Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

April 2022 Photos

by Leave a Comment

Here we are in May already! The months fly by very fast. This first picture is Miss Joy driving her car. We use that crate to take Bibles to church–it keeps them off the floor of the van! She loaded herself into it when it was empty, along with a bear and several books, and pretended to drive. See her hands on the “wheel?”

It is time to finish the salve we started in early March. We had started three jars, and I got one finished just before Easter. Until meeting up with a friend in Timaru at Easter Conference, I didn’t have enough beeswax to finish, so now I need to do the other two jars. The first step is to strain the herbs out of the olive oil. Then, I weighed the oil, and for every ounce of oil, I added a Tablespoon of beeswax bits and the oil from one Vitamin E capsule. Then, I heat it all just enough to melt the wax, and pour it into small jars. The younger children (and a few of the older ones) love to eat the empty Vitamin E capsules! I opened about 50 that day, with such a big batch of oil, and they were all gone before the boys got home from work.

Also, a few days before Easter, Mr. Imagination brought up three baby turkeys! Because a hawk has been destroying all the turkey nests, these are the only ones we got this year. We kept them in the house for about two weeks; while we were gone a neighbor came in a few times a day to check on them. Now, we’ve gotten them acclimated to being outside in a small cage that we move around on our lawn. They got a lot of love the first week!

The day we drove over the mountains to Timaru was a gorgeous morning! It’s impossible to capture all we see with a camera, but here’s a tiny glimpse.

We harvested most of our pumpkins a couple of weeks ago. This is about 100 of them! On the far left you can see our biggest, a Hubbard. One end was rotting, so I cooked it immediately. It took a lot of work to get inside it. I had to use a cleaver and bang that with a piece of wood to finally crack the hard shell open. After I cleaned out the rotten bits and the seeds, I tried to weigh it. Both halves overloaded my 5 kg scale! I’m guessing it may have been about 13 kg, or 26-28 pounds. It was delicious, too! Very sweet. One of the gray ones was also almost that weight. It didn’t look quite so big, but had a smaller seed cavity. It was also very sweet. If any of my friends here in New Zealand want seeds, I saved all of them. The long brown one to the right is actually a zucchini. I hand pollinated it so the seeds would be what I wanted, and then watched it swell through the summer. It took only about three weeks to reach that size! I haven’t opened it up yet, because I’m making sure the seeds are totally mature. Anyone who wants zucchini seeds can have a few of them, too! I hope they are viable, anyway!

This is Elijah with his favorite toddler.

One morning right after we got off Daylight Savings, the girls were both up early enough to “help” take the cows back down to pasture.

At one point we had too many zucchinis, so I told the younger ones to cut them up. We cooked them a bit and fed them to the cows. The children had fun, and the cows had a feast!

Miss Joy loves to cut paper. She was delighted when Esther gave her an old phone book to cut.

The little girls set themselves up on Esther and Miss Joy’s bed one evening, with lots of pillows, soft toys, and books. They had great fun reading.

Up in the Air!

by Leave a Comment

James has spent several days in the last few weeks helping to reroof a house about a block from our house. It is positioned such that we can see it from a few of our windows! It’s fun to be able to see what he’s up to. One afternoon we walked over to have a better look. They had hired a cherry picker to get up to the roof, since it’s so high and steep–the house used to be a church. James’ boss offered that James could take the younger children up in it. Three of them were delighted to have a ride up over the roof and the power lines! James was delighted to take them, too. He had been operating that machine all day, and his boss said that James never stopped smiling all morning!

They went all the way up, but I didn’t get a photo of them at the top. I could hardly stand watching–there’s no way I would want to go up like that! They loved it, though; when Miss Joy got down, she said, “Dat was fun!”

Book Review–Spines & Leaves

by 2 Comments

About the Book:

Book: Spines & Leaves

Author: Chautona Havig

Genre: FICTION / CHRISTIAN / WOMENS FICTION / ROMANCE

Release date: July 8, 2021

♥ Books are the strings that tie hearts together. ♥

With a month to get from Orange County, California to Delaware for his next corporate challenge, Milton Coleridge decides to spend a week at Joshua Tree National Park.

He never expected to find a floundering bookstore in need of his particular business skills. Will his methods of saving companies from bankruptcy or takeover work on such a small scale? And can he convince two people to risk their hearts?

Step into the Spines & Leaves, Tamarisk, California’s oldest (and only ever) bookstore. Come in out of the harsh, desert sun and wind and peruse all the store has to offer. It might just be more than you think.

One man, one store, thousands of books.  What’ll it take to keep this bookstore from becoming a book ghost town… and what’ll it take for Milton to tie two heartstrings together?

Spine & Leaves is the introductory novella to the Bookstrings series.

My Thoughts:

I first read Spines & Leaves about a year ago (see the review I wrote then here), soon after it was written, but when I read it again last week, I enjoyed it every bit as much. I loved reading a story set in one of my mom’s favorite places. I have never been there, but I have seen her pictures of Joshua Tree National Monument from when she lived in California in the 1960s. I also loved the story of how Milton helped revitalize a struggling bookstore, and his parrotlet was pure fun! The one thing I didn’t enjoy so much was the kiss that the love story in the book cantered around. I did like watching the interactions between Milton, Marcus and Ced, and how they learned to know and appreciate each other.

I received a review copy of this book from the author, and these are my honest thoughts about it. Links may be affiliate links, which will benefit Esther’s website if purchases are made through them.

About the Author:

USA Today Bestselling author of Aggie and Past Forward series, Chautona Havig lives in an oxymoron, escapes into imaginary worlds that look startlingly similar to ours and writes the stories that emerge. An irrepressible optimist, Chautona sees everything through a kaleidoscope of It’s a Wonderful Life sprinkled with fairy tales. Find her at chautona.com and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.

More from Chautona:

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the Bookstrings series is a process rather than an idea. Each time I saw an indie bookstore close, each time I went in one with no one else in there for the hour or two I browsed, and each time I heard book lovers lament the lack of a store in their town… Yeah. Those experiences slowly grew into a wish—one where I knew how to rescue those stores from extinction. So maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but that’s how it felt.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, Milton appeared—a business genius who, along with his faithful parrotlet, Atticus (not Finch), travels the country saving corporations from takeover or bankruptcy.

Milton went through several iterations. Older, balding, mustache, and always wearing a golfer’s cap. Then I had him as a young hipster dude who got sick of the rat race on Wall Street and took off on his own, using what he’d learned. That just felt too cliché.

Instead, I have a forty-ish guy who wears chinos and oxford shirts with topsiders, shorter than most men, and with a nonchalant air about him. And charm. The quiet guy with serious business skills just oozes quiet charm.

After deciding on Milton, I had to choose where to put the stores. I’ve been watching out for towns for years—using trips different places as research times. Would I create places that felt like real towns or use actual small towns? Though drawn to real towns, I had an idea for where to end the series, and, doing that meant a fictional town. Would it be weird to have four or five books set in small towns across America followed by a final fictional one?

The solution came to me as I learned that the Mosaic authors were doing a summer collection in 2021. If I started with a novella and ended the series with both in a fictional town, at least that fictional bit wouldn’t be out of the blue!

So, the Bookstrings series has two novellas and five full-length novels. (I couldn’t resist a Christmas “noella” in the charming town of Noel, Missouri—the “Christmas City.”) We’ll be off to other small towns around the country—one in Red Wing, Minnesota, another in Berne, Indiana, and one somewhere between Kingsport, Tennessee and Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina. If I can find a place in New England, that’d be great, too. Or maybe down in Mississippi… I’d love to visit my sister down there.

The Bookstrings series books all have one very important thing in common (aside from Milton and Atticus, of course). They all illustrate that books truly are the strings that tie hearts together.

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here.

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Update on Simon’s House

by 1 Comment

Ever since New Year’s Day, the boys have been working hard on renovating Simon’s house. His tenants hope to move in in a week, so the pressure is on! The main living area is finished, and we’re working hard to finish the laundry and toilet. The bathroom is finished except for wall linings, which are not coming in–they were ordered over a month ago. I painted the main living area two weeks ago, and spent the last couple of days painting the laundry and toilet. I hope to finish that within the next two days.

Here are a couple of pictures of the living area soon after Simon bought it. First is the kitchen, second is the living room.

This was the first color Simon chose for the trim. It was supposed to be brown! We asked him to buy a darker shade. This worked for the first coat, and then we painted over it with the darker paint. Simon saw it and fell in love with it, and decided on the spot what the outside of the house will be painted: cream with red trim.

The finished walls: first, kitchen; second, living room.

After we got the painting done, Elijah laid the carpet and vinyl, and then the lights were installed and connected.

Soon I’ll post a few pictures of the other rooms we’re finishing. I don’t have any here right now. It’s a lot of work, but the end result is rewarding. There is still a long way to go to finish the house. Simon ordered the roofing iron yesterday, so that will be the next step, and when he does that he’ll insulate the attic space. The cladding needs redone all around, and the bedrooms need to be gutted and redone. He’ll end up with a new house, one piece at a time!

Fresh Salsa

by Leave a Comment

This post, like the last one, has to do with food. However, this food is much less controversial!

This time of year, our garden is overrun with tomatillos. These unique fruits look like small, green tomatoes, and grow in papery husks. They readily self-seed all over the garden, wherever they drop and don’t get picked up. In Michigan, I had a lot of trouble with worms getting inside them and ruining them, but that doesn’t happen here. I really like food that grows itself without my input! This spring, I wanted them in a particular area, so I dug up seedlings where they grew by themselves, potted them, and when they had roots established, planted them in the section designated for them. Then, I thinned the ones that were growing in other parts of the garden, so there would be only one in a space instead of two dozen. Now, I harvest them while I harvest zucchini or cucumbers or green beans. They often fall off the plant when they are ripe; I also harvest them green sometimes when they are big enough to burst their husk.

The problem is, what to do with all this bounty? We put them in the salsa we make to can every year, using about half tomatillos and half tomatoes. We were done with that a month ago, however, and now the main crop of tomatillos is ready! I made salsa verde last year, but most of it is still on the shelf. Our favorite way to use them is by making fresh salsa. I made a batch a couple of days ago and took a picture to show you this deliciousness.

I have no idea how much of most ingredients I used. That’s a two-quart bowl, and I filled it over half full with chopped tomatillos. Then, I added three or four chopped tomatoes. The proportions really don’t matter; we’re short on tomatoes now, so I used extra tomatillos. I don’t have a lot of bell peppers, either, so I used one, I think, but you can use two or three. I also put in half an onion (red is best, but I don’t have them this year), and about four minced cloves of garlic. Also, add maybe half a teaspoon of salt, several shakes of pepper, and a quarter cup or so of cider vinegar. The tricky part is the amount of chili. My chili peppers didn’t do well this year, but my neighbor, who moved away and let me take over her garden, has two plants that are loaded. One of them is consistently very very spicy, and the other is sometimes spicy and sometimes mild! I put in one finely diced chili from that second plant, then gingerly tasted the result. It wasn’t very spicy, so I added another. Wow! That took the heat level way up. So, use your own judgment as far as the amount of chilis or jalapenos you use. Dig in with corn chips and enjoy.

Finally!

by Leave a Comment

Warning: If you have problems with hunting or eating meat, stop right here! There are details you may not want to read or see.

When Simon was about seven, and James was about three (maybe eight and four–I’m not sure), the two of them and a cousin who was in between their ages, who lived on our property, disappeared one afternoon in November. This was in Michigan, and in Michigan, the last two weeks of November are Deer Season. (Maybe that should be in all-caps; it is that important to a lot of people, and the first day is nearly a state holiday!) People who are not hunting stay out of the woods and near buildings during that time, lest there might be stray shots. It can be dangerous to be walking around in the woods or fields during that time. Anyway, these three children disappeared. When someone realized they were missing, both families started searching. By the time we had been looking for 45 minutes, my sister-in-law was about ready to call the police–and then they showed up. They had been out hunting deer behind the woods at the back corner of our 40 acres, over a quarter of a mile from the houses! They were armed with a baseball bat and a stick, and Simon apparently fully expected to bring down a deer. They were totally unafraid, with no idea of the danger that the adults knew about!

Ever since that time, Simon has dreamed of killing a deer. He would love to live off the land, with a hunter-gatherer type of lifestyle. He has gone on hunts with friends half a dozen times since we moved over here, and never saw a deer when anyone in the group had a gun that could bring one down. This week, he went hunting twice with a friend who moved to the area a few months ago and who, importantly, possesses a gun license and a deer rifle. They went out in the middle of the afternoon the second time and searched for likely places to see a deer. After several hours, an hour or so after dark, they gave up and started out, and finally got a possum for their pains. Then they continued on down the road–and saw a deer in the middle of the road! It took a couple of minutes for Simon’s friend to get his gun loaded again, and Simon kept the spotlight on the deer. The first shot only wounded it (they hadn’t realized the gun wasn’t sighted in properly), so Simon took off up the river, following it. He soon caught up and delivered the killing shot. Then, he got to pack it out of there to the car (probably a good thing he had so much adrenalin in his system–it was heavy!) Finally, his dream of bagging a deer came true.

Mr. Imagination was along, since I had gone to town that day, leaving him with Simon, and no one was home to keep track of him. He was over the moon to be a part of this experience.

I love the grin on Simon’s face! The second picture is the Daihatsu–the gutless car that is often scoffed at, but which can go almost anywhere.

Simon brought the deer home and hung it in our carport. The next evening, Little Miss helped him skin it, and then he and Gayle brought it into the kitchen where we boned it out. The friend he went with, and his wife, stopped in while we were working, and he was excited to see that part of the process. The next day, they came back, after we had minced all the meat, and helped turn some into sausage and package it all. We got 34 kg of mince and 5 kg of backstrap from that deer! (That’s about 86 pounds.) It was a young stag, so quite tender and tasty. We had venison sausage patties with breakfast, venison hamburger patties for lunch, and backstrap for dinner. The boys were delighted to get to eat all that meat! Now, Simon wants to go hunting even more.


Half of the bones are cooking in a big pot right now, to make bone broth, and the other half are in the freezer waiting. There was very little waste from this animal, something that makes me feel good about them killing it.

Multiplication and Division

by Leave a Comment

I have a child who really struggles to memorize his multiplication and division facts. They just don’t stick in his brain–so many other things are much more interesting to think about! Esther has been helping a local family for a few hours a day with their homeschooling, and she came home one day asking for advice for their children who have a similar problem. I suggested making speed drills for each multiplication and division table, to help them practice. She set to work and soon had them made up for each table from 1-12, with four different arrangements for each table. Genius! This way, it’s hard to memorize the pattern of answers. She also came up with charts to track the progress.

I have been having both Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination use the multiplication speed drills. I time them on two of the speed drills each day, and the goal is to get below 30 seconds for each table. I figure that if they can write down 12 answers in 30 seconds, they know those facts pretty well! Of course, instant recall on multiplication facts will make all of math much easier, which is why we spend time focusing on them. I have them keep practicing until they get below 30 seconds three times in a row.

If you think this kind of speed drill would help your child, you are welcome to download and print these pages. I hope they can be a blessing to you!

Fact Family Speed Drills

So Far in March….

by 1 Comment

We have not taken many pictures this month! I’ll have to be more intentional about taking some if I want to keep blogging. This was a potato someone found in the garden. It weighed an entire kilogram (over two pounds!).

We got our year’s supply of salve started. Packed into those jars is comfrey, plantain, lavender, calendula petals, and a bit of self-heal. We filled the jars with olive oil, and it is currently soaking for six weeks.

Miss Joy was delighted to figure out one day that she could tuck her doll inside her dress. That was her baby carrier!

James signed his apprenticeship papers, and to celebrate, his boss took him to the store and bought a bunch of tools.

Elijah took Mr. Sweetie on a trip to Dunedin to visit friends. They spent a day in Timaru with a friend, who took these two pictures of Mr. Sweetie using a giant slingshot at the beach.

They stopped at Moeraki Boulders, and Elijah caught a picture of Mr. Sweetie balancing this boulder on his head!

Book Review–Noise in the Night

by Leave a Comment

I don’t know about other parents, but I have rarely found a book with solid Christian values that is also adventurous enough to keep boys’ attention without having violence in it. I’ve been very pleased with Katrina Hoover Lee’s Brady Street Boys series. Though the stories are fairly simple, they are interesting enough to keep my attention, and my boys’ attention. The boys in the story have parents who teach them about living a Christian life without being preachy, and the boys themselves try to do what is right. Noise in the Night is just as good as the first two books, if not better.

Terry, Gary and Larry were surprised, when they went to the swimming hole at the edge of the St. Joseph River that flowed past their house, to find a strange boy there. They were even more surprised when he seemed to hold a grudge against them for something they had done to his family—but they were sure they had never seen him before! The fruit of the Spirit their family was focusing on this week was peace, so how could they put that into practice with a boy who was being mean to them?

The three boys were very excited about the camping trip they were going on this week. Dad was allowing them to camp by themselves on an island in the river! Once they got there, though, mysterious things started happening. Could the strange boy still be harrassing them? They were sure there was no way to make peace with him—and would they even survive the dangers they found themselves in? Or were they imagining everything? And would they ever find more clues about the surgeon who amputated Gary’s leg?

Once again, this author has come up with a great story about simple, plausible events. I can picture everything happening as she has described it. I like the way the boys’ parents give them freedom to be boys and to explore their surroundings, while keeping tabs on them and being in their lives, giving guidance where it was needed. Noise in the Night is a fun, gentle mystery that a wide range of ages will enjoy.

I rI received a review copy of this book from the author, and these are my honest thoughts about it. Links may be affiliate links, which will benefit Esther’s website if purchases are made through them.

Buy your copy of this delightful book here.

Book Review–Corrie Ten Boom

by Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Several months ago, some friends of ours borrowed a large box full of books from us. A week later, their house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Everything in it was destroyed.  We had some money in the bank in America, so we decided to replace the books that had been burned, and buy some more. A number of the books that were destroyed were from the Christian Heroes: Then and Now series, by Janet &Geoff Benge. For about 15 years, I have been collecting these books, buying them wherever I can find them used. We decided that since we needed to replace several of them anyway, we would splurge and buy the entire set, as well as the Heroes of History series by the same authors. What an exciting day when a box of 80 books arrived here! (Each stack in the photo is five books!) We’re all looking forward to reading the ones we haven’t read before.

Not too long ago, I was offered the opportunity to to review one of these books and a study guide that the publisher has produced to go with it. Because I’ve been curious about the study guides for a long time, but didn’t want to spend the money to buy one because I wasn’t sure if we would use it, I signed up for the review. Of the books offered, there were three that were possibilities, ones that we hadn’t reviewed yet, and that were not loaned out. I let my three school children vote on those, and they chose Corrie Ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels’ Den.  We read through this book for morning history time, and used the discussion questions for each chapter from the study guide to talk about what we have just read each morning. All three children were eager to hear more each day, although it may have been almost too much for my seven-year-old daughter. One morning she told me she had dreamed about being in prison!

Chapter 2 of this book tells the story of Corrie’s life up to the beginning of World War II. There are 15 chapters in the book and, except for the last chapter, the rest of the book tells the story of  the Ten Boom family during World War II. The last chapter tells about how Corrie travelled around the world sharing her message of love and forgiveness for the rest of her life after the war. Basically, the contents of this book are almost the same as The Hiding Place, although there were a few things added in. I appreciate the way these authors tell the story of a persons’ life.

As far as the study guide goes, most of it doesn’t work very well for us. There is a section of key Bible verses which are good to read together and discuss how they apply to Corrie’s life. Suggestions are made to form a display corner with a long list of things you could put in it about the Netherlands and Corrie’s life. We don’t have room in our house for something like that so we didn’t even consider doing it. The chapter questions are what we used the most in the study guide. As I said before, after reading the chapter we used the questions to discuss various aspects of the story. Then there are suggestions for essay questions to help older children think more deeply about the story, creative writing suggestions, hands-on projects, audiovisual projects, and some arts and crafts that children can do to go along with the story.  There is a chapter that gives suggestions for field trips or people that you can talk to to add to the study. Another chapter suggests map activities and vocabulary studies. More miscellaneous activities are suggested in another chapter and then the appendix has suggestions of books and resources to go along with this book interest. Interestingly, we had just started watching the movie The Hiding Place when we were assigned to this review; because we don’t spend a lot of time watching movies it took us a few weeks to get through it. Watching that along with reading this book made both more meaningful to the younger children. The study guide comes as a PDF download. I printed it and made a cover, so that it would be easy to use.

If you are wanting biographies for your children, I highly recommend Janet and Geoff Benge’s books. These are the best children’s biographies I have ever found. They’re accurate and interesting. Our entire family, from Gayle down to Little Miss, who is seven, enjoys listening to these books, either when I read them aloud or when we listen to an audiobook of one. As far as the study guides I’m not sure I will be interested in using any more, simply because that type of study doesn’t work very well for me personally. I’m glad I have had the chance to look at it, and I know it will be a good fit for a lot of families, especially those with high school children  that are academically inclined. There are lesson plans and a schedule for using it as a group that meets periodically, so if you have a homeschool co-op it would be a good way to study the book together.

WARNING (things to consider when thinking about letting children read the book): The Germans mistreated people in chapter 7, 8, 11 and 12. Corrie’s sister died in Chapter 13.

Click the image below to read other families’ reviews of this and other books by the Benges!

christian-biographies-from-ywam-publishing-bring-heroes-to-life