Ahaura

May 2018 photos

June 16, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of my pictures from May. The little boys built this castle in the sandbox one day. Mr. Sweetie found his Ecuadoran flag (from Let’s Go Geography) and flew it from the top turret.

One Tuesday evening near the beginning of May, a car crashed in the paddock across the road from us after a 6-hour high-speed chase. The boys (and some of the rest of us) spent a lot of the next two hours watching the police tracking down the driver, who had taken off on foot, and the tow truck loading up the car, which was escorted by the police back to town. The really amazing thing about this crash was how the fence of the paddock was flung up and over our cow who was standing just inside the fence; the car passed a meter behind her.

On a sunny day, we can see these mountains, the Paparoas, from the girls’ bedroom window. This was a rare clear sunrise, with snow on the mountains.

We find Goofball sleeping in the most contorted postitions!

Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligent rebuilding the fence destroyed by the car.

Esther likes to raise bread in front of the stove in the living room. Goofball paid no attention, but Grizzly was very suspicious of it—maybe she could hear the yeast working in the bowl?

Simon bought another car in May, a Suzuki. When the neighbor asked about it, I said, “My son is a mechanic. Need I say more?”

We see a lot of rainbows here! This was one I could see one afternoon from my kitchen window. The end of the rainbow is at the edge of the paddock we use for our cow, where the car crashed.

We spent a weekend in late May in Canterbury, and one of our days over there I took the children to Kaikoura. We enjoyed watching abseilers at work on the cliff faces.

This house surprised us. During a cyclone a couple of weeks after we moved, a new slip came down and filled the house with rocks and dirt! Some of the walls were bulging out.

We also spent a few minutes at Gore Bay, where the boys tried to move a log into the water.

We played on the playground for a few minutes, and Mr. Sweetie climbed his favorite net.

Children, May 2018

June 9, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I took a lot of pictures of my children in May. I braided Little Miss’s hair for the first time! It’ll be awhile before I do it again, though. Her hair is still so short!

Grizzly on top of Mr. Imagination.

After Mr. Intellectual built a bridge for his engineering course one day, Mr. Sweetie built his own version.

Little Miss wanted me to take a picture of her with her baby.

Esther tormenting Goofball.

When we were in Canterbury a few weeks ago, we stopped for a few minutes at Gore Bay. I tried to get a print-worthy picture of the children. The light was wrong, though. In person, this was lovely, but a camera just can’t pick up what the human eye can.

And then, I got these goofy faces!

We tried again at Hurunui Mouth, with a bribe of some feijoas for cooperation. This one turned out decent.

I think we’ll try again sometime.

And, one last picture. This is one Simon needed taken for his apprenticeship. He was supposed to have a picture of himself in his safety gear for doing a job. The job he chose to illustrate involved welding, so here he is decked out for that.

April 2018 Pictures

June 3, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Ok, time to finish cleaning out the folder of pictures from April. This first set was taken on our way home from Timaru over Easter. We came home via Arthur’s Pass, and I couldn’t believe the colors on this mountain side, which was, I believe, somewhere near Porter’s Pass on the way to Arthur’s. I know we’ve driven past this mountain a number of times, but somehow the light conditions made it just glow, even though the sun wasn’t hitting it.

This was a cloud front we saw. The upper part of the sky is actually a thick cloud, even if it doesn’t quite look like it here.

A few minutes later, it started raining, and poured the rest of our way home!

I often make a batch of “fudge”, with peanut butter, carob powder, coconut oil, and flake coconut. Mr. Diligence loves to cut it up for me so that he can eat some of it, and this time he was clowning around pretending he would eat the whole thing!

Little Miss refused to take her nap this day, and for about the first time in her life she just fell asleep on the couch when she was looking at a book!

Mr. Imagination loves the cats!

This is what I saw in the living room one morning. She told me afterward, “Mommy, I was enjoying that book.”

When some friends from Canterbury came to visit on weekend, we walked down to the river. The boys, of course, had to throw stones.

Busted!

May 28, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Several years ago, we got a book out of the library titled Six Dinner Sid. Sid was a cat who had six homes. He had to keep up six different personalities, but he also got six different dinners, had six different beds, and had six different people who doted on him.

Our cat Princess has been away a lot of days lately. She decided about the first of April that it was time to wean her kittens, and ever since she has been very nasty to them, and sometimes to us when she’s upset at the kittens daring to exist in her presence. Some days, we wouldn’t see her until late afternoon. When we got home from our weekend trip on Tuesday evening, she was missing, and we didn’t see her again until Saturday morning. By then, I was figuring that either she had met with a sad end, or had moved in with someone else.

Saturday morning we were sitting in the living room having family worship when someone spotted Princess outside! We let her in, since she had been gone so long, even though we don’t normally pay attention to the cats during worship. A few minutes later, the neighbor who had taken care of the animals while we were gone came over. She had a newspaper clipping for us:

Now we know where Princess is spending her days! And the moral of this story is? You can’t own a cat!

Finished!

May 23, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The girls moved back into their bedroom a week ago, after only a week and a half out of it. They are really enjoying having a beautiful new room, rather than than the old room with its horrible pink and purple walls. It now looks quite beautiful! Here are a few pictures of the process of building. This first one was taken by one of my boys, who said, “Safety first!”

By Saturday night, the room was painted!

Little Miss got into some glue, and our friend had just finished cleaning her up when I grabbed my camera. That hat!

Sunday afternoon the boys took advantage of an empty room to play games. It was also warm; since we insulated it, it’s probably the warmest room in the house.

The girls moved back in Tuesday afternoon, after Esther finished painting the trim. In case you wonder what it looked like before, there is a picture in this post.

<p>Esther found the wardrobe in the corner out in the carport when we moved in here. She needed a closet, so decided to strip and refinish it. The project took a lot more time than she anticipated, but she’s happy with the result.

Demolition

May 8, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A friend from Dunedin, who is a builder, offered to spend a week helping us work on the house. For two months we have been anticipating this week, and finally, he is here. We decided that, although the exterior of the house is badly in need of some help, we don’t have the money to work on that right now, so we decided to do the next most urgent project, redoing the girls’ room. We told Esther before we moved in here that we would do it up and get rid of the pink and purple walls. She hated them, even if Little Miss loved them. Saturday, Esther moved everything out of the room, and the boys began the demolition job. They had great fun ripping old wallpaper off, and then they began the task of taking down the boards that were underneath the wallpaper (five layers in places, with the top layer being painted). They also played hard in the room for a little while, since it was an open space!

Typical cat—as soon as the mattress was moved out of the room she was relaxed on the highest point!

We’re looking forward to seeing what the room looks like in a few days, when the gib board is finished and the walls are painted!

March 2018 Pictures

April 21, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We were amused when we looked out one day and saw this truck, with its two very different trailers, stopped on the highway in front of us.

Mr. Intellectual is still working through the Thinking Like an Engineer course that we got for review in October. He recently built this paper marble roller (this is the first step):

Mr. Diligence had to look at an atlas one day for school. He complained about the assignment, but then I found him and Mr. Sweetie studying it for a few days afterward!

Grandma recorded herself reading some picture books that we have, and Little Miss is loving having Grandma read to her! She quickly caught on to turning the pages at the bell, and is good at following along. Even though Grandma lives 9,000 miles away, we can still hear her voice! Esther helped with the first book, but since then, Little Miss is doing it herself.

I chuckled one day when I saw Goofball watching intently as Mr. Imagination told himself a story while he washed his hands!

My garden in March. It looks pretty bad now, since we had a hard frost.

Mr. Imagination was given a toolchest and tools for his birthday, from his brothers and sister, and his daddy and I gave him the watercolor set.

Apple Cider

April 14, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

There isn’t much fruit grown around here, but because Gayle is still working in Cheviot, he has been able to bring us a lot of apples. One Sunday afternoon, the boys decided to make some of them into cider. They washed the apples and cut them in half, then put them through a garbage grinder (which has been thoroughly cleaned!).

They ground the apples into a clean pillowcase, then pressed the pulp between some boards, using a jack to apply pressure.

Then, they carefully poured the juice through a strainer and enjoyed it!

From approximately a bushel of apples, they got nearly four gallons of cider.

Family Walk

April 7, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One Sunday afternoon, our entire family walked down to the Ahaura River. We went down a road near us that went straight down the hill to the railroad track, then turned to cross a large creek.

Esther was very much not impressed with this old bridge. She calls it rickety, although many trucks cross it every day!

The creek.

After looking at the creek, we walked a long way to get to the river bed. It’s not the easiest place to push a stroller, but it worked all right with the big boys who enjoy pushing their little sister.

We had to cross the creek to get out to the Grey River.

This is the confluence of the Ahaura and Grey Rivers.

Just below where these boys are, the water rushes extremely fast through a very deep chute. They were at the top of it, keeping each other from washing away.

We passed these calves on the other side of the creek on our way home. We sure enjoyed that walk—this is a very beautiful area!

Mr. Imagination picked these lovely flowers for me.

February 2018 Photos

April 3, 2018 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

The day before we moved, this cat knew something was awry. She was very restless, but she did settle down in the rag basket for awhile—I thought it looked like she was trying to shut the world out!

The view from our new living room. This is a frequent sight—rain!

Little Miss has started “feeding” her baby lately.

We enjoyed some gorgeous scenery on our way to Christchurch in late February. There had just been a cyclone, and the tops of some of the mountains had snow on them.