Lots of Helpers

January 2017 Pictures

February 11, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Soon after the young turkeys were released into the paddock, a bunch of them got out into the yard and congregated here.

Right after Christmas I started a bunch of cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli seeds, and New Year’s weekend got them into potting soil. Now, they are in the garden and growing fast. I’m hoping for a decent fall/winter harvest this year—still trying to work out when the best time is to start that crop.

A family came to visit us the second weekend in January, and that Saturday Gayle took them out to Gore Bay. The boys took their inflatable boat, and the children had fun boating in a lagoon.

The young turkeys often spend time perched on this gate. They sleep in the tree above it at night. One morning I was in the garden at 6:15 to start a sprinkler, and saw the turkeys get up for the day—or rather, down! They flew out of the tree one after another, or a bunch at a time. So funny!

Mr. Inventor’s poultry flock: geese, ducks and turkeys. He must have 70 or 80 birds, or even a hundred, in that flock.

A few days after the family I mentioned above came to visit, I took our children and a couple of theirs to Gore Bay. Since the last time we had been there, sand had come in and covered the rocks on the beach, making a wonderful place to play at low tide. The children had a lot of fun!

It was fun to investigate a starfish we found.

The family who came to visit asked if they can stay here a few weeks while they wait for their visas to be granted. They are living in our shipping container/sleepout, and Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence built this gate to go across the driveway that leads to it so they can drive right up to their room. We had just had a section of fencing across it before, to keep wandering sheep out. They built it out of pallets and a few boards given to them by a friend who moved to Australia a few months ago, and hung it on the gate posts put in by a former resident of this house, using the hinges from the original gate.

Children—January 2017

February 9, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This is just a random collection of pictures I found on the camera of the children from the past month.

Mr. Sweetie picking cherries the second Sunday of the month.

Mr. Imagination’s reaction when I told him we were working on buying plane tickets to go to America in June. Think he likes the idea? We’re all excited!

To go to America, we have to get American passports for the two youngest. Mr. Imagination has one, but it will be expired before we go, and we haven’t done Little Miss’s American paperwork at all yet. So, one morning Esther and I worked on getting passport pictures taken. That’s a challenge!

We have a family staying with us for awhile. One day I was harvesting cabbage, with help from several children, and Mr. Sweetie found his head covered with cabbage leaves after I trimmed the head!

Mr. Inventor went to work again on his well. He got it dug down to about six meters below the surface, with about two meters of water in the bottom, but then the bottom caved in before we were able to try pumping out of it. I love his imagination and ability to make do.

Little Miss pretending to be asleep.

Mr. Sweetie wanted me to take a picture of him with this tower.

Kaikoura Peninsula—High Tide After the Earthquake

February 6, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On our second trip to Kaikoura after the earthquake, the second Sunday of January, we went to the Peninsula to see what it looked like at high tide.

Here is the same spot at high tide several years ago:

We saw this on the way to church. The earthquake caused the side of the road to slump down.

After leaving Kaikoura, as we started driving along the coast we saw this fresh slip, with the digger just starting to clean it up. We got through—but the road closed early that night. (Part of the highway to the south of Kaikoura, the part that was damaged the worst by the quake, is closed every night from 8pm till 6am the next morning.)

This spot looks like an entire section of a hill dropped down, creating a new gully.

The Oaro overbridge—the bridge with which the highway crosses over the railroad—suffered a lot of damage in the quake. We stopped to have a close look.

At both ends of the bridge, the road dropped about a meter. Apparently, the gravel used for fill under the ends jiggled away during the earthquake. Most of the bridges around dropped at both ends, but most only a few inches. This, of course, is unusable; you have to detour around this spot.

Kittens and Children

January 29, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are really enjoying our kittens! They are so fun to watch, especially for about an hour first thing in the morning when they race all around the living room, over and around the furniture, and over my lap while I’m reading the Bible. Little Miss loves to carry them around. Princess, the black one, is very patient and gentle with her, although she’s the roughest when she’s playing with the rest of us. Bandit, the gray one, though he’s a cuddler with the rest of us, hates to be carried by Little Miss, and sometimes scratches her! She’s offended—but it doesn’t stop her from doing it again!

Mr. Sweetie with Bandit

Little Miss with Bandit

and with Princess

A fight happening on top of Daddy

and another fight on top of Mr. Intellectual

Bandit tried to ride bike! I didn’t quite manage to get a picture of him trying to figure out our mirror, but it was quite funny.

Little ones love kittens! Mr. Imagination and Little Miss

One afternoon, these two spent several hours asleep on a chair under the table. As they moved around in their sleep, they took turns falling off the chair and getting back up.

New Look at the Kaikoura Peninsula—Low Tide

January 22, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

During the earthquake, the seafloor rose from one to two meters above the former level. This has dramatically changed some parts of the coastline; in Kaikoura, high tide now is approximately where low tide was before the quake! There are rocks visible now that no one knew about before. We went to the Peninsula last Sunday afternoon, around low tide, to see how different it was. This is how it looked just above low tide in 2010, and up until the earthquake:

This is taken from approximately the same place, now, at about the same stage of the tide:

We walked out to the distant rocks, which we were never able to reach before; there was a channel deep enough to snorkel through even at low tide before the quake. Out there, we discovered a colony of baby seals flopping around on the rocks, making a lot of noise. We saw a few of the mothers come in to feed their babies after several days fishing out at sea. It was just amazing to get to see all that—and then, when we returned to the van at the carpark, we got to see a pod of dolphins jumping offshore. I took several videos of what we were treated to, and Esther helped me put them together, so you can enjoy a tiny glimpse, too.

Here are several more pictures of the Peninsula at sea level:

Most of the family also climbed to the top of the Peninsula; I stayed in the van with the two littlest ones. Here are some pictures Esther took from up there; the first is from several years ago, and the second is the same place now.

Videos of Mr. Imagination

January 20, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I happened to notice some videos in a folder from October recently, and when I watched them to see what they were remembered that I had wanted to share them. So, here’s a little glimpse into the life and thoughts of Mr. Imagination! By the way, the background music is Gayle singing to Little Miss as he bathed her! He had no idea that he would end up being recorded, and said I’d have to put a disclaimer on. And, I do apologize for the way these fade out in places. Our living room isn’t very light at night, and the camera has a hard time with that.

The Road to Kaikoura on New Year’s Day

January 18, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had not been to church in Kaikoura since the earthquake, on November 14, so it was an exciting day when we were finally able to go on New Year’s Day. Unfortunately, I had a severe migraine, so had to stay home, but the rest of the family went. Esther took my camera and got a lot of pictures of the condition of the road. It’s much better than it was immediately after the quake! There has been an enormous amount of work done already. Compared to what it used to be, though, the roads are pretty rough. I couldn’t believe the way the guardrails were twisted. In this first picture, though you can’t see it very well, a bridge on the main highway is completely gone. Traffic has been rerouted around a narrow back road.

See the new hill crossing the tracks and the road?

Many hillsides slid away.

Because the seafloor rose, low tide is much lower than it used to be.

Obviously, this bridge is not safe to drive on!

End of December 2016 Pictures

January 16, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of our pictures from December.

Mr. Inventor dropped a piece he needed to work on a pump into our underground cistern, so he put on his swimming trunks and went down into that cold water to retrieve it. He was glad to be able to pick it up with his toes, so he didn’t have to go all the way under. Mr. Diligence took the picture.

Mr. Diligence also took this one. He and Mr. Inventor were perched in an oak tree. Mr. Diligence has a new camera, which he keeps in a case on his belt, so he gets some interesting pictures. I’m glad he lets me look at his memory card sometimes!

Mr. Sweetie, piling up long grass that Mr. Inventor had just mowed, to mulch the garden.

Mr. Diligence was pretty impressed with this egg, about twice the size of a normal hen’s egg! The poor chicken who laid it.

Gayle took Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence on a picnic one Saturday. They walked around a new trail in the Domain, and came across a family of ferrets.

Esther is tying the tomatoes up this year. That should make them easier to pick!

I was pleased to harvest all this the week before Christmas! We’ve gotten a lot more since then.

Little Miss was determined to go help Esther feed the calf!

All dressed up for the Christmas Eve service! Mr. Inventor was a scribe, Mr. Intellectual was Herod, and the other three boys were the Wise Men.

Charades one evening. This was a symphony. The kitten was a violin.

Parallel. No one could guess this one.

A bit of earthquake damage we observed on our way to our picnic on the day after Christmas.

Little Miss is Busy!

January 14, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our little girl is a very busy little person. She is on the go from when she wakes up in the morning till she reluctantly goes to sleep at night. Here are a few more pictures in which we’ve tried to capture her lovely personality! This first picture shows her sweet side—she does love to cuddle, when there isn’t something else more pressing to investigate!

When Esther arrived home from America, she brought some preschool books that I had bought for Mr. Imagination. He immediately started coloring pictures—so Little Miss wanted to color, too! I gave her an old school book, and she very diligently colored for a few days. The morning I took this picture, she had just delightedly told me, “Mommy, see me picture!”

This was a game of kickball. She loved running bases, although she couldn’t understand the rules.

Picking peas. I love this picture—looks like she’s telling off one of her brothers; he probably offended her in some way. She is very bossy, and does her best to keep her big brothers in line. This morning, she found a wet rag in the house and took it outside to wash the top of the little picnic table. She informed me that it was “Mess! Mess! Da boys.”

Christmas Day—Beach and Railroad Tracks

January 12, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We actually had our Christmas Day picnic the next day, since Christmas was on Sunday. We went to church that day and visited the family from whom we acquired the kittens. On Monday, then, we went to the beach for a picnic. We ate lunch in a grove of pine trees; the needles make a lovely floor to sit on. The boys played in the water, and then buried each other in the tiny rocks that covered the beach there. We had two extras that day, our nephew and a friend of our boys.

Mr. Inventor stepped on a bee as soon as he reached the beach. He put plantain on the sting and kept in on for a long time. He was quite pleased that it didn’t swell and itch like normal.

After the sting stopped bothering him, he did some beachcombing. I was quite pleased with some of his finds. The starfish washed up just as he was walking past! The orange thing is some sort of sea slug. There were also a couple of nice sponges.

We walked across the railroad track to reach the beach, and on the way back investigated the unusual curves and twists that resulted from the earthquake. I couldn’t get a picture of what we saw in the gravel under the track, but it looked like the earthquake had shoved the track back and forth, pushing the rocks out of place, and the track ended up about half a foot or more to the side of where it started out. We could tell by the rust on the rocks. It was quite interesting. We spent a little time picking cherries on our way home, beside a railway bridge. The bridge either rose, or the tracks on both ends of it sank, because they obviously drop at both ends. The gravel was gone under the end on which we were standing; it had fallen down the hill under the bridge. Kiwirail has a big job to do, repairing the tracks from here to Picton! These pictures show some very minimal damage compared to where the track follows the coast on both sides of Kaikoura.