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April 2025 Photos

June 8, 2025 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I have some time this afternoon, so maybe I can catch up with posting photos! I’ll schedule posts ahead to spread them out a little.

We had fun one evening attempting to make Pippi Longstocking-style braids on Miss Joy!

One special evening, we got to attend a graduation ceremony for a number of local apprentices, including both Elijah and James. Elijah actually got signed off in September, but James was only signed off that week! The company who handled their studies invited all the new tradesmen and their families and workmates to a dinner at a local restaurant, and after the meal, presented them with their diplomas. It was quite a special occasion!

We are really enjoying these two budgies! The blue one, Reepicheep, is especially interesting–quite a character!

Mr. Imagination has a new obsession. He makes knives! These are a few of his recent creations.

I missed a couple of pictures of the cat who likes boxes! Here they are. Elijah had his bedroom door in the carport for a week or two to be painted, and Grizzly was delighted to find a piece of newspaper in one of the panels. Two of her favorite things–newspaper, in a “box!” The trailer makes a large box when she can’t find a cardboard one.

Little Miss cracked an egg one day and found a strange “egg” inside it. She decided this needed to be documented!

My Cat Sleeps in Boxes

April 27, 2025 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We have a cute picture book about cats. It describes cats around the world who are very talented… they might dance, or sing, or many other things… but every second page says, “But MY cat likes to hide in boxes.” Well, we have a cat who loves to sleep in boxes, any boxes. Grizzly was overjoyed when we were emptying boxes of jars during canning season, and putting the empties outside to be taken back to the garage. Perfect places to sleep! We’ve also found her sleeping in a child’s wheelbarrow, carefully braced so she didn’t slide out, or in the trailer (very big box!). One day, when Elijah’s bedroom door was laying on sawhorses in the carport while he was prepping it for painting, she found that someone had put a newspaper (another favorite bed) in one of the inset panels on the door. So, she had not only a box with tiny sides, but also a newspaper! Perfect!

She generally wakes up when we come to take a picture, but this time Esther found her sound asleep, laying on her back in the box!

I took this picture one day when it was drizzling. Gayle had driven the ute somewhere, so of course the engine was warm. Apparently, the heat trumped the wet. Grizzly was curled up tightly, with her paw over her nose. I said something to her as I walked past. She uncurled enough to half open one eye and sleepily say hello (she’s a very talkative cat), and immediately curled up again, fast asleep.

Goofball likes boxes, too. She’s much more dignified than her sister, though.

Cats

July 28, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We continue to enjoy watching our goofy cats, and teasing them. Of course, any new surface must be sat on–this sheet of newspaper was obviously the best place around for taking a bath!

The house the little girls made was a great place to hide out, too–especially when we were trying to catch Princess to put her outside!

One evening, James started teasing Princess, and it was so funny I grabbed my phone to get a video of it.

Mr. Sweetie was amused at Grizzly enjoying the sun on top of our ute one day.

The picture above, of Grizzly from behind, reminds me of Capyboppy in the book by that title–a capybara that was a pet for awhile. This is the picture:

A friend stayed here with our boys for a few days, and the last day he was so worn out that I found this!

Girls and Cats

August 13, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

When I looked through the photos I had from July, I noticed a lot of pictures of my little girls, and several of the cats–and some of both girls and cats.

Princess spends a lot of the winter in front of the fire. Usually she is curled up facing it, but this one day it looked like she just flopped down as she was walking!

One of the boys took this picture of Miss Joy while he was supposed to be doing school.

The girls love walking with their daddy! He often takes them around the block or down to the river.

The fad for awhile was crowns. Little Miss found a book on our shelves that showed her how to make a crown out of foil, so she made a number of them.

It’s always special to get Jo-Jo to sit on your shoulder!

One evening, Miss Joy was quite cranky. When I remembered that we had recordings of Grandma reading several picture books we have, I spent a few minutes transferring the recordings to my iPad and finding the books on the shelf. Her evening was suddenly transformed; she spent the next 45 minutes till it was time to eat totally engrossed in stories.

Goofball

A craft project we did one day was to make fans, since we had just spent a couple of days learning about Japan. The girls then packed a tea party and took it outside.

Goofball is Miss Joy’s favorite cat, because she is always gentle. We had our homeschool group meeting here one day, and while the children played outside, these two sat on our vine-covered stump and watched for quite a long time.

Our little mommy. She loves her dolls!

More Pictures From October 2018!

November 17, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Well, I should have looked at my memory card again before publishing last week’s post of pictures. There were several more good ones.

Mr. Diligence made the lions for the skit they performed at the concert. I found him a picture of a lion online, and Esther enlarged it. He glued them together, cut them out, and painted them. Then, he glued them to cardboard and made them stand up.

Simon learned to ride a backwards bike when someone loaned them one many years ago. He has wished for one ever since, so when he had a couple of days off work on a recent long weekend, he built one. When you turn the handlebars right, the wheel turns left, and when you turn the handlebars left, the wheel turns right. So far, all three of the older boys have learned to ride it.

I looked in the living room recently and saw Mr. Imagination telling Goofball to hold still. He wanted her to pose for him to draw a picture of her, but she wouldn’t cooperate. I suggested he hold her still while I took a picture, and then he could draw from that.

Here is the picture he drew and cut out.

Some of our friends from Dead Boring came to see us a few weeks ago. We met in Moana, and had a picnic together beside Lake Brunner. They had two 9-year-old girls along, and Little Miss, once she warmed up to them, had great fun helping them build a “hut.” It was basically an outline of grass, with flowers arranged artistically in it.

I wished I had taken a picture of this scene earlier. When we first arrived, the lake was calm and the mountains were mirrored in it, but then a wind came up. It was still beautiful!

This coal train came along, and stopped on the side track. Soon, we saw the passenger train come from the other direction and pass it, and then the coal train started moving again.

Busted!

May 28, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Several years ago, we got a book out of the library titled Six Dinner Sid. Sid was a cat who had six homes. He had to keep up six different personalities, but he also got six different dinners, had six different beds, and had six different people who doted on him.

Our cat Princess has been away a lot of days lately. She decided about the first of April that it was time to wean her kittens, and ever since she has been very nasty to them, and sometimes to us when she’s upset at the kittens daring to exist in her presence. Some days, we wouldn’t see her until late afternoon. When we got home from our weekend trip on Tuesday evening, she was missing, and we didn’t see her again until Saturday morning. By then, I was figuring that either she had met with a sad end, or had moved in with someone else.

Saturday morning we were sitting in the living room having family worship when someone spotted Princess outside! We let her in, since she had been gone so long, even though we don’t normally pay attention to the cats during worship. A few minutes later, the neighbor who had taken care of the animals while we were gone came over. She had a newspaper clipping for us:

Now we know where Princess is spending her days! And the moral of this story is? You can’t own a cat!

December 2017 Pictures

January 23, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon helped me harvest the garlic on Christmas Day. We got 89 heads from an area about a meter square.

We’re having a problem with fleas on the kittens. I don’t want to spend $30 each to buy the pour-on stuff from the vet, because the mama cat would just lick it right off and I don’t think that would be good for her, so we’re dusting them with diatomaceous earth every 2-3 days. They hate it!

This cat has always loved to sit in boxes—but I think she found one almost too small for her, this time!

This hen hatched six babies right after Christmas. We were able to sell the mother and all the babies.

The positions we find the kittens in are sometimes pretty funny!

Kittens

December 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

We are really enjoying having two kittens in the house! They are about six weeks old now, and spend a lot of time playing. In fact, they are in my lap right now. Goofball is asleep, and Grizzly is chewing on her (yes, Goofball is sleeping through the chewing!). We gave them their names when they were quite little. Goofball has always been laid back about life, and would relax in our hands from the beginning. She has always liked to lay on her back to sleep or play. Grizzly, on the other hand, complained about everything—hence her name. She has been the favorite of their mother since the beginning, and the one that Princess almost always dragged into the house in the mornings. She would kick and scream the whole way in, rather than curling up like kittens are supposed to. Grizzly took about four weeks to stop crying every time we picked her up, but now she loves people as much as Goofball does.

Here they are at two weeks old.

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Three weeks and starting to play.

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Mr. Diligence holding them at about four weeks.

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Mr. Imagination with Goofball, the one he chose to keep, at a month old.

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Five weeks and wrestling. Grizzly is the one on the floor here, kicking at Goofball.

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Cats

April 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our little kittens aren’t so little anymore! They are nearly full-grown now, but we’re enjoying them just as much. One problem they are running into, though, is that they don’t both fit on the same lap at the same time anymore. This morning, I was sitting on the couch reading my Bible, and Princess jumped onto my lap from one side. A second later, Bandit jumped on from the other side. He was on the inside, though, so she had to jump off while he curled up for a cozy sleep! She had to spend a minute washing herself to get over the disappointment.

We find them sleeping in all sorts of funny places; here are just a few pictures from the past couple of months. This first picture was when they could still both fit on my lap.

This was one of the first days this fall that we lit the fire in the coal range. They loved the heat, and spent most of the morning in front of it.

We found Princess asleep on my laptop one evening.

She also loved sleeping on the coal range a few hours after the fire went out, while the cast-iron top was still warm. One day, however, she decided to take a nap there while I had the fire going. I suddenly heard frantic skittering and turned around to see her running away from the stove! She raced into the other room and stood there looking very scared and offended. Her paws were slightly scorched. She has stayed away from that stove ever since!

Just a few days ago, we found her here—apparently there wasn’t a human lap around that suited her!

They don’t always sleep, though. Until the past week or so, there would be fierce fights every morning. Bandit got sick last week, though, and for several days didn’t do anything. He wouldn’t even eat for a day or more. We were pretty concerned about him, and prayed for him. Soon, he started eating again, and now he’s back to normal.

This was the first time we saw Princess on top of the garage roof. She couldn’t figure out how to get down. She would look down, scratch her shoulder, run a little way, give herself a few licks, run a little way, lick herself again…. We just cracked up watching her; it looked for all the world like a person scratching his head while he tried to figure out a puzzle! And sure enough, within half an hour she was down.

I had the boys clean out the garage one afternoon. They threw out this pile of boxes to be burned. The cats had great fun stalking each other through the pile before it was loaded up and taken out to the paddock.

We bought a couple of suitcases one day, in preparation for our trip to America. The cats thought we got them just for their benefit!

Little Miss did the same thing!

“Aw, I’m too late. The lap is already occupied.” So he started scrubbing his sister.

Kittens and Children

January 29, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are really enjoying our kittens! They are so fun to watch, especially for about an hour first thing in the morning when they race all around the living room, over and around the furniture, and over my lap while I’m reading the Bible. Little Miss loves to carry them around. Princess, the black one, is very patient and gentle with her, although she’s the roughest when she’s playing with the rest of us. Bandit, the gray one, though he’s a cuddler with the rest of us, hates to be carried by Little Miss, and sometimes scratches her! She’s offended—but it doesn’t stop her from doing it again!

Mr. Sweetie with Bandit

Little Miss with Bandit

and with Princess

A fight happening on top of Daddy

and another fight on top of Mr. Intellectual

Bandit tried to ride bike! I didn’t quite manage to get a picture of him trying to figure out our mirror, but it was quite funny.

Little ones love kittens! Mr. Imagination and Little Miss

One afternoon, these two spent several hours asleep on a chair under the table. As they moved around in their sleep, they took turns falling off the chair and getting back up.