then walked on the rocks again, then on a grassy area. Eventually, we came out at the base of a cliff littered with concretions, enormous round rocks. They are at all levels of the cliff, and as the cliff face erodes, they come down. Thankfully, none came down while we were there! Our leader didn’t allow the boys to climb as high as they wanted to, for their own safety. We only saw a few fossils, but had a beautiful walk with good friends! The man in front center of this picture, wearing a backpack and gumboots, was our leader.

That tiny white object my finger is pointing to is a shark’s tooth! In the one area we walked through, there were a lot of these shattered rocks.

This was a vertebrae from a marine reptile.

My Mr. Diligence found this greensand, a type of sandstone.

That’s my Mr. Handyman in the middle, helping carry one of the little children. The first concretion I found. I sat on it to feed my baby, and the wife of our leader commented that she had sat there to feed her baby several years before!

The boys all had fun climbing up and sliding down this cliff!

One of the concretions, ready to come down (it was probably 50-100 feet above us).

Another fossil vertebrae.

More concretions. Mr. Imagination on a concretion in the river.

This picture is for my Mom. I thought of you, Mom, when I saw this very unusual thistle here and there along our walk.

Mr. Handyman on a concretion!

The scenery along our drive was spectacular, too! Also, notice how dry everything is. We have only gotten about an inch of rain since New Year’s.

Yes, one place the road was really this steep!

Timaru, Part 2

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Saturday night tea was a barbeque at the house we stayed at. The people we stayed with last year, the parents of the man of the house where we stayed this year, were there. He is a baby-lover, and I was amused when he shouldered me aside to take my baby from his wife when my baby was crying! She liked him and settled down on his shoulder several times, like she doesn’t do for very many people.

Sunday morning was a normal church service, then lunch at the parent’s house, followed by an afternoon service, tea at church, a gospel service in the evening, and then a singing at the parent’s house again. What a day! It was wonderful. These pictures are all of the singing in the evening.

Our hosts for the weekend:

Grandpa saves the evening again! I was so thankful for the help with our baby.

I think this one missed out on hearing what the point of the evening was! He had fun with the toys while we sang.

Monday we headed home! First, we got a picture of the family we stayed with. Their hospitality was amazing!We stopped several times, and the last stop was a long one. We needed to pick up a rooster someone was giving us, and when that man and Gayle get together, they will talk a long time. We got home in time to unload and eat before bedtime, though. Mr. Sweetie got hold of my camera and used it to amuse himself all the way home. I deleted most of the pictures he took, but here are a few, including a selfie: This little girl slept most of the way home, to everyone’s relief.