Canterbury

Climb Up Hurunui Bluffs

November 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, when we went to Waikari for church, we had a picnic lunch with a family we’ve grown to love, and then climbed a track to the top of the bluffs over the Hurunui River. The day was clear and beautiful, with the bluest sky you ever saw! The wind was blowing fiercely, but most of the time we were walking, the track was sheltered somewhat. The views were incredible all the way up, and especially at the top.

We started out by walking up the road a short ways, and then climbed over a stile beside the gate in the second picture. Then, the track went up, and up and up! For a long ways, a trickle of water ran through a rut at the side of the track. As we came to a place where the track leveled out and it looked like we were going downhill, I checked that trickle and, to my surprise, the water was still running the same direction! Apparently, the leveling out and downhill was an illusion.

Looking back toward the Hurunui River. The gap in the hills in the distance, if I understood right, is the Hurunui Gorge. If you’ve ever read the excellent book The Runaway Settlers, that is where they drove cattle through to sell them to gold miners on the West Coast.

Our goal was that hut at the top of the hill. It was a fire spotter’s hut at one time.

Mr. Sweetie

October 2017 Pictures

November 4, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of the pictures from October!

It’s hard to see in this picture, but one thing they’ve done to stabilize this cliff face is to put black netting over the loose rocks. You can see it on the left side of the top.

These are five-ton blocks of concrete—and a slip pushed them over!

Mr. Intellectual is doing a course called “Thinking Like an Engineer.” He’s loving it, especially the experiments. In this one, he had to pile books an inch above the floor, using one sheet of printer paper. You’ll have to wait till I write the review of the course to see how tall a stack he achieved!

Mr. Sweetie built this stack of animals, and then took 16 pictures of it!

This was the latest dump find. Mr. Intellectual is loving his “new” roll-top desk!

We got out the microscope one day to look at some algae. It was still out several days later when I was cutting up meat, so we looked at that, too.

The first picture is skeletal muscle; the second is cardiac muscle. Mr. Intellectual had just been studying about these muscles a few days before, so this was a timely opportunity.

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss spend most of the morning playing together while the bigger boys do school. They got out the rocking horse one day and had great fun on it for a long time.

Little Miss can spend hours playing with these tiny animals. She loves sorting them.

One day, Little Miss wanted to paint, so I gave her a brush and a bucket of water and told her to paint the house.

Mr. Imagination was delivering quite a fiery sermon to his brother and sister! I enjoyed listening, while I picked lettuce nearby and pretended not to pay attention.

New Babies

October 29, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It’s spring! That means there are lots of new babies around.

We were given a lamb the last week of September. See the cat eyeing it? The other cat took one look and hid for the rest of the day!

The cows and ducks were pretty curious, too. This lamb is named Daisy. By now, she’s free in the paddock, but she spends a lot of the day crying at the gate for more food, or attention.

We were given two more lambs when Daisy was a few weeks old. They are named Dusty and Debbie. We have the beginning of a flock of sheep—three little ewe lambs!

We came home from a trip to the West Coast to find eight new goslings! I didn’t want to get close to them to take a picture, so this is really zoomed in and not the best. These particular geese have never attacked anyone, but I don’t trust geese too far.

The little boys are loving taking care of the lambs!

September 2017 photos

October 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the last few photos from September, that didn’t fit into any other posts.

When everyone else works on cleaning the house on Saturdays, Little Miss wants to do her cleaning, too. She has decided that spraying the walls and scrubbing them is her job. She sure loves to spray water!

Licking the beaters is the best part of making pavlova!

The boys brought in four goose eggs one day. They decided to blow out the insides and paint the shells.

Mr. Imagination did this one.

Esther made herself a new dress, and used the leftover fabric to sew an apron for her little sister.

Princess doing what she does best.

On our way to the Dead Boring concert a few weeks ago, we got to see the Weka Pass train—it’s just a short excursion train from Waipara to Waikari. Fun to see a steam engine!

Gore Bay

October 18, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon came home for a few days a couple of weeks ago. We loved seeing him again, and spending time with the family he lives with, as well. We took them out to Gore Bay, since the weather was so lovely. I don’t think I had been out there since January! Everything was so clear and gorgeous.

One of the must-sees in Cheviot is Cathedral Lookout, above the south end of Gore Bay. I never tire of seeing this place. I couldn’t decide which perspective I liked better, so decided to use both pictures.

Gore Bay was so beautiful that day, too! This is the south end, looking toward Port Robinson. It was high tide, so we didn’t go down to the rocks at the point.

Mr. Intellectual kept busy a long time building this tower.

Does it look like Simon is happy to be with his family again?

We went to the playground, too. I felt dizzy just watching the merry-go-round!

Spring 2017

October 11, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The pictures in this post were taken over the course of a month. One Sunday afternoon in September, we drove through the local domain on our way home from church. The daffodils were in full bloom, and so beautiful! Esther wanted me to take a picture of her with Little Miss, so I did. While I was doing that, Mr. Diligence took a picture of me taking the picture!

The annual Dead Boring bike hike was the second Tuesday of September. Mr. Imagination rode in it, for the first time. I drove him the first 10 km or so, and then he rode his little bike for about 7 km.

We had left after the older children who rode their bikes the entire 21 km of the route, but soon passed all of them. However, Mr. Imagination went slowly enough that a lot of them passed him up. Here is Mr. Intellectual.

I always enjoy seeing the farm signs at the gates!

These curious cows went racing to the corner of their paddock to see the children riding by.

Mr. Diligence took Little Miss in a seat on the back of his bike. You can just see her helmet sticking up. She was thrilled to get to ride in the bike hike! Just in front of Mr. Diligence, who is wearing a blue-and-black striped shirt, is Mr. Sweetie, in a white shirt with vertical stripes. They are about to pass Mr. Imagination, in his brown striped sweater. Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie stayed together the whole way.

One day, Mr. Diligence found these wild ducklings huddled together by the duck pond. No mother was in sight, so he brought them in. Soon, though, she showed up, so he put them back with her.

This is as close as Princess wants to come to water. She, like a normal cat, minces delicately around puddles. Bandit, on the other hand, races right through them without seeming to notice he’s getting wet! One day, I watched him walk deliberately into the middle of a small puddle, about an inch deep, and start batting at the ripples he created! No wonder he’s usually wet and muddy.

This has been a common sight this year. Such a contrast to the last few years!

The cat wants us to shut off the rain—but the waterfowl are loving it!

The little children are loving it, too. Because of all the rain (four inches in five days a few weeks ago, and four and a half inches in the past five days), the creek in front of our house has been running. When it’s full enough, they boat down it in a half barrel. Yesterday we had a sunny morning, so these three spent time splashing and playing. The boys were having a toe-stomping fight.

Videos for Grandma

October 6, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Just for my mom, here are two videos of the little ones.

This first one is of Little Miss counting to 22 when she was playing hide and seek with Mr. Imagination.

This is Mr. Imagination reading me his list of words. He has only learned six sounds so far, but he’s doing quite well at sounding out words. In the background you can hear Little Miss and her incessant questions and comments!

August 2017 Pictures

September 22, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The kitchen table broke one day, so Simon and Mr. Diligence fixed it for us. I’m sure glad Mr. Diligence has learned to fix things, too, since Simon is no longer here!

Princess likes to try out all sorts of new places to sleep in.

She also wants in the house all the time. She can walk along the ledge outside the living room window, and she begs to come in that way.

Her favorite place to spend the day is on top of our refrigerator in the laundry room. One day, she was rolling around trying to get attention from the boys and fell off!

Mr. Imagination making toast for his breakfast on top the stove.

Little Miss showing off her ponytails.

A dear friend sent these flowers to me! I was bringing the cow home one evening when a truck turned onto our road. I kept the cow off the road, and wasn’t paying much attention to the truck, but it went slower and slower so I finally looked. The driver, a man who had been a neighbor at one house we lived in, was holding out these flowers to me! So beautiful. Thank you, dear friend!

One Sunday at church, a girl who loves Little Miss decorated her with these pansies, so I asked the girl if she would take some pictures for me.

These are places we frequently find the cats. Bandit wants a soft, warm spot. Princess wants to be on something, and the computer, when it’s open, is a favorite. If I close it she’ll find some other place. She loves to curl up on a sheet of paper!

Our beef cattle. The two black ones will soon be going to the works. The white one was our calf last year.

School Days

September 19, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We spend a lot of time at the kitchen table in the mornings, doing lessons.

The day Mr. Sweetie learned about borrowing when subtracting, we got out the Base 10 blocks to illustrate what was happening. As soon as I was done with them, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss started playing with them—no wonder I sometimes have trouble finding all the pieces I need!

Mr. Intellectual loves building towers with the blocks, then taking a video of the tower collapsing.

Mr. Diligence is required to spend some time reading something—whatever he wants to—every morning. He’s been reading the Circle C books lately, and really enjoying them. He read the entire Circle C Beginnings series, and now he’s reading the two Circle C Steppingstones books that have been published.

Mr. Imagination isn’t officially doing school yet. He’s quite capable, but he doesn’t want to most of the time. He’s just 5, so I’m not pushing yet—but some days he does things like this! He wrote the numbers to 28, just for fun.

Little Miss spent a lot of time one morning sorting this tiny animals by color. Sometimes she sorts them by kind of animal, or just stands them up. They came inside a Mancala game someone bought at a secondhand shop, and they have been played with a lot more than the game!

Spring!

September 17, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Spring is here! Some days sure don’t feel like it, but more days are warm than a month ago, and the grass is growing.

The first garden work was done in mid-August. Simon took the rotary hoe (rototiller) through part of the garden, after I showed him what needed done. It broke after he got some done, though, so he tore it apart and took one part to a local man to get a replacement shaft made. We picked up the finished piece the day I took Simon to Christchurch to get his Learner’s Licence; that night, Simon and Mr. Diligence stayed up till midnight putting the rotary hoe back together. He felt like he had to do it because he was leaving home a couple of days later and wouldn’t have another chance!

This is the lemon tree right outside my kitchen window. So beautiful!

Esther babysat the day I took Simon to Christchurch. She sent the boys outside for a break at one point during school. They started wrestling, and Little Miss was telling them to stop!

When it didn’t work to order them to stop, she tried to manually separate them!