Our family's life in New Zealand
We were driving to Kaikoura for church Sunday morning when suddenly one of the boys exclaimed, “There’s a whale!” Sure enough, just a few hundred meters offshore was a whale, apparently feeding on the surface in the middle of a small pod of dolphins! There was a fishing boat close by; apparently there was a large school of fish there. Of course, we stopped to watch–you don’t see a whale very often. What a special experience!
It’s fun to look through Esther’s memory card every so often. She gets some good pictures, and happily lets me use them. I often either forget I have a camera, or actually don’t have it along, so I’m glad when she takes pictures to fill in the gaps. Here are a few more pictures from the day we walked to the lighthouse near Timaru.
Little Miss was watching someone climbing the outside of the lighthouse. She held on to that apple all the way out there and most of the way back!
Gayle helping Mr. Imagination down the steep cliff below the lighthouse. They walked back along the shoreline.
Enjoying the view from a bench in front of the lighthouse.
Mr. Inventor, Mr. Imagination, and Mr. Intellectual trying out a hut someone else built out of driftwood.
Mr. Diligence, Mr. Inventor, and Mr. Intellectual on a rock north of Kaikoura.
Mr. Imagination pondering something!
Otherwise known as random pictures! One Sunday in April, our nephew went to church with us, and we took him north of Kaikoura to see the baby seals. Little Miss loved them, too!
Everyone has been enjoying our new kittens. They love to sleep on people! Unfortunately, the black-and-white one was accidentally killed this week when she got in someone’s way. We miss her, but are glad to still have the other.
I liked this sight, as Mr. Inventor took a turkey to a neighbor who wanted to buy him to live with her turkey hens.
A favorite activity has been building towers with the base 10 blocks.
Just a funny picture of Mr. Imagination!
Mr. Imagination loves his “robot pajamas”, which were in a bag of clothes that was given to us.
Impromptu math lesson one evening! I can’t remember any more what we were discussing, but that white board sure comes in handy!
Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence got the idea to bob for apples one evening. They soon caught on to pushing the apples to the bottom of the dishpan to get hold of them!
Mr. Intellectual is my kitchen helper. He learned how to make tortillas recently.
The two little boys built this. We brought very few toys with us when we moved here from America, but this was a set we didn’t want to be without.
On a recent Sunday, our nephew, who is working for a few months at a farm an hour and a half from here, spent the day and went to church with us. After church, we went to the Kaikoura Peninsula. We walked across the top, enjoying a beautiful overcast day.
This seal pup was along the walkway, just as we started up the cliff.
The view from halfway to the top. This is the bay in front of Kaikoura, on the north side of the Peninsula.
Walking along the the top of the peninsula. Little Miss was sound asleep when we arrived, so her daddy carried her till she woke up and wanted a snack. Then, I took her and Gayle went back to get the van and take it around to the end of the trail.
See all the black specks on the white rocks? Those are seals.
We made it to the overlook above South Bay! This is the other side of the headland on which you go back down to sea level.
And when we arrived at sea level, the boys who got there first had a surprise for us: They had found a jellyfish on the beach! In real life, the dark areas were somewhat bluer than this.
Then, we moved on and found another jellyfish…and suddenly they were everywhere! Mr. Diligence counted 130 by the time we were done. Some were totally clear, like this one:
And this one, with Mr. Inventor’s shoe for scale.
This was the biggest we saw; it was more vividly brown.
It’s hard to see them, but there are jellyfish scattered across the rocks and seaweed here, at the high tide line. Look for purplish, transparent blobs.
After enjoying the jellyfish, I took Little Miss onto the bridge that forms the end of the trail at South Bay. She loved looking through the bars.
Mr. Diligence brought me this handful of sand, gravel and tiny shells.
Our trip to church Sunday was a little different from usual. Every year, this weekend, there is a classic car show in Kaikoura on Saturday, and the cars go back south on Sunday morning. There were around 600 cars at the show, we heard, and the boys counted 270 or so passing us! That sure adds interest to a one-hour trip we make nearly every week.
The other thing that made the trip unusual was snow. We drove through falling snow for about 10 minutes, and there was some slush on the road. That is the worst road conditions we’ve driven in in this country. It was sure pretty! This was the first and probably last snow for us this winter.
We especially noticed the wattle trees bending down with the weight of snow. On the way home in the afternoon, the snow was gone, but the wattle trees were still bowed down and a lot of limbs were broken off.
On our way home, as we crossed a bridge just as the highway reached the sea, I looked at the river mouth and noticed a flock of spoonbills! We pulled off and Gayle and Mr. Intellectual went over to get a picture. The rest of us preferred to stay in the warm dry van.
The last Sunday my sister-in-law was here, three weeks ago already, we took her to Kaikoura for church. After church, we took her out to the Peninsula, of course. It was a cold, windy day, but beautiful all the same. I stayed in the van with little ones who didn’t need to get cold, but most of the family climbed the Peninsula.
I have never seen so many seals at the Peninsula! They must have been wanting to stay out of the cold water.
While I waited, I watched this film crew. I have no idea what the man was talking about, but they were obviously filming him discussing something! They had a reflector to bounce light onto him, and a shade they held over him at times to get the light right—until it blew away into the water and they had to scramble down to get it.
We drove around to South Bay, on the other side of the Peninsula, and while there I noticed this incredible cloud formation. It was obviously snowing in the mountains!
I enjoyed seeing these cows on such a steep hill. One had just raced downhill.
I’m not sure what was happening in this picture, but I thought it was a cute one of James and Nathan.
A late-evening game of Dutch Blitz (thanks to one of my sisters, we can now all play at once—thank you!).Left to right are James, Elijah, Seth, Simon, and Joseph, and Esther.
Here are some pictures taken on the way to church by Joseph. Most of the pictures he took were too blurry or sideways, but there were a few good ones. The first is along the Kaikoura coast, with a railway tunnel on the left; the second is the Kaikoura airport; third is a creek just north of Kaikoura; fourth is a restaurant on the corner where we turn off the highway to go to church; and fifth is our church building with the new Kaikoura museum/library/council chambers building rising behind it.
And, last but not least, this is only part of the cabbage crop. We brought in and put up literally bushels of cabbage (probably about nine altogether).
Yes, I’m a bit late, but here are some more pictures from December. And, by the way, we are still waiting for baby to arrive. It’s due in a couple more days, but I won’t be surprised if it’s late—we’ll see! We’re pretty anxious to meet this little one and see who he/she is!
The day after Grandma left, the two littlest boys decided to lay in her bed and study a leaflet we got at Willowbank.
We cleaned the garage out one day. I finally gave the permission the boys had been waiting for since we moved: I let them haul out and burn a lot of boxes! First they loaded ALL of them onto the wheelbarrow Simon got free at the dump (he just had to buy a new tube for the tire and had a good tool!).
Seth’s birthday landed on Sunday this year, and he wanted to walk over the Kaikoura Peninsula. Gayle took all the children across, while I drove around to the other side. Two of the boys ran the whole way, so had to wait a long time, and one of them was so bored that I handed him my camera and told him to take some pictures.
We had three little turkeys in the house for a few weeks. They were rather fun to watch! Some nights, their owner, Simon, would go around catching moths for them to eat. That was pretty hilarious to watch, as at the time, the moths were bigger than the turkey’s heads! After awhile, it was time to put them outside. They are thriving in a small pen now. We let them free-range until they ate all the leaves off my pepper plants one day.
One sunny warm day I got all the newborn clothes washed and hung out. So fun!
Just for fun, a couple of random shots of some of our critters—the steers and the ducks.
On Christmas Eve, the local Anglican church always has a special service for the children. They are supposed to dress in Nativity-scene costumes and sort of act out the story as it is read. Our boys were asked to be Joseph and the wise men, and one ended up being Herod when the boy who had that role backed out. We still had enough wise men, as the two littlest boys decided at the last minute they wanted to be kings, too! Esther created the costumes, and each boy designed and made his own crown, except the two littlest.
This has been a common scene this summer. I have had the boys spend half an hour a day in the garden pulling weeds, and they are doing well at keeping the weeds under control. One of the days Gayle had off work over Christmas he joined them; they were doing the job before breakfast, before the day got hot. I’ll do another post soon to show the garden. It is gorgeous this year!
One afternoon, Nathan wanted to take a picture of a spider in his room. He couldn’t quite get a picture of it, but played with the camera for awhile anyway!
We are really enjoying having my mother with us for the month. All our adventures are more fun with a visitor! The first Sunday she was here, we went to Kaikoura for church, as usual.
The hills between here and Kaikoura are covered with broom, and it is in bloom right now.
We got to see a train when we were along the coast. Not much time to take that kind of picture—that’s why you see the reflection on the window!
After church we went to the Kaikoura Peninsula—lots to see there
Gayle turned over some rocks to find critters. Here were two starfish together—see the dark one?
The crab was hard to photograph, as it scuttled away quickly.
The sea was a gorgeous blue that day. The big plants are bull kelp; it grows in enormous beds all along our coastline.
After we left the Peninsula, we drove up the coast and stopped near the Oaro River. You can walk along the railroad tracks and enjoy a beautiful stretch of coastline. The big attraction for our boys is the wrecked train cars that were dumped along the sea at one point to prevent erosion! We ladies didn’t walk that far, though.
James, posing behind sweet peas with yellow lupines around.
One of the smallest praying mantises I’ve ever seen (that’s Esther’s hand). It was incredibly hard to get the picture because the camera didn’t want to focus there, and it kept moving (jumped onto the lens once!).
And this is something I was glad to have not known about until I found the pictures on the memory card later! This is my daredevil second boy, way up high in a gum tree. He hauled the ladder up after him to bridge the gap between branches. He did make it back down safely!
The second and fourth boys have been diligently working at lining their sleepout walls with cardboard, and then painting it.
This little boy (our youngest) is so cute! I love the way he walks so purposefully across the yard. His favorite place in the kitchen is up on the countertop, where he can see what’s going on.
One evening our silly boys had a contest to see who could put the most different items on their bread. It started when one put plum jam, grapefruit marmalade, and pumpkin butter on his bread, in separate stripes—that one was actually sensible, in Mom’s opinion. This boy, #2, was the ultimate winner (in his opinion)—he found 15 things to put on his bread! Yes, I made him eat it.
Ryan Craig, from Twizel, is walking the length of New Zealand for the fourth time pulling a cross, carrying the message of forgiveness. He stayed with us for a night, and our boys really enjoyed him. To learn more about him, visit https://www.facebook.com/RyanCraigsWalk2014/timeline 
Last Sunday on our way home from church we stopped for a little while along the coast, which we haven’t done in a long time. The boys sure enjoyed climbing around on the rocks! Top picture is James, our 4th boy; next is Joseph, the 5th. Beyond them was a huge flock of birds on the water. Next picture is James, then Elijah, then Simon. The next two include Seth and Joseph with us.
A beautiful spiderweb I noticed while milking one morning.
The calf we were given a few weeks ago. She was born in the yards where Gayle works, just before her mother was butchered. She was initially given to a friend of ours who works there also, who got her started eating but then decided she couldn’t afford to keep her cattle and gave her to us! This calf is very healthy and frisky, and absolutely loves her foster “mother”—Seth, our first boy!
We got our potatoes planted last week, and then I assigned the boys to mulch them with a bale of straw we had. They did a great job!
