Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

Fossil Hunting

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Yesterday at our homeschool writing group meeting, a man showed us a powerpoint presentation about fossils.  He has been collecting fossils for several years and has an impressive collection from the local area.  My boys badly wanted to go to Gore Bay and search for fossils along the cliffs there, so, since it was sunny and warm today, we went right after lunch.  When we arrived, the tide was high, with waves hitting the cliffs, so we sat on top and read some of our books for school before we went down.  The tide was still so high that we couldn’t get to the best places, but the boys climbed up some of the less-vertical cliffs anyway.  We never found anything that we were sure was a fossil today, but had fun exploring anyway.  One unusual thing we saw was an oystercatcher (bird) with a missing foot!  I could tell something was strange about it, and when I was able to see its tracks, it had one normal footprint and one that was just a round peg.  Poor thing.

The tide when we arrived.

Reading stories.

This one quickly got bored with the stories and found something more interesting! Climbing the cliff to hunt for fossils

After they gave up on fossils, they cut a few branches of lupine bushes.

Driftwood makes a great boat.

The tide when we left–quite a ways farther out, and notice the shadows. Short days right now.

And these two pictures are just because they’re cute!  The first one was this morning when 2-year-old needed something to do during school and I assigned him to “read” to baby.

This one was after we got home this afternoon.  I set baby on the couch while I went to do something else, and when I came back he was staring, fascinated, at his booties!  They kept wiggling!

“I’ll Be Back in a Minute!”

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This morning, as we were getting around to leave for church, I set the baby down and told him (as if he can understand!), “I’ll be back with your clothes in a minute to get you dressed.”

Then, on the way, I picked up a couple of wet diapers to dispose of in the laundry room.

While I was in the laundry room, I remembered I wanted a jar of carrots to put in the soup for lunch, so grabbed that.

In the kitchen again, the carrots got put in the soup, and then the soup needed seasoned.

Then, I noticed that the stove still needed to be washed–it was terribly messy.

Down the hallway to get baby’s clothes–I changed my own while I was there, very fast because our unheated bedrooms are refrigerator-temperature.

Grabbed the diaper bag while I was there, and made a quick pit stop.

Then remembered the original reason for going down the hall, so backtracked to the bedroom to fetch baby’s church clothes!

Then, he finally got dressed!

I think it only took 5-10 minutes to do all that, but it was much longer than originally planned.  Any of you other mothers able to relate to this?  It’s so easy to be distracted from the original job that I was planning to do by all the other things that need to happen.

Six Boys

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Six boys live in our house.  Want proof?  Today’s game:  tackling (till too many got hurt and came in the house saying they were done!).

Gayle butchered a goat yesterday and a couple of the boys decided to tan the hide.

….And number six would dearly love to join the fun!  He can’t wait till he’s big enough.

Peace and Quiet…

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…is a rare commodity when there are seven children in the household!  I find some every day, though!  It helps to get up earlier than the children.  They don’t usually get up before 7:30 when I call them, although #4 does wake up and come out to the kitchen around 7:00 a few mornings a week.  This morning, #5 showed up at  7:00, but he had been asleep for 14 hours so no wonder!  (He fell asleep in the van on the way home from the homeschool gathering we attended yesterday, and only woke up for a few minutes to eat a couple of bites of supper.)

The other place I find peace and quiet is while I milk the cow.  I must admit, I’m rather possessive about “my” cow–I really value the time I spend milking her!  In the summer, the little boys often come along with cups in hand, to get a drink of fresh warm milk, but this time of year I’m generally alone.  Ahh–what bliss!  It is cold and dark while I milk this time of year, with sunrise at 8:00 and sunset at 5:00, but the quiet is worth it.  And, I get to study the stars, and enjoy the moon, and see the first streaks of dawn in the east.

I also get a few minutes alone while I hang laundry on the line; nobody wants to help with that job!  It is a job that I delegate when I need to, but it’s one of my favorites (although on a frosty morning like today it’s not so pleasant!).  There’s just something about being outside and hanging up clean clothes that I enjoy.

Those little oases of alone time are so valuable for resetting my frame of mind.  I’m thankful for them!

My daughter just wrote a blog post about this morning; you might enjoy it!  And, by the way, this was pretty mild–there was a lot more that she didn’t get recorded!  I’m not sure if I’m worthy of such a tribute, although if I do have any patience she certainly helped develop it!  God has His ways of teaching us patience, and I’m thankful He only sent one teacher to me at a time!  Seven at once would have been about more than I could handle.

Pumpkin Soup

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I made pumpkin soup for supper last evening, and thought maybe our American family and friends would be interested.  This is a very “Kiwi” dish, and we’ve learned to love it.  It’s the kind of soup that can be made in any number of different ways.  Last night, I peeled and diced a largish pumpkin (all winter squash is called pumpkin here, and you can use any kind for soup), then nearly covered it with water.  I put it on to cook on high, then went to take care of baby.  When it started boiling, someone turned it down for me, and when I was able to get back to it, I chopped the good parts of several onions that were going bad.  I probably ended up with about 2 cups of onion, if you want approximate proportions.  By then, the pumpkin was soft, so I stirred the onion in, then put in 2 quarts of cooked, shredded, frozen potatoes (we had more stabbed potatoes when we dug them than we could use before they went bad, so cooked and shredded, then froze them).  Once the potatoes were thawed and everything was soft, I added a couple of teaspoons of salt and several sprinkles of cayenne pepper, then pureed the whole pot with my stick blender and stirred in a can of coconut cream.  The result?  A delicious, thick soup that the entire family enjoyed!  You can also add milk or cream, but since Gayle can’t have cow’s milk, I used the coconut cream.   It adds a delicious flavor.

Grey pumpkin–the most common variety here.My big pot of soup.

Can’t beat a good cupful of pumpkin soup!

Sorting

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The boys needed something to do tonight, besides playing with legos and looking at lego creations online, so I assigned them to sort the container cupboard.  It had gotten to the point where it was frustrating to try to match a lid with a container, and I knew there were lid-less containers and vice versa.  They started out grumbling about having to do the job, but when I told them they could have the mismatched containers they were suddenly enthusiastic and the job got finished quickly!  Now the cupboard has lots of room and is tidy (for a short time, anyway).

Baby was entertained for awhile, listening and watching.

Apple Picking

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Yesterday afternoon we went to pick apples to feed to the cow.  Well, it was a great excuse to take a drive around an area we don’t otherwise have an excuse to go to!  We did get apples to feed to her, to help keep up milk production, and had a great afternoon together enjoying gorgeous scenery.

We drove through the hills to the west of us.  Lots more rugged than right here where we live!

The first tree we found that had apples on it was at the top of a steep cliff!  This cliff went nearly straight up–no problem for my fellows!  The rest, however, found a slightly easier route a little to the left of this picture.

I did not go up.  The two youngest stayed down with me.  After the rest had all gone up, the 2 1/2-year-old decided he wanted to, also.  As he was standing at the base of the cliff, facing it, he proclaimed, “I am going to climb up the hill!”  After a pause, “Where is the hill?”  I told him he was looking at it.  The place he was standing at was an eroded, rocky spot that went up at about a 45° angle.  He gave it a try, but soon gave up and told me, “This is a broken hill.  This is interesting!”

The next tree we stopped at was beside this wool shed/yards.  We only stopped there because we remembered the tree from last year.  It bears small, delicious orange apples.  There were two left.  We went several weeks later this year than last.

The birds had gotten most of the apples from this tree, but we got some that weren’t too rotten .

After picking up apples from that last tree, we allowed the boys to run on ahead and see how far they could get before we caught up with them.  We drove slowly to give them time, and I believe they got most of a kilometer!  The one in the lead kept going till he had gone probably twice as far as the others before they gave up.  They had fun doing that!

This hillside dotted with Angus cows was beautiful–and we got to see it from both sides.  The road continues on, then doubles back just beside those pine trees at the top of the photo.

Willowbank

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We were able to get tickets to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve for half-price recently, thanks to a tip from a friend.  The tickets were good till the end of June, so we were planning to go sometime before then, but weren’t sure when it would work out.  Gayle didn’t want to take time off work for that, but neither did we want to go on a Saturday because there would likely be a lot of people there.  Then, we ended up needing to go to Christchurch to meet the Vice-Consul from the American Embassy in Auckland when he made a visit to Christchurch, to get the baby’s American paperwork done and apply for his passport.  The appointment was in the early afternoon on a Thursday, and both of us had to be there, so that was our perfect opportunity to take the family to Willowbank!

There were tame eels in a pond at the beginning of the tour, and a woman was spoon-feeding them with a little container of food she bought in the office.  They would crawl partway out of the water onto the step!

Black swan.

Pukeko.

Fallow deer

The woman who had been feeding eels had some bread along, and let our children, as well as her daughter, feed it to the wallabies and ducks.

Monkey Island was fun!

Macaws

This bird would say, “G’day, mate!” when the boys said it to him!

Lemur

Kune-kune pigs

My horse-lover was happy!

Boys looking at antique tractors….

This was supposed to look like a Maori village.  It struck us that it must not be full-sized!  Those houses seemed pretty tiny.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the live kiwis, but we did see a couple of them.

Morepork owl–tiny little thing!

Working When Baby is Fussy

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Cooking a meal can be quite a challenge when baby wants to be held–and according to him, Mom is the only one qualified to hold him!  He tends to be fussy in the evening, of course.  Tonight, I cooked supper this way:

Isn’t he sweet?  I love having him snuggled up to me that way, although it does get a little tiring after awhile.

This is like a Moby Wrap.  After my last baby was born, a friend showed me the one she had made.  It’s very simple.  I just bought a 3-yard length of 60″ wide knit fabric from Joanne Fabrics, and cut it in half lengthwise along the fold.  Then, I took one end of each of these strips and sewed them together securely with several rows of stitching:

That’s all!  Then, to use, I wrap the cloth around the back of my waist and cross it over my front, then over my back, bring the ends around front and tie at one side of my waist.  Put the baby in with a leg on each side of the X on your front and spread out the cloth to support and cover him.  Then, jiggle and sing till baby goes to sleep!

Leftovers

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I read a few blog posts about using leftovers this morning and thought I’d share how I deal with them.

I love leftovers–they make quick meals so easy.  Leftovers have been a life-saver to me more school days when it comes to lunchtime than I can count.  So often, it gets to be 12:30 or even 1:00 and I realize we need something to eat–quickly, sort through the fridge and see what’s there.  We do occasionally have to throw things out (maybe my husband would say more than occasionally), but it gets recycled into eggs.

Some days, depending on what I find, I’ll put the leftovers in a casserole dish and heat in the oven at about 300°F.  If there were several casserole leftovers, they can all go in the same dish and won’t run together too much; or I’ll use a couple of smaller dishes.  Usually, 20 minutes is long enough to heat.  Then, everyone gets to choose from the offerings.

Other days, again depending on what I find, I’ll put it all together into soup.  Most of the time, it turns out delicious!  Adding cheese on top in each bowl always helps, too.

Today was a clean-out-the-refrigerator day.  Since I was thinking about this, I kept track of what went in the pot.  We had approximately 1/2 cup of goat stew, 1/4 cup of pork headcheese (brawn), 1 cup peas, 2 cups hash browns, 1 cup cooked rice, 1 or 2 cups stuffing and about 1/2 cup cooked hamburger (I had baked them together in a casserole last night).  I added a small can of pork and beans (a secret ingredient in a lot of my soups/stews) and some water and heated it on low.  It wasn’t one of my more successful leftover stews, but fairly good.  Cheese would have made it really good, but Daddy was home and he can’t have cow cheese so we didn’t have it.

Sometimes I’ll add tomatoes or tomato juice, or broth, to make it easier to heat without scorching and add flavor.  I just try to have some meat and some vegetables, as well as something starchy (rice or potatoes).

One thing the children really like is leftover mashed potatoes, put in a casserole dish and topped with bits of sausage, then served with cheese and ketchup.  Baked potatoes, diced, work really well in a quick soup.

I’m thankful that my crew doesn’t mind eating leftovers!  Oh, I should also say–my husband likes leftovers every day for his lunch; I try to plan meals so we have extra.  I put them in a microwavable plastic dish that fits nicely in his lunch box and he heats it at lunchtime.  Much easier than coming up with sandwiches!