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You are here: Home / Archives for Boys

Boys

Messy Faces!

May 18, 2013 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Baby showed up at the door this afternoon, in the tow of Big Brother who was saying, “Be prepared!”  It took awhile to figure out what he got into, but eventually we found that he had been playing with a bucket of mud, and obviously decided to paint his face!  He enjoyed the clean-up, once I quit turning him upside down to wash his hair. Tonight, he painted himself again.  This time, it was easier to clean up!

I haven’t been doing well at keeping this blog up, so I’ll just put in some more miscellaneous pictures from the past week or so.  Maybe I’ll aim to do that in the future–just go through the memory card once a week or so and put up pictures of the highlights of the week.

Our landlord put 180 dry dairy cows into the paddock next to our house over the past week. He keeps them here for the winter to allow their home farm to rest. They arrived in big double-decker stock trucks.

The paddock he put them in is planted in kale, which is 4-5 feet high! Notice how the cows are dwarfed by it!

This is the first section, after 24 hours of grazing by about 120 cows. By the next day, nothing was left except short stubs of stems.

This enormous spider was on a cupboard in the laundry room one night when I was putting laundry in the washer! It was 1 1/2 inches long.

Simon invented a stir-fry one evening, with goat meat, onions, mushrooms, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and an egg. It was delicious!

At the same time, Elijah was mixing up apricot-chocolate chip muffins, and Seth was making coconut bread, which I didn’t manage to get a picture of before it disappeared. Both were scrumptious!  The kitchen was quite the busy place that evening, as all three boys were cooking while I was trying to fix supper.  Also during that time, a friend dropped off my cell phone which had gotten left somewhere, and someone else came for milk!

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Baby, Boys, Cow, Random Photos

Getting Back to Normal

April 19, 2013 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I arrived home Sunday afternoon with the four children who went with me to America, and it is so good to be back!  I don’t know if I’ll get around to posting any pictures of the trip or not; I haven’t even looked at them yet.  Just to let you know we’re all still alive and well, here are a few pictures from this week.  Baby got sick on the way home; as we crossed the equator, he started vomiting.  Two days later he finally got well, just in time for all the rest of us, except Gayle, to come down with it.  Now, I think we’re all well–sure hope so!  We did manage to get a week’s worth of school done this week, and Monday, before the plague hit in force, we did some harvesting.

This evening–nearly bedtime, and the boys are having fun playing games with each other.

An aunt sent these fire truck sets to the little boys. They love them! Thank you much–you know who you are.

Monday was our only sunny day since we got home. The boys got all our pumpkins harvested for the year. I had them wash them and lay them out in the sun to cure. Now it’s raining–we should have put them under cover!

The boys found this “horse mushroom” yesterday–about 10 inches in diameter! It’s edible, so we had it for supper.Today for Science, I read about magnets to the littler boys.  There were a few experiments to do, and they had fun playing with the magnets.  One of the bigger boys discovered something fun he could make the magnets do–see this quick video!  Grandma, this is especially for you.  For some reason, the arrow you usually click to watch a youTube video isn’t showing up for me, but if you click on the video it’ll start playing.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Boys, Homeschooling, Video

Tired Boys!

February 4, 2013 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It looks like we’ve been hard on our boys today–at the moment, this is what the living room looks like.  The older boys (and their noise) are all outside, so these three have a chance to sleep.

These two (Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination) have been playing hard!

This one (Mr. Diligence) got up at the same time I did this morning, two hours earlier than usual, because he had a bad dream and couldn’t go back to sleep. He had most of his school done before breakfast!

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Boys

Candle

August 16, 2012 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One thing I love about homeschooling is the creativity the children get the opportunity to exercise.  For his birthday last week, Simon wanted candle wicks–his current interest (at least, one of his current interests!) is making candles.  The wicks came today, and he wanted to try out an oil lamp, like people used in Bible times.  I gave a tiny bit of direction–and permission–and he did the work.  He used a large mussel shell, filled it with cooking oil, and submerged a wick in it.  It works!  I wasn’t sure what would happen when he lit it, so made him try it outside on a metal pan, and had a tub of baking soda close.  No problem–it burned perfectly and safely.

 

Update:  Several minutes after I posted this, someone went outside and noticed the cats lapping up the oil!  So, if you try this, don’t leave it where your cats can reach it.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Boys, Homeschooling, Simon

When Your House is Full of Boys…

August 14, 2012 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

…you may hear conversations about topics such as butchering our heifer and what we’re going to do with the hide (I’ll spare you the details of how to work on it).  Yes, we do plan to butcher the heifer (she is not going to calve, after all), and the boys are anxious to do the killing, gutting and skinning ourselves–they can’t stand it that Daddy hasn’t made the decision yet.  Part of the conversation included chewing hides to soften them, as the Eskimos do, and eating raw meat, as the Indians do.  Boys!  I hope the rain stops soon for awhile so they can get outside again–this cabin fever is going to drive me crazy!

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Boys

Six Boys

June 5, 2012 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Six boys live in our house.  Want proof?  Today’s game:  tackling (till too many got hurt and came in the house saying they were done!).

Gayle butchered a goat yesterday and a couple of the boys decided to tan the hide.

….And number six would dearly love to join the fun!  He can’t wait till he’s big enough.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Baby, Boys, Children, Nathan

Siamese Twins and CDs

November 12, 2011 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Two of my boys decided the other day that they would like to be Siamese twins.  They decided they wanted to be tied together for the next morning.  Well, predictably, life wasn’t so simple as they thought it would be!  Elbow room was hard to come by at the table, and then when they went out to move the cow’s fence for me it got extremely awkward and painful!  They came in pretty quickly, and one announced that he was going to do surgery!  He was feeling like he was getting bruised.

Clearing the drainer…

The younger boys decided to try it for a little while, too!

I sorted and organized a cupboard today, and discarded a number of music CDs that we didn’t want.  The boys claimed them, and discovered that they could use the condensation on the window to make them stick to the glass!  They made several interesting patterns.

 

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Boys, Children

Moving the Cow

October 8, 2011 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

“Hurry up, I’m hungry!”

The cow needed fresh grass yesterday, so I had my trusty helpers move her.  Boys thrive on jobs like that!  The cow was very happy when the job was finished.


By the way, all these pictures are zoomed in a long way; the neighbor’s house is not actually very close! My photographer didn’t want to distract her brothers.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Boys, Cow, Farming

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The Family:


Dad and Mom (Gayle and Emma)

Girl #1, Esther, my right hand

Boy #1, Seth (Mr. Handyman)

Boy #2, Simon (Mr. Inventor)

Boy #3, Mr. Intellectual

Boy #4, Mr. Diligence

Boy #5, Mr. Sweetie

Boy #6, Mr. Imagination

Girl #2, Little Miss

Girl #3, Miss Joy

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