Lots of Helpers

Connections

May 18, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I love the connections we sometimes get to make. We’ve been reading aloud a book titled The Broken Blade, a story about voyageurs who traveled from Montreal to Grand Portage in 1800. The main character is a young boy whose father got injured just before signing up with a crew for the summer’s trip, so Pierre went in his father’s place. In the chapters we read this morning, the five canoes reached Lake Superior, and as they crossed a large bay a fierce storm came up. They barely reached the shore of an island before the canoe sank.

At lunch, we often watch some educational videos online. One we watched today was from an article I came across this morning, about a shipwreck recently discovered in Lake Superior.

We watched the video, and then read a bit of the article. As we were reading, I wondered where the wreck was, so then we went to Google Maps to find Michipicoten Harbour. As we looked at the map, we started thinking it looked like the map in The Broken Blade that we had been studying this morning. We grabbed the book, and sure enough, it was the same bay! What fun.

By the way, The Broken Blade is quite a gripping story about the voyageurs and the hard life they lived. We are really enjoying it, although there are some very graphic places, such as when they killed a deer or when one man was killed. It’s so real, you feel like you were there. We are rather upset with how the author made the one man die, and wondering why it had to be him. We’re hoping there is a good reason later on. What I loved about all this was the connections some of the children made, between the book and real life, and what’s happening today! I also loved that it was totally unplanned!

This is the map we were looking at in our book; the yellow arrow shows where the canoes got caught in the storm. As far as we can tell, they landed on the island.

Here is the Google Maps page we looked at:

And I just realized, we actually did a bit of geography today! That doesn’t happen every day.

MacKintosh Beach

May 17, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One Tuesday in April, our homeschool group went out to MacKintosh Beach, near Amberley, for a picnic and to explore after reading the stories the children wrote, which gives us our excuse for getting together. We had never been out there before, so we enjoyed the spectacular scenery. Even though it drizzled a bit, it was a fun afternoon!

Strange People

May 14, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had some very strange-looking people in our house this evening. First, this apparition appeared:

He wouldn’t tell us his name, but we think maybe it was Mr. Imagination. Sure sounded like his giggle, anyway! Then, a little while later, this one showed up in the kitchen:

Later, after we ate, we were treated to a sword-swallowing show. I’ll let you catch a brief glimpse of Mr. Inventor’s skills.

Happy Days

May 7, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This is just a collection of random pictures of happy times over the past couple of months—pictures I never found a spot for before. Mr. Imagination was so happy to have puddles to splash in! This was one of our first rains in March, and was some of the first puddles he had the opportunity to play in for a couple of years.

All these lovely people, plus a few more, slept and ate at our house for a day and a half! We really enjoyed that weekend. One family had lived with us for two and a half months; they had to fly back to America a couple of days after the picture was taken, and the other family had come to say goodbye to them.

Mr. Intellectual was doing a science experiment, with help from Mr. Inventor and Esther. It had something to do with how pulleys work.

A friend came one day to say goodbye before she goes to America for a year. She loves children, and spent a lot of the day with the little ones. You can see how Little Miss loved her!

I believe this is a cup of hot chocolate from the friend in the picture above. Think Little Miss likes it?

We were given a big box of clothes, and Mr. Inventor had great fun dressing up and trying to look as ridiculous as possible! (And now I notice a cat enjoying the box!)

I came out of the bedroom after praying with Gayle at bedtime one night, and found that, not only had the boys not gone to bed, Mr. Inventor was busy tying Mr. Diligence up!

When we happen to have a Sunday afternoon at home, Daddy sometimes plays a game with the children. They love it!

NASA Super Balloon

April 26, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Yesterday evening when I was on my way home with the cow from where she grazes on the roadside during the day, I noticed a bright object in the sky off to the southwest of us. I thought that was an odd shape for a plane, and it didn’t seem to be moving, but I didn’t think much of it and soon forgot it. After I got home, I put the cow in the area where I milk, picked a few things from the garden, and headed for the house. The turkeys started fussing about then and ran for cover under the macrocarpa hedge. They were acting like there was a hawk, so I looked around, and saw a large flock of Canada geese coming toward us. Several of the boys ran out into the paddock to see them, and soon yelled that they saw a planet—maybe Venus or Mercury? I knew it wasn’t Venus, because I’ve been seeing it to the east in the morning shortly before sunrise, so I told them it must be Mercury, but went to see what they were seeing, because it didn’t seem likely that we’d actually see that small planet! They pointed out the same bright object I had seen a little bit earlier, and it was definitely not a planet. It was much brighter and larger than any heavenly body I’ve ever seen, except of course the Sun and the Moon. It was round, or oval, but we couldn’t make out what it was. Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence ran for their binoculars, but that didn’t help much, so Mr. Inventor got the telescope. I went inside to look online and try to figure it out. First I looked for the International Space Station, but that was obviously not what we were seeing. I tried one or two other fruitless searches, and then thought of the NASA weather balloon we had heard was to be launched several weeks ago. I searched for that, and after one or two more dead ends, found an article that said the balloon had finally been launched today, after seven failed attempts. The accompanying video showed an object exactly like what we were able to see with the telescope!

This picture shows what we were able to see with the naked eye (this is very zoomed in):

This is a screenshot from the video in the article; this is what we could see through the telescope:

We were pretty excited to get to see this!

Little Miss and Her Bicycle

April 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence found a tiny bicycle with training wheels at the dump a few months ago. They brought it home and presented it to their favorite little sister; it was just the right size for her. She was thrilled to be able to ride it. I grabbed the chance to get this video one morning when she slipped out of the house still wearing her nightgown! She moves so fast it’s hard to capture a video like this.

Cats

April 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our little kittens aren’t so little anymore! They are nearly full-grown now, but we’re enjoying them just as much. One problem they are running into, though, is that they don’t both fit on the same lap at the same time anymore. This morning, I was sitting on the couch reading my Bible, and Princess jumped onto my lap from one side. A second later, Bandit jumped on from the other side. He was on the inside, though, so she had to jump off while he curled up for a cozy sleep! She had to spend a minute washing herself to get over the disappointment.

We find them sleeping in all sorts of funny places; here are just a few pictures from the past couple of months. This first picture was when they could still both fit on my lap.

This was one of the first days this fall that we lit the fire in the coal range. They loved the heat, and spent most of the morning in front of it.

We found Princess asleep on my laptop one evening.

She also loved sleeping on the coal range a few hours after the fire went out, while the cast-iron top was still warm. One day, however, she decided to take a nap there while I had the fire going. I suddenly heard frantic skittering and turned around to see her running away from the stove! She raced into the other room and stood there looking very scared and offended. Her paws were slightly scorched. She has stayed away from that stove ever since!

Just a few days ago, we found her here—apparently there wasn’t a human lap around that suited her!

They don’t always sleep, though. Until the past week or so, there would be fierce fights every morning. Bandit got sick last week, though, and for several days didn’t do anything. He wouldn’t even eat for a day or more. We were pretty concerned about him, and prayed for him. Soon, he started eating again, and now he’s back to normal.

This was the first time we saw Princess on top of the garage roof. She couldn’t figure out how to get down. She would look down, scratch her shoulder, run a little way, give herself a few licks, run a little way, lick herself again…. We just cracked up watching her; it looked for all the world like a person scratching his head while he tried to figure out a puzzle! And sure enough, within half an hour she was down.

I had the boys clean out the garage one afternoon. They threw out this pile of boxes to be burned. The cats had great fun stalking each other through the pile before it was loaded up and taken out to the paddock.

We bought a couple of suitcases one day, in preparation for our trip to America. The cats thought we got them just for their benefit!

Little Miss did the same thing!

“Aw, I’m too late. The lap is already occupied.” So he started scrubbing his sister.

Salsa

April 21, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I started a batch of salsa a few days ago. I had nearly a bushel of tomatoes that were going bad, so I trimmed them all and ground them with the stick blender. It filled this 20-litre pot about 2/3 full! I boiled it that evening. Yesterday, I got a few peppers chopped and put in, and boiled it again. Tonight, I picked a dishpanful of tomatillos and chopped them and put them in…and brought it to a boil again! Maybe tomorrow I can finish the job. Think the pot is full enough?! I’m planning to divide it into two pots tomorrow before adding more peppers, jalapenos, onions, and some tomato paste. This is the second batch of salsa for the year, but the other wasn’t this big. Yes, we go through a lot of salsa around here.

Field Trip

April 13, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One day last week, we had to take a friend to the airport early in the morning, so I decided to take a field trip. We don’t often decide to do something like that, but there was a special exhibit at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch that I wanted to take the children to. Air New Zealand was celebrating their 75th anniversary, so they had a huge exhibit of their history.

The first part of our adventure was finding a place to park. Esther was driving, practicing her skills in the city. She got to drive around the City Centre area for half an hour before we finally tried out a car park in the middle of Hagley Park and found empty spaces! Then, we had to walk quite a ways in the drizzle to the museum. We really didn’t mind the walk, though. It led through the Botanic Garden, which we hadn’t visited for over six years. It was so beautiful! I want to take time again, on a nice day, maybe in spring, to explore the gardens more. We stopped to admire this enormous macrocarpa tree. Left to right are Mr. Diligence, Mr. Inventor, Mr. Intellectual, Mr. Sweetie, Little Miss, Esther, and Mr. Imagination.

The flower beds were stunning!

On the way to the airplane exhibit, Mr. Imagination and I got separated from the rest, because he was asking questions about some of the other exhibits. I let him take time to ride the horse in the Christchurch street area.

This spot allowed you to decorate your own airplane. The boys spent a lot of time here. You could email your finished design to yourself; they turned it into a model you can print, cut out, and put together. We only ended up doing that with one, though, Mr. Sweetie’s.

When we left the museum, someone pointed out that the downspouts were decorative! I love late 1800s-early 1900s architecture.

Mr. Diligence made his model plane on a rainy day several days before our field trip; Mr. Sweetie is holding the model he made from his design at the museum.

Orana Park

April 10, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We have been going to Christchurch every six weeks or so for the past year and a half, for Mr. Inventor’s orthodontist appointments. Of course, these are always on weekdays, so I just take the children unless Gayle takes a day off work. The most recent one, however, was on a Saturday because the orthodontist was planning to take a few weeks off, so we made it a family trip. It happened to be Mr. Imagination’s 5th birthday, so we decided to celebrate by going to Orana Wildlife Park. What fun! It was a drizzly day, and chilly, so there weren’t as many people as usual, but the animals were more active for the most part, and we really enjoyed the day.

We enjoyed catching a glimpse of the American bison calf having a feed!

It’s always fun to feed the giraffes.

The birthday boy in front of a lion.

People pay a lot for the privilege of riding in this truck while the lions are fed.

We went back a second time to feed the giraffes.

The male rhino had apparently been taking a mud bath.

We got up close to the rhinos after their feeding, too. Little Miss had fallen down the steps at church the Sunday before this, and hit her forehead on the concrete.

By the time we left, she was tired of being there and wanted to drag her feet on the road when she was in the stroller!

And here are a few photos Mr. Diligence took of the animals.