Canterbury

Early December 2016 Pictures

January 5, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

There will be another post soon (I hope) with more pictures from December, but one of the children borrowed my camera today so I don’t have my memory card. These are the pictures I do have today, when I have time to post!

I was amused one day, when I looked out the door, to see Little Miss walking very carefully around and around the tree in the middle of the roundabout in our driveway. She kept it up for quite a few minutes.

I was not quite so amused the morning I looked out to see Mr. Inventor’s flock of 35-40 ducklings going across my yard! Thankfully, ducks are very easy to herd and he got them back in the paddock before too long.

The hills are drying out again. I don’t remember ever seeing it quite like this before, half green and half brown. Maybe we’ve just never gone south at the right time before. This picture shows so clearly how the hot, dry northwest winds suck the moisture out of the grass here in North Canterbury.

I’ve been puzzling over this field since May or June, when it was planted. It looked like they sowed rocks thickly in the rows, then didn’t cover them up. I couldn’t imagine what those things were. When the plants came up, I decided they must be elephant garlic, but now we can tell what they are. Apparently, someone is raising onions for seed! (Mom, this is the field we were discussing one day when we went past while you were here—probably the day you arrived.)

I’m not sure what the blue/purple is on those hills across the Hurunui River, but it was beautiful! I’m guessing it’s a noxious weed, though.

Coming home to Cheviot one afternoon, I was struck anew by the beauty of the mountains to the north of us. I love seeing the ranges, one behind the other!

Painting the Sleepout

January 3, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I have a son who is at his best when he has a big project underway. He thrives on working toward a goal, day after day. Right now, he’s building a moveable chicken pen out of lumber someone gave the boys. He’s been at it for several days, and has several more days of work on it. He can’t stand to be at loose ends.

While Esther was gone to America for two weeks, Mr. Diligence had a different project. He had actually wanted to do it last year while she was gone for six weeks, but didn’t get at it then. He’s now 11 years old, though, and able to do even more than he was last year. He set himself the goal of scraping and painting her entire sleepout before she got home this year! He didn’t quite meet the goal; the scraping turned out to be a lot harder than he thought. He got two walls done, though! Then, he ran out of paint. It’s going to be very hard to match those walls with what he finds at the dump for free, but at least those two look good.

Videos of Little Miss

January 1, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Little Miss learned how to turn “round and round” a few weeks ago. She had great fun practicing her new skill!

I love watching Little Miss run and jump! She rarely moves slowly; this is her normal pace of life. She’s a very busy little girl!

More of Little Miss

December 24, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

If you get tired of seeing pictures of our little girl, just skip this. We think she’s someone pretty special, and more fun all the time. She is really developing her own personality. This presents some major hurdles at times, because she is so independent, but fun at the same time. A few days ago, we were having family worship in the kitchen. Most of the family was sitting around the table, and I was on my rocking chair in the corner, holding her. She said, “Mommy, please help me.” I asked what she needed help with. She answered something about “the persons.” I asked if she wanted to be at the table with the others—yes, that was what she wanted! This evening, she came to the kitchen with Mr. Imagination’s shoes on. She announced, “Three, four shoes! Seven, eight, ten shoes!” One evening, she fell asleep early, so I laid her on the couch. She ended up putting her feet up on the arm of the couch!

She is determined to help in any way she can. A favorite job is rinsing dishes. Here, she is helping Mr. Inventor.

Think Little Miss and Mr. Imagination enjoyed their blackberry muffins?

She was thrilled to get a new coat!

I ordered some preschool books for Esther to bring home from America for Mr. Imagination. As soon as she unpacked her suitcase, he started coloring in the coloring book from the set. Little Miss grabbed another book and started coloring in it! That wasn’t very popular, so I quickly grabbed an old school book for her. She’s been diligently coloring pictures every day since. One morning I came in from milking and she said, “Mommy, see me picture!” She carefully scribbles over every little picture on a page, and on some of the words that are by themselves. She also likes to draw a picture during family worship; Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Sweetie draw pictures most days while we read, to illustrate a verse from our chapter. After we finish reading, they show us their picture and explain what they drew. The last couple of days, Little Miss has stood up to show off her picture, too! The most important part, to her, is her name, which she asks us to write on the page over and over. She loves her name.

This kitty shirt was in a bag of clothes that was given to us. I wasn’t going to keep it, but she found it and asked her daddy to put it on her. She was so happy I let her have it. She ran outside to jump on the trampoline as soon as she had the shirt on!

She’s very happy to have Esther home from America. For several days, she seemed to be afraid Esther would disappear again, and the first day Esther went back to work, when Little Miss went out to her room and found her gone, she was quite upset. She didn’t want to let go of Esther after she returned. These two pictures show what she was doing at one point, hugging Esther’s legs tightly. I like the way her dress swishes in the bottom picture—this is one little girl who doesn’t hold still! She moves at top speed most of the time! This dress, by the way, was another item she found in the bag of donated clothes. She loves red dresses, so I let her keep it.

Pictures From Late November 2016

December 10, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

As usual, most of the random pictures are of Little Miss. This one was taken at Castle Hill.

This was in Cass as well; I just looked at Esther’s memory card the night before she left for a couple of weeks in America.

An aunt sent this dress to us. I got the picture quickly after dressing Little Miss, before she got dirty!

The supermoon around the time of the earthquake.

Fun on the trampoline!

Mr. Inventor is a hard-working young man.

I never know what I’ll see when I look out the window! One evening, it was Mr. Inventor and Mr. Intellectual, giving several siblings a ride on the ladder!

Little Miss actually sat and read a stack of books for about 10 minutes one evening, after I bathed her.

This wild cat has been coming around in the evenings to look for food. We often have whey in buckets outside the kitchen door, and it likes to drink it. We were quite amused at the lengths the cat went to to get the whey! Unfortunately, this was just before our own cat disappeared. He always spent the evening with this wild cat and two others who also came around for food, but a day or two after we took this picture we saw him for the last time.

We had quite a surprise one morning when several vehicles pulled in. The mayor of our district was going around to the local schools and preschools, giving teddy bears to the little children of the area. Someone had suggested this to help children who were having trouble sleeping because of the earthquakes, and a large company donated the bears. He heard about us and brought our three youngest each a bear, too! They love them.

A few of us were privileged to see this beautiful double rainbow early one morning. There are perks to getting up earlier than most of the family!

Aftermath

December 4, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It’s now been a little over two weeks since the earthquake. We’re no longer feeling tremors very often, although I hear that Kaikoura still is. We’ve cleaned up all the damage here, and the helicopters are no longer coming in very often. I did hear a couple, several times today, but nothing like the 40+ landings a day the first week! For several days, maybe a week, there were a lot of loads taken to Kaikoura dangling from under a helicopter. This was one of the first few loads; sewer pipes to repair damage.

This was a load of water lines. It’s much bigger than it looks!

The rugby club building, across the road from us, where we had Seth’s funeral, was somewhat damaged. Several large windows were broken out, and dishes thrown to the ground and shattered. The boys took this picture through a window.

In a classic example of closing the door after the horse runs away, we had the boys put fronts on the shelves. I miss seeing my shining jars of food, but I will admit this is much safer when we live in an earthquake-prone area!

On our way to church on Sunday, we noticed this hillside. See the jagged horizontal lines? Those were not there before the quake!

Early November 2016 Pictures

November 30, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

In this picture, there are 38 baby turkeys, 3 chicks and 1 duckling. All were hatched by their mothers, but we took them away to raise by hand, for the babies’ own safety.

Grandma and Little Miss admiring the nine chicks hatched a few weeks ago, which are being raised by their mother.

The little ones caught 20 snails after church and were playing with them.

Drilling a new well in a better location than the first one.

An aunt gave Little Miss a couple of nightgowns. She loves her “pretty dress”.

Bees

November 29, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One day, about noon, I was sitting at the kitchen table helping a couple of the boys with school. I glanced out the window toward the paddock and saw a cloud of insects swirling around. I’ve seen something like that two or three times before, when we lived in Michigan; there was a colony of wild honeybees living in the wall of an old house just in front of our house, and they swarmed a few times. Mr. Intellectual ran outside to see what the insects were, and sure enough, they were honeybees! He followed the swarm across the neighbor’s paddock and onto another property yet, while I called a friend who wanted bees to tell him about the swarm. Pretty soon, the bees settled around a branch, and the boys hung around to keep an eye on it until our friend arrived to collect them. What a fascinating science class for that day!

More Pictures from October 2016

November 16, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Inventor built this trailer for a friend, who was then not able to take it. He’s trying to sell it now.

These chicks were hatched a few days after the funeral. So cute!

The cat found a lovely soft, warm place to rest on Mr. Diligence.

Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence with their aunt in our garden.

Mr. Imagination drew this picture.

This silly cat slept like this for an hour or so—back end twisted one way and front end twisted the other way.

A friend spent a week with us, and one evening the boys made a bunch of crowns. He had fun being a king, while Mr. Sweetie had fun giving him rabbit ears!

One day, the boys found a couple of newly-hatched chicks. I sent them to get hay for a bed for them. Instead, they came back in with eight new turkeys! I sent them back out. Mr. Diligence came back with another baby turkey! They finally did get the hay and made a home for all the babies. A few days later, Mr. Intellectual got these two pictures. I love how the turkeys woke up and were so curious in the second picture.

Gayle’s aunt cut out new dresses for all three of us while she was here, and got the ones for Esther and I mostly finished. The next week, I was able to get them done and make the one for Little Miss. It’s fun to have new, matching dresses!

Earthquake!

November 15, 2016 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

My apologies to those who read this as well as my weekly newsletter; I decided to copy and paste, to save time. We’ve had quite the shaky day. Last night when we were about to go to bed, the cat was acting very strange. He was grabbing us and biting for no apparent reason, and being extremely playful. In fact, Gayle yelled at him from his bed to stop what he was doing! Mr. Inventor had given him a golf ball to distract him from biting, and Leif was playing with the ball in the hallway outside our door. Gayle thought it was one of the boys and got quite irritated when he wouldn’t quit! Another strange thing last night was that I got a terrible stress headache right after going to bed. It got so bad that at midnight I got up and took aspirin, then used the toilet, got a drink and went back to bed.

Immediately after I went to bed, I heard a roaring outside. I thought, “That’s an awfully strong wind. Strange that it’s coming up so fast.” Then, the house started rocking–ah, an earthquake. Then it got stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and then added an up-and-down motion to the rocking and rolling motions. Things started crashing in the house, and it seemed to take forever to quiet down. After about two minutes it finally settled down, although for two hours there was nearly constant shaking at some level.

I found my headlamp in my purse and we started through the house to assess the damage. The jars of jam in the hallway had fallen off the shelves, although only a couple had broken. The kitchen was a shambles; a stack of my nicest, biggest crockery serving bowls fell off the shelf and shattered, and most of the teacups fell off their hooks. The fridge in the laundry room came open and a 5-liter jar of milk broke. Then, we went out to the garage where we keep the jars of fruit, etc. What a mess! Gayle got a shovel and started scooping out the broken jars. He filled a wheelbarrow. We took all the good jars off the shelves and set them on the floor.

We spent about an hour cleaning up, then went back to bed. About that time, the neighbors came over to tell us there was a tsunami warning. Thankfully, that didn’t end up being a problem! The shaking was still nearly constant, with occasionally a big shock. We could hear a lot of them coming, with a dull roar. Gayle got up around 3:30 as usual; sometime after that I was finally able to sleep a little. All the children who usually sleep outside had moved into the house. When something like that happens, they like to be close to the family!

The power came on soon after I got up, about 6:30. We were able to get online after a little while, and learned that it had been a 7.5 quake, which started about 20-30 miles from us and triggered one in Kaikoura. Kaikoura was taking a real pounding; they had had about 3 aftershocks already of magnitude 6 or so, and were cut off from everyone else. The power went off again at 7:00, and didn’t come back till 11:30. Around 10:30, we went to Cheviot to get chicken feed. The feed store was, I believe, the only business open in town. They couldn’t ring up the sale, since the power was out, so they wrote it up in their book and I’ll go in and pay another time. We saw a digger heading north, to start cleaning up the road, but there was a road block preventing anyone else from going north. The road to Kaikoura has been wiped out so badly it will be weeks, if not months, till we go there again.

Mr. Inventor’s baby turkeys and ducks fared pretty well. We were worried about them in the night, as they’re so little they need their heat light still. Gayle and Mr. Inventor rigged up a battery-powered light in the night, but one turkey had already died. When the power came back on, Mr. Inventor turned on the electric lights; only one duckling had died in the meantime. Later, he gave the turkeys a couple of buckets of hot water to cuddle up to. They all did well, including two new ones that hatched during the night!

Mr. Inventor had to work on the water tank this morning. After the quake, we had water in the hot water taps in the house, but not the cold water taps. This morning he looked into the problem and figured out that there was too much debris in the tap coming out of the tank. He hooked up a hose to it and used the foot pump to blow it out.

We learned, sometime today, what likely caused that headache I had last night. There was a light seen over Wellington during the quake; it was also seen during the Christchurch quakes a few years ago. Apparently, electricity builds up in the earth before a quake, and then releases into the air. I’m guessing I felt the effects of that, and so did the cat.

We’ve felt aftershocks off and on all day. Most were minor, but two were strong enough that we went outside. The worst was at 1:30. We were all in the kitchen, and headed out to the lawn. I was losing my balance, so sat down, and everyone else followed suit. We could feel the ground rolling under us, and hear the water splashing from end to end of the underground cistern. It had done that during the night, too, and a river came out a crack in one end and flowed across the yard. Also, during the night, the septic tank had sloshed enough that the smell came out of the cracks in the top and it smelled pretty bad for awhile.

Little Miss slept through all the excitement last night (she was the only one who did). When she got up this morning, she saw the jam jars on the floor in the hallway. She turned to me, and pointing to the jars, said, “Boys. Mess.” She’s loved seeing the helicopters who have been refueling across the road from us all day while they help with rescue and relief in Kaikoura. She gets all excited about the “coppers!” The boys have spent most of the day over there watching the choppers land and take off. They have counted about 40 that landed, although a lot of them were repeats. Some came five or six times.