Ahaura

Our House

February 13, 2022 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Just before Christmas, we started working on recladding the house. For a week, until we took off for a weekend over New Year’s to visit friends in Kaikoura, all the men in the family focused on pulling off the old weatherboards and putting up new ones. Then, Simon started work on his house, and Gayle kept puttering away at this one, with help from James on a couple of days, until they all went back to work.

See how rotten that sill is? It had to be replaced. Later, they also replaced the pile at the corner of the house.

This side is insulated, and the building paper is going up to keep the house drier!

One day, I saw several of them on top of the house. They had pulled the weatherboards off the end, and couldn’t put up a new fascia board because so much was rotted out up there at the top. So, part of the roof was pulled off, several purlins replaced and a new fascia board put on, and the roof replaced–all in one day

.Finishing up the gable end. We had to get the electric company out to pull the fuse so the cable could be safely unhooked, the weatherboards put up, and the cable hooked up to the house again. We had about two hours to do all that before they returned to put the fuse back in at the pole.

This was the most challenging part of the entire project. Gayle spent a couple of days working out the angles to cut the boards to get it to look right under the bay window, and then James took a couple of days off working on Simon’s house and helped him get it finished. They started all over again at least once. It came out looking good–but what a process!

In early February, Gayle had a day off work, so he started painting the house. With help from Esther and the younger children, they got the first coat on the two sides that were replaced. We need to get the other two coats on yet, but it’s a start.

We’re hoping for a warmer, drier house this winter! We should do the other two sides of the house, but not this year. These were worst, so they got done first.

Videos!

January 30, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I was sorting through memory cards this afternoon, and came across a lot of videos I thought some of you might enjoy.

Miss Joy loves to read. When Little Miss was this age, if I would tell her to sit down and read a book, meaning look at a picture book, she would exclaim indignantly, “I can’t read!” In contrast, Miss Joy takes the book and starts “reading” what the pictures are about or what she remembers from hearing the story read to her.

Esther took this video on Christmas Day at the end of the 4WD track where we stopped to eat lunch. Simon had taken his hatchet, so of course he had to chop down the dead tree he saw!

One afternoon, we took a lunch down to the riverbed and ate there, then let the children swim. They had a lot of fun.

December 2021 Photos

January 23, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Miss Joy found Daddy taking a nap!

I was reading aloud to the family one evening, and Miss Joy started bringing me books to read to her!

She informed Simon one evening that she was going to drive somewhere, so he asked her where her driver’s license was. She didn’t have one, so he gave her this business card. She got busy diligently signing it.

For Science, we made a model of a water molecule.

For a couple of days, the girls’ favorite activity was making soup, using flowers and leaves.

We bought a cockatiel for Nathan, since his budgie died. This little bird is named Jo-Jo. He’s still a baby, so he looked rather ragged when we got him. He’s looking better now, and getting slightly tamer.

The day before Christmas, we started working on the house. These are the before pictures of the sides we are redoing.

It didn’t take long to rip off the old weatherboards!

The flax bush in front of the house bloomed in December. We enjoyed watching the tuis come to drink the nectar.

When two or three tuis showed up at the same time, there were always raised feathers and arguing. It was pretty funny!

This is the view from our kitchen window. Actually, this WAS the view; all those pine trees at the left are gone now, and we can see the house behind them at the top of that hill.

Our Garden This Week

January 9, 2022 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

The garden is at its peak of beauty right now, so I decided to do a video walk through it. I was especially thinking of you, Mom, and hoping you can watch it.

I had fun photographing some of our harvests lately. The first picture was my harvest the evening of Christmas Day; the rest were this past week (the 3rd-8th of January). I love bringing in gorgeous fresh vegetables!

Christmas 2021

January 2, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

For Christmas this year, we decided to go on a picnic at Jim’s Hut, about a half-hour drive east of here, up the Ahaura River. Our boys have been there a lot of times, hunting, and Gayle has been there once, but the rest of us hadn’t seen it yet. I got a picnic ready, and we headed off, in two vehicles. Our van wouldn’t make it up the track, so Simon and Elijah each drove his 4WD. We got almost to the turn-off to Jim’s Hut—and Simon turned off the other way, onto a two-track going into the bush. It turned out, once we got together again and heard the story, that James had heard about this track (at least he thinks it was this one!), and they decided to explore something new! Here we are, following Simon’s Pajero. He wanted to use his kayak in the river, so he had a trailer on behind. These pictures were taken through the windscreen of Elijah’s Rav4, while we were bumping around.

Mudholes don’t faze that truck!

These ruts, however, were a different story. The reason for the blurriness is that we were being thrown around a lot. I think this was a few seconds before we stopped and all piled into the Pajero, leaving the Rav behind. Just ahead, the track got even rougher, with gullies at least two feet deep to navigate. Simon did very well, and the Pajero performed beautifully; I held on tightly!

The end of the line—Simon decided he wouldn’t try going through this creek, because the bank on the other side went up too steeply. The track goes on, but we decided not to walk it this time.

The bush is beautiful back there! I couldn’t possibly record the colors of the ferns, or the cool dampness, or the sound of the rushing water. You’ll just have to imagine!

Simon found a dead tree right away, and his trusty hatchet came in useful. Soon, we were treated to the sight of a tree crashing down into the ravine.

We laid out the picnic on the trailer, and had lunch, then packed up, got turned around, and went back out to the main road.

Finally, we were on the track to Jim’s Hut…and there was a tree across it. Out came the hatchet again!

The Ahaura River in front of Jim’s Hut.

Elijah tried fishing, but when someone is swimming in the same place, it doesn’t work very well. Several of the boys ended up swimming across the river and back.

The boys often take this cage across the river.Some of us walked down to Jim’s Flat. It’s an open meadow surrounded by thick bush.

Looking upstream, to the mouth of the Ahaura Gorge…

…and downstream.

The girls wanted a ride over the river in the cage, so Simon and James obliged.

The kayak made a couple of trips up the gorge.

One more picture… I took this on our way out, going from home toward the mountains. Notice the bales of hay? Whoever mowed the roadsides baled it, too!

November 2021 Photos

December 5, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Can you believe it’s December already? Here are the last of our photos from November.

The first weekend of the month, on Mr. Diligence’s birthday, we drove across the mountains to attend a friend’s 21st birthday party. Mr. Diligence turned 16, so I’ll start calling him by his name, James. He is excited to be working full-time, and, Lord willing, will be starting an apprenticeship in the new year. Anyway, this picture was taken on the way over. The boys in the back of the van thought they were tired! James is on the bottom, with Mr. Imagination to the left and Mr. Sweetie on the right. Now, of course, since James has his license, you won’t catch him in the back—at least willingly!

This was taken that evening. After we sang Happy Birthday to the 21-year-old, her mother cut a slice of cake and put a candle on it for James, and we sang for him.

This may actually have been taken in September or October—I’m not sure. I just found it on Gayle’s phone recently. It was taken in Waikari, near the church we attend when we’re over there. Near the church is a public restroom, and these concrete sheep are in front of it.

Mr. Sweetie went with Gayle and some friends to the sea one day, and Gayle took this picture of him.

Someone found a crab that day.

Simon often picks up vehicles for his boss. This was a day he had driven an hour to pick up a farm vehicle to be fixed, and stopped by home for a few minutes before taking it to the workshop.

Elijah was laying on the couch reading one evening when Princess decided he would make a perfect place for a nap!

Elijah saw this pretty flower when he was doing a job in Westport one day, and took a picture to show me. It sure brightens up an otherwise uninspiring fence!

Little Girls!

November 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It is so much fun having two little girls in our home. After having a lot of boys, I especially enjoy the girls. Miss Joy is old enough now that the two of them play together a lot. Playing house is now a thing in our home, something we rarely, if ever saw, while we had lots of young boys. This day, they had most or all of the dolls, doll clothes, and soft toys in the hallway, and were doing puzzles while holding their dolls.

Miss Joy loves to write and draw. She often spends a lot of time writing long letters or stories like this. The most recent example had a lot of circles, carefully drawn in the lines.

She discovered Little Miss’s pick-up-sticks. Her way of playing with them is to dump them on the floor and then carefully lay them back in the box.

I glanced out the window one afternoon this week and saw Miss Joy walking down the street in front of our house (it’s basically a driveway), telling Grizzly to follow her.

Children Playing in Water–Videos Then and Now

November 14, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, I remembered a funny video Esther took in September 2010, so we found and watched it. It made me laugh again, just as in the past! The baby is Mr. Sweetie. Seth is in the yellow shirt on the bike. Simon has a yellow and brown striped shirt, Elijah has a blue striped shirt, and Mr. Diligence is the cute little fellow in the maroon shirt. They sure have grown up since then!

This was yesterday, with Little Miss and Miss Joy starring. Puddles were made for children!

October 2021 Photos

October 31, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I took this picture one afternoon to send to a friend who had left here a few hours earlier. The entire weekend they were with us, it was dry, and the morning of this day, the children played outside on dry ground while she and I worked on potting my tomato seedlings. As they left, it started to rain, and soon we had this again!

Mr. Imagination adopted this baby blackbird after a cat knocked it out of the nest. He diligently dug up earthworms and fed it, a couple hundred a day, for a week. We were trying to teach this baby to be independent when it suddenly died one morning. It took a while to work out what happened, but he thinks it may have choked on a large kernel of corn. That was a sad day. Then, a week later, the cat bit his budgie when someone opened the door while he was letting the budgie exercise, and that bird died. Not a good week for birds in our house. We’re missing the budgie.

Mr. Sweetie made this arrangement for Elijah’s birthday!

For science one day this week, we mixed cornstarch and water, and played with it. What fun the children had! We were learning about the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), and this was to demonstrate a non-Newtonian fluid.

Inside the tiny house. It’s crowded—but we can sleep a lot of people in there now!

September 2021 Photos

October 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I think I should be taking more pictures! I’m running out of fodder for posts. It doesn’t help that my camera doesn’t work very well, so I forget to take it along when we go places. Mr. Sweetie let me use his last week when we did a fun science experiment, and I got a good video of what we did…and then he deleted it without thinking. Sigh. Anyway, here are the rest of what we took in September.

This is Mr. Imagination with his pet budgie, Tammie (short for Tamarillo). The budgie isn’t very tame, but he keeps working on it.

We killed a beef and dressed it out ourselves, for the first time! That was pretty exciting. We had never done an animal bigger than a sheep before. We got a friend to kill the animal, and the boys and Gayle got it skinned and gutted. We hung it here, in the woodshed, for a few days, wrapped in clean, old sheets to keep flies off. As soon as I could get to it after the weekend, I found videos on YouTube about boning out quarters of beef, and went back and forth, watching a bit, then doing that step. It wasn’t too hard. Gayle boned out one back quarter, but I mostly did the other three. I wouldn’t mind doing this job again.

This was the pile of steaks. Yum! This is some of the tastiest, most tender beef we’ve ever eaten.

The day I finished putting the beef in the freezers, Elijah brought home four deer legs! We decided to make venison sausage. The whole family got into it, and Gayle got to share his expertise in linking sausages. He did that for many years at his last job. These sausages are delicious!

Elijah got to lay the carpet in the tiny house. It looks good! Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie now sleep in there. We have two sets of bunkbeds now in that house, and can sleep five people in there when we have company (the boys move to the container then). I need to get some pictures of it now that it’s finished.