Our family's life in New Zealand
Mr. Imagination wanted to build a car for himself. He ended up with a wooden contraption that his brothers helped him mount on a bicycle. It looks pretty funny, but he had a lot of fun with it for awhile! Little Miss has also ridden her bicycle a lot. This week, though, the training wheels broke off, so she can’t get herself going anymore. I got a video of her while she still could, though.
We watched a video one day of a man collecting dead leaves, twigs, flowers, and other things and building insects out of them, so Mr. Imagination decided to try his hand at it. This was his creation. He sure has an artistic bent!
The cats continue to amuse us. This box with old newspapers in it was Princess’s favorite bed for awhile, so her offspring decided it was THE PLACE to be, as well. One day, we found Grizzly and Goofball sleeping in it like this, cuddled together; apparently, Goofball had been asleep there and Grizzly decided she wanted it, too.
A few days later, we found this pose. It must have been too much work to find a way to get her whole body in!
Mr. Imagination, with some help from his brothers (maybe more than “some”!) built this boat. It works well, although Mr. Diligence was able to sink it by putting too much weight in, much to his satisfaction.
A friend sent Little Miss a card, just because. The card had a hole cut out of the front, so Little Miss made Goofball look through it.
The latest design for a boat—cut up barrels and weld them together for a double-hulled canoe. It’s still waiting for more time to finish it, though.
Poppy, a week or so before she calved.
I was walking home from checking on Poppy before she calved, on the road that goes east from our town, looking at the mountains to the west of us. It was so pretty, with range after range going off into the distance. Since I was looking into the sun, the picture turned out dark, but in real life it was quite light.
Little Miss loves books. If you say something to her, though, about reading them, she’s quick to respond that she can’t read.
Our new baby! This is Pansy, a purebred Jersey heifer. She’s full of personality, and very smart. Also, very stubborn. So cute and full of life, though!
We visited some friends in Canterbury last weekend, and the boys set an eel trap. They didn’t catch anything, though.
A friend invited our boys to go fishing with him one Saturday, so Gayle went with all the children to Greymouth. The friend had this kontiki, which takes a longline out a kilometer or two from shore, and has a section with a number of hooks on it. They ended up catching one kowai and a shark that got tangled in the line as they were reeling it in.
When they opened up the shark, they found a number of babies inside! They put the babies in the water, and they swam away.
One evening I noticed the most beautiful sunset over the mountains to the west! The colors were much more vivid than my camera was able to capture.
We took another trip to Pancake Rocks with some more friends who came to visit. This time, it was cloudy and misty, but there was a lot of water coming up out of the blowholes!
Simon had a week off work, so he spent some time on his canoe. Here are the first two strips in place!
The boys spent one afternoon digging up weed plants from the paddocks across the road. I was amused to see Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Imagination coming home this way!
Little Miss loves to listen to her grandma read to her. Grandma recorded herself reading a number of picture books, and Little Miss frequently wants to listen to the whole stack of books.
Mr. Imagination likes to listen, too! Once the others were finished with school, I let them listen without earphones.
Mr. Imagination found an old pingpong paddle, and made it into a paddle for a canoe! I noticed the blade laying around the other day, though.
I went out to our garden with my camera one evening a few weeks ago, and saw the clouds rolling in over the mountains to the west.
Mr. Imagination and Little Miss dressed their toy monkey up with gloves and shoes, and then wanted a picture. I let Mr. Imagination take the picture—it took about a dozen tries.
The boys, with some help from their daddy, have been working diligently since the end of May to clear the land across the road for grazing for the cow. This first picture shows where they have been working for the past several weeks; what I can see of it from the kitchen window. This spot is to the left of the first and last photos in the other post I wrote about this project, at the end of the hill.
I walked up there last weekend to see how much they had accomplished. The arrow points to our house.
The boys found some wetas in an old rotten stump at the top of the hill. This is a small one.
If you look at the other post, these next two pictures were taken at the same place as the fourth and fifth pictures in that one. Lots of progress!
One of the fun things about moving to a new house is seeing what blooms in the spring. We have a lot of flowers coming out right now. Since Esther is away, I have the perfect excuse to post pictures of them! She’s missing out.
Two weeks ago, one of the boys brought this in. It came from a tree in the paddock; we’d been wondering what the tree was ever since we bought this place. I had no idea, but a friend asked if it might be a magnolia. I did a quick Google search and sure enough, that’s what it looks like!
The magnolia tree a week ago, with a rain storm approaching behind it. Notice the sheep to the right; she’s apparently a hair sheep! All three were orphan lambs that we raised last year, and we had no idea what breed they were.
Our new cow, Poppy. She will, hopefully, be calving within the next three weeks. She looks very young, and is quite tiny compared to our last cow, but she’s three years old and this will be her second calf.
This ugly, scraggly bush in front of the house turns out to be a forsythia! I’ve always wanted one.
I have no idea what these are, but they’re blooming on the shady side of the house.
Daffodils, of course!
I noticed a couple of days ago that the kowai tree was blooming.
This is the magnolia a few days ago.
Yesterday I went out for another photo of the magnolia, and Little Miss wanted me to take a picture of her ladybug.
Mr. Intellectual is spending his breaks from school digging a garden for me. I am grateful! As soon as the sheep are out of the way, I can start planting.
The forsythia yesterday. Right in front of it are my broad beans and garlic.
I looked at Mr. Sweetie’s memory card recently, and found some nice pictures he took out our bay window. These first three pictures show the view from the end of our living room that faces the street we live on. There are three other houses on this short street, which has no exit; we can easily see two of them. The local school is just beyond the buildings at the end of the street, in the third picture.
This is the view out our street, across the highway. A trucking company is based there, and for a few days last month they were fixing this digger. I think they took the tracks off and fixed them, then put them back on. Of course, the activity over there is rather distracting on some school mornings!
A tall tower!
We can see the tops of some of the Paparoa’s over the neighbor’s garage. When they have snow on them, and the early morning sun hits them, the sight is stunningly beautiful!
How do you like that mischievous look on Little Miss’s face?
I found Princess sitting in the washer one evening. She was hiding from her daughter, Grizzly, in the next picture. There is all-out war between the cats a lot of the time now. During the day, Princess disappears; she spends a lot of time at the school.
Doesn’t Grizzly look scary? Princess thinks so—but Goofball is worse; she actually chases her mother.
It’s not every day you can actually see your laundry drying before your eyes. I ran outside to grab something, though, and when I glanced at the clothesline I could see a cloud of steam rising. Five minutes later, that effect was gone. In this picture, the haze is steam! It’s a brilliant, sunny day here, now that the morning fog has dissipated. I happen to be home alone for a few hours; Gayle took the boys to Greymouth to watch a friend try out his longline in the ocean at high tide (they’re hoping he catches lots of fish!), and Esther went along to do some shopping. Maybe later today I’ll have time to put together a post about Mr. Diligence’s baptism; for now I’m making granola and soap and working on a batch of beef broth—as well as doing laundry!
Oops! Here we are in August, and I just realized I haven’t shared the last few miscellaneous photos from June!
When we were in Cheviot in May, a lady we visited gave Little Miss a packet of heart-shaped beads she had bought and saved to give to some little girl. I helped her get them strung one day, and she’s been wearing her bead string around her neck a lot.
I asked Mr. Sweetie one day to get a picture of our cow. The house directly across the road, on the right of the picture, is ours.
For two months I have been taking Esther and Simon to town to practice driving. Esther successfully got her driver license about a month ago, and Simon this week, so we don’t have to do that anymore! One of those days, we drove out on the north breakwater at the mouth of the Grey River. The mountains were so clear that day—it was gorgeous! I zoomed in with my camera, hoping to capture the scene, but this comes nowhere close to showing the real beauty of it. The car in the picture is on the south breakwall.
We see a lot of rainbows here! This was out the bay window in our living room one morning.
I love seeing my boys working with their daddy! This is Simon helping Gayle cut firewood to length.
Mr. Sweetie and Little Miss visiting the cow. Unfortunately, we discovered about the time this picture was taken that she had slipped her calf, and as a result we had to give her up. We don’t have feed for a pet this size. One of those hard things in life….
Our big project for the past month and a half or so has been clearing the land across the road, as I described last week. A few other things have happened in that time, though.
Mr. Intellectual decided he wanted to build a canoe. He took these two sheets of roofing iron and hammered them flat, then riveted them together. He’s been working, when he has a free moment, on crimping down the edges so they won’t be sharp. I’m not sure how he’s planning to waterproof the seam and the ends.
Mr. Diligence needed a way to organize and protect his drill bits, so he built this box.
One evening, a few months after one of the burners on this hob quit working, I was standing beside it finishing cooking the meal. Suddenly I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye, and simultaneously felt pain in my eye. With no idea what had happened, I quickly got some cold water from the sink in case I had been burned, and was very relieved to find out I could still see from both eyes. After some investigation, I discovered that the light that turned on to show that a burner was turned on had blown and the cover hit my eyelid (thank God for quick reflexes that close your eye when something is coming toward it!). We had bought a gas hob from a friend after the electric one started going out, and I had been wondering how long it would be till it was installed—it happened the evening the stove blew up on me! I am thoroughly enjoying having a gas hob for the first time since we moved to New Zealand (it’s what I always had in Michigan). It is supplied by a 9 kg (20 lb) cylinder, so we can replace it ourselves. The first cylinder lasted about 3 weeks.
Mr. Diligence found this box one evening, and made “hair” on top of it. It took several tries, but I finally got a picture of him facing me in it.
For a month now, my boys have been working on clearing land across the road from us. We need grazing land for our cow, and were offered the use of a hillside that was covered with gorse and broom. The boys are enjoying the hard work, and making good progress.
The hillside between where our cow is in this picture, and the base of the pine trees, is where the boys are clearing. You can see a lot of gorse and broom in the middle of the picture. This was before they started.
The beginning of the job—they cleared a strip along the bottom of the hill first. They are hauling the brush to a “green dump” down the hill from town.
I went up the hill one sunny day to see what the boys are up to. Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence are doing most of the work, spending an hour or two a day after school, before dark, working on cutting brush. On Saturdays, Gayle helps them haul it all away.
This is what I can see from the kitchen now. Can you see the difference? The boys are hoping that another 2-4 weeks will see the end of the project.
I’m grateful, not only for the land to use, but also for work for my energetic boys to do.