Lots of Helpers

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September Pictures

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Esther took these pictures around her little house soon after we moved. The chickens were left here when the owners moved out; they’ve now been locked up. Our cat, Ginger, loves her house. He has a comfortable bed on the front porch!

The littlest boy loves the little picnic table close to the kitchen door! He wants to take his lunch out there to eat it, and sometimes asks to take his breakfast out. The other boys sometimes join him. Apparently, this time, the youngest had gone elsewhere, because the ones in the picture are Simon and Joseph, the second and fifth boys.

I’m horrible about getting before-and-after photos, but we put two shelves up in the kitchen to make more space. Simon bought himself a cordless drill, and was thrilled to use it to put up the shelves. That’s James helping him.

Time to work up the garden—but the tiller (rotary hoe here) broke. They’re busy fixing it. That’s Seth,  James  and  Simon.

Nathan is enjoying this swing, and James likes to swing him!

Moving

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I know this is rather overdue—but here are a few pictures we got of the moving process.

The first thing we did was to pack as much household stuff as possible into the shipping container. My husband is the world’s most efficient packer, and he taught his boys some of his tricks. We fit approximately 6 tons into that 20-foot container!

The two little boys couldn’t do much to help, but they oversaw the operation! Our truck, and a friend’s trailer, were used to ferry things from the house to the container, which was out by the road.

Firewood had to be moved, too—that was taken directly to the new house, after the container was full.

The company we hired to move the container made a mistake and sent too small a truck the first time. It couldn’t lift the container.

A few days later, we got them to send out their big truck, and that one had no trouble moving the container. The man tried to turn around, but the road was too narrow, and he had to back all the way out to the end of the road (about 360 meters).

Because we loaded everything we could do without for a week into the container, we sat on the floor a lot that last week. The boys laid on their tummies for bedtime prayers; this is Daddy blessing them.

I spent a lot of time the last week cleaning. The little boys helped me wash the kitchen fridge! And that is all the pictures we got of our last week in the Fosters Road house, and of the move!

Hard-Working Boys!

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After Gayle got home this afternoon, he suggested that Seth start mowing lawn. He also told me he wanted to clean his truck. The next thing I knew, when I looked outside, this is what I saw!

Three boys mowing lawn (one mower no longer has the self-propelled feature, so two boys push it)….

Elijah was weed-whacking….

And these two were vacuuming! I love it when they are all working like this. Big sister is at work, too, cleaning at the place her daddy works. I need to get busy now; I’m the only lazy one at the moment! Time to fix supper.

Some Views of Our New House

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My 8-year-old went around taking pictures the other day of this new place, so I can share with you some of the grounds. I haven’t taken any inside yet, so you’ll have to wait till another time to see that.

Esther’s sleepout—the gray-green bush beside her porch is wormwood.

The creek in front of the house (there is also one at the back of the property).

The garage, by the house. I have the freezers in the right-hand side, and behind that is a stage with some built-in shelving, plus shelves we put in, where all our jars of food are.The daffodils are in full bloom right now on the east side of the creek.

The container/sleepout, and fertilizer for the garden.

The lemon tree, in a sunny, sheltered corner of the house.

The sand box, under the water tank—the littlest boy’s favorite place!

Another sleepout, inside and out.

Some of the piles of junk! After the ground dries out, they are planning to clean up. The third picture is a World War II crane. The owner here is a trucker/mechanic/antique car collector.

The creek at the back of the 5 acres, with a couple of cabbage trees.

The bridge over the back creek!

A pukeko nest the boys found.

Our two ram lambs.

I took these pictures during school the other morning—this is the view from the school room!

Monday evening, Gayle brought a surprise home from work—a ewe lamb! She was not impressed at being taken away from her mother and tied up. She has since decided, however, that Seth is her mother and will follow him everywhere. He led her into the kitchen a couple nights ago. She promptly squatted and left behind a puddle! He got to clean it up.

Miracle

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Yes, we have a house chick. This little fellow is a miracle. About a month or six weeks ago, one of our hens started hatching the eggs we had put under her. Six of the eleven hatched on Wednesday, and we brought them in the house for a couple of days, then put them out with another batch, of a dozen chicks, that were just a couple days older. She was still sitting on the remaining eggs, so we let her. The next day, another egg had a hole in it. On Friday morning, the chick was still in the egg, still peeping, and had its head sticking out. We could tell that the egg was stuck to the chick, dried on. I knew you are not supposed to help a chick out of the egg, as they need the struggle to be strong enough to survive, but we also knew this one would not live without help. My chicken-lover, Simon, gently picked the shell off, to give the chick the only chance it would have. Once out of the shell, the chick flopped around on its back, from side to side of the plastic tub it was in with several others, crying piteously when they stepped on it. We put all the ones that were strong enough out with a mother hen that evening, and the next morning this little one was on his feet! He surprised all of us by that. He was still bumping into the sides of the tub, and couldn’t get one eye open, but within a couple more days was acting much more normal, eating and drinking. All the others have moved on, but this one doesn’t fit in with any flock we have. He now lives in a bucket, with a lid on at night because he won’t stay in. During the day, we put him outside in the grass and he scratches around like any other chicken. This afternoon, it was chilly outside, and he came to the door and seemed to want in. Someone opened the door and he hopped right on in and walked around, totally at home!

August Pictures

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And here we are at the end of August again! I’ve been spending my spare time packing. I hope to do everything we can do without for a week or two in the kitchen, today. Gayle has next week off work, and we plan to load all we can into the container, then get that moved. He and the boys will also move the outside stuff, including firewood, and then next Saturday we hope to move the last of our things and the animals. I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what goes into the container and what doesn’t—what can we live without for a week or two, in case the container doesn’t get moved on schedule? It’s an interesting exercise. At this point, I’m thinking we need to keep out mattresses (but bed frames can go in), table, benches and chairs, clothing (and dressers), some food, and just basic dishes for cooking and eating. We can sit on the floor in the living room for a little while, although I do want to keep my rocker/recliner: I need a comfortable place to sit down once in awhile! Busy week ahead. Anyway, here are this month’s pictures that I haven’t already shared.

We took one, and then two lambs with us to church and Dead Boring for a couple of weeks. They’re big enough now not to need so many feeds, so we can leave them home now.One Sunday afternoon, we went to the waterfall north of Kaikoura to see the baby seals. We were almost too late; most had already gone out to sea. There were seven, though, and a couple were really putting on a show just upstream from the beach. They are so graceful in the water!

After watching the seals for a bit, we walked across the road to the beach and watched the big waves. It was high tide, and the waves were really crashing up and over a large rock right below us. Two boys had fun running out onto that rock between waves, then dashing back to safety. The cliff in the picture above was across the road, over the path back to the waterfall.

One of our boys (Simon) is getting some practice fabricating. He cut apart a broken sack bearer, then welded it back together to make this small one for his little brothers.

We have three teenagers now! We had an informal birthday party for the birthday boy (Simon), and he requested this game.

We’ve had a bad flu go through the house this week. The youngest got it first, and was down two days. Several days later I got it and was in bed for three days. Two other boys got it right after I did, and they were down for two days each. A few days later, three more got it; one was down only a day, but the other two for two days. This morning, everyone is feeling better! We’re praying that Gayle and Esther don’t get it. The downside of homeschooling (from a child’s perspective) is that sick days don’t mean days off school! Teacher Mom insists that they do at least a little! This boy did extra, though; he completed three lessons yesterday while he was down sick!

This little boy loves his books! One of his most common sayings right now is, “Can’t read it!” as he presents you with a book he wants to hear. The boy who made the sack bearer also made this cradle by cutting apart a big plastic drum and putting wooden ends on. In my opinion, it’s too tipsy for the new baby, which is who he intended it for, but the first day this little boy loved it as a place to sit and read.

A Beautiful Day!

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Esther wrote this blog post yesterday. I loved the pictures so much that I asked her if I could share it here. She obliged—and even put it up here for me so I wouldn’t have to figure out how! Enjoy.

Today is a beautiful spring day. There are hardly clouds in the sky, and the sky is deep blue. My brothers are soaking up the sunshine, and getting some fun projects done before we move.

When they were working outside my window, I decided to take a quick break from school and get some pictures of them.

One was working on his crossbow (formerly a combined rubber band/arrow gun) made out of popsicle sticks, bike brake wire, and I don’t know what.

Another helped with the project, and the last one worked on stripping more bike brake wire to fix the brakes on his bike (at least, I think that’s what he was doing).

The last boy tried to scare me with an arrow and rubber band from the former rubber band/arrow gun, but I just took pictures of him. 🙂

And, realizing that wasn’t working, he picked up his bike and tried to get me to take a picture of his muddy bike tire (it didn’t work; I got a picture of his face instead).

Breathing the fresh spring air and looking forward to summer,
–Esther

P.S. We are planning, Lord willing, to move next week. This week, Mom was planning to get a good amount of packing done, but Sunday she came down with the flu along with one of my brothers. Then, another one came down with it the next day. Mom is finally doing well today, it’s taken a good three days for her to get over it. Praise the Lord, none of the rest of us have gotten it, and we’re praying we won’t! God is good.

July Pictures

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I saved a grand total of four pictures from the memory card in July! Apparently, we didn’t do much during that month. We’ve basically been doing school and looking at houses.

Cats, as you know, like their comfort. This one found a sunny window out of reach of the chickens where he could keep warm one afternoon.

This is a model heart, made of homemade graham crackers, marshmallows, and icing. It is supposed to represent the circulation of deoxygenated blood into the heart and out to the lungs; then oxygenated blood into the heart and back out to the body. Of course the most fun part was eating it. Looks like the little brother in the background is afraid he won’t get a taste! (This was Seth and Elijah.)

Who can say no to that little face asking sweetly, “Pwum?” Of course, he got one!

Our New Baby!

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We were given a new baby yesterday: this little orphaned lamb. He’s about four days old right now, and got a good start from his mother before she was put down because she was old and sick. Our two littlest, especially, are in love with him. I’ve taught the four-year-old how to mix the milk powder for the lamb’s bottle, and the two of them are taking charge (under supervision) of feeding him.

Our New House

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As I promised last week, here are a few pictures from the next house we’ll be moving to. This is the front of the house, towards the road. The light isn’t the greatest here, because this side faces east and we were there late in the afternoon.

The door to the left goes into a bedroom, which will be our spare bedroom/schoolroom/library. Next is the door opening into the hallway, and then our bedroom. The third bedroom is just down the hallway from our room, on the same side of the house. The schoolroom will be cold in winter, but nicely cool in summer.

This house was the first maternity house in Cheviot. It was purchased for that purpose sometime soon after being built, in the few years just before 1915. A woman named Mary Davidson was the local midwife, although she never had any formal training. She ran the maternity home from when she bought the house, just before 1915, until about 1930. She never lost a mother or baby! At that time, the house only consisted of the three current bedrooms and the living room. The living room was apparently the kitchen, with a coal range where there is now a logburner. The room we’ll use as a schoolroom was apparently the parlor. They would put mothers in there when both bedrooms were occupied (of course, back then, women usually stayed in bed for two weeks, if I understand right). All the water they needed was heated on the coal range, and to have enough they put it in a “copper”—a metal cylinder—in a corner of the wide hallway, camouflaged with a large wicker basket. When a baby was expected, the home was kept in readiness night and day. The story I read said that was not hard during the day, but nighttime was much harder—that was when the store of hot water in the copper came in handy! The hardest thing for mothers was to get to the maternity home, as the only transportation then was horse and buggy, and it’s not exactly smooth terrain here! I found this history quite fascinating.

Esther is planning to make this sleepout into her bedroom. She’s quite excited about making it attractive inside, and having her own space. It was originally a railway hut, and the present owners of the house moved it here.

When we move, we’ll work on getting more pictures of the place. It’s not as beautiful a location as the one we’re in right now, but it will work for us for a couple of years.