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Ten Years!

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Esther merged my old blog with this one this week. She signed up with a new hosting service, and when she migrated this blog over, she decided there was enough storage space available that we could do that. So, now all the posts I have ever written are together! We’re not sure yet if all the photos transferred; we know most did, but there was one page she looked at that had them missing. She can’t remember where it was, though!

Anyway, when I was looking at my oldest posts to see that they had transferred, I noticed the date on the very first one: July 23, 2011. That was ten years ago yesterday! I hadn’t thought about how long I’ve been blogging; ten years sounds like a long time. If you want to read it, just click on the bar to the right, just under “Archives,” and scroll down to the bottom of that. It’s rather fun to look at the old pictures and see how much the children have grown up!

A Decade

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We have now been in New Zealand for ten years—an entire decade. Ten years tomorrow, we landed in Christchurch with six young children. We were met at the airport by friends who had come ahead of us, with whom we hoped to work and form a home church. They were the only people we knew in the entire country.

Today, we know people from end to end of this country. God has given us more friends than we could have imagined. We are now part of a growing little house church on the opposite side of the island from where we started out. The business we were planning to start with our friends never even began; instead of building and running a sawmill, Gayle found a job at a meatworks, which got us our first visa.

We arrived here with six children, ages nine weeks to eleven years. Over the course of these ten years, one of them died and we lost two unborn babies—but we have also been blessed with another son and two daughters. Now, we have eight living children, ranging from three months to twenty-one years! Also, during these ten years, four of our children have received water baptism as a symbol of their new life after receiving Jesus as their Saviour.

We have experienced great joy—and immense grief while living here in New Zealand. These years have been hard—but good. We love living here and are thankful for so many things. God has been very good to us through everything.

This photo was taken the morning we left the States. A friend advised us to dress the four boys in matching shirts so it would be easy to find them in crowds. They loved those shirts and wore them until they were tattered!

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This was taken a week or two after we landed here, when we visited Hagley Park in Christchurch for the first time.

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One more photo from that first few weeks! We lived in a rental house near Christchurch for three weeks, and then had to get out. We had no house to go to, so we ended up camping for a couple of nights with some friends near Cheviot. Someone loaned us a horse truck and a house bus to sleep in. I’ve always thought our camp looked pretty funny!

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Memories of Seth

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Yesterday was Seth’s birthday. He would have been 17. Naturally, I was thinking about him a lot through the day, and decided to share some pictures from when he was little.

The day Seth was born was a day I’ll never forget. He was due the middle of January, so we had Gayle’s family’s Christmas gathering early. We were going to go home on Monday. Our car needed new shocks, so Gayle and his dad worked on that first. We finally left his parent’s place around 3:00 in the afternoon and headed home (they lived in Ohio, we lived a 6- or 7-hour drive away, in Michigan). After an uneventful drive home, uncomfortable for me because of constant Braxton-Hicks contractions, we walked into our house at 10:00 at night to find it “peopled” with mannequins! My sisters, who didn’t get to decorate our car at our wedding two years before because we hid it, had gotten revenge by decorating our house while we were away. (I was going to insert a picture of it, but apparently one of our photo albums is missing.) We spent a couple of hours tidying up, then went to bed at midnight. I woke up at 6:00 Tuesday morning in labor—a month early! We called the midwife, and she came as soon as she could. She allowed us to stay home to have the baby. Around 4:00 in the afternoon, I started to bleed. The midwife started really praying. About two hours later, around 6:15, Seth made his appearance. He was very blue, but started breathing and pinked up within a minute. We were thrilled to have our first boy! Esther wasn’t sure about him the first day, and was mad at me, but she soon learned to love him. She was only 16 1/2 months old when he was born, but she was determined to pick him up and carry him around. One time, I had left him asleep on a chair in the living room and went into the bedroom. She picked him up and carried him to me, dropping him at my feet. Thankfully, we had a thick, soft carpet, and he never even woke up!

Two weeks old

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Nine months old

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Five years old

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Eight or nine years old

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Ten years old

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Memories of My Dad

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I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately. He died of cancer 16 years ago, just before Christmas. While he wasn’t perfect, as none of us are, I feel very blessed to have had him for a father—and am very sad that my children haven’t had the opportunity to know him. I thought I’d share just a few of my memories of him here. This picture is of one of Dad’s favorite flowers, which he called a “pink”. (His other favorite flower was the black-eyed Susan.) When we stopped on our way home from church two weeks ago to pick cherries, there was a patch of these tiny pink flowers beside the van when I got out, and it made me think of Dad.IMG_2631

One thing I really remember about growing up is the sheer number of people who passed through our home. I’ve been reading my diaries from my teenage years lately, and one year I circled, on a pocket-size calendar, every day that we either went somewhere or someone came to see us. Some months had every day circled, and all had nearly every day circled!  A story I remember clearly illustrates the kind of life we led.

Our manure spreader had broken down one fall, and Dad really needed another one, quickly, but as always there was very little money available. He and Mom went up to their bedroom to pray about the problem. As they were praying, a semi pulled up at the side of the road by our driveway and the driver walked up to the house. It turned out that he was a friend of one of our friends and wanted to meet Dad. In the course of the conversation, our need of a manure spreader was mentioned, and he said he knew of one that was for sale. Within a day or two, we had exactly what we needed!

I also remember Dad’s five-minute vacations. Pardon the mention of more manure, but when you have cows you have to deal with the stuff. He cleaned the gutters by hand every day during the winter, scooping the waste from 18 cows into a wheelbarrow, then taking it out the back door of the barn and dumping it off the edge of the hill into a pit. In the spring he would spread it on the fields. I remember him standing out there on the edge, just taking time to admire the sun setting in the west. That was his vacation for the day.

Dad was raised in the city, and moved to the country when he was 25. He claimed that he retired at that age and never worked another day in his life! Of course, he worked harder physically than he had ever worked before, but it goes to show what a difference attitude makes.

One thing I inherited from Dad is my love of history. I used to love discussing history with him.

Dad used to read us bedtime stories. He liked to add in sound effects (and sometimes would even stop reading and ask for sound effects!), or sing, rather than reading, the songs that were quoted. One story we read said something like, “They heard the crunch of gravel outside. ‘Who’s eating our driveway?’ so-and-so asked.” Another story had a girl say, “By the way people were dressed at church yesterday (they had just moved to a new community) they are poor.” He read it as, “By the way, people were dressed at church yesterday!” We loved his reading.

What stands out the most from Dad’s life was his love of God. That love radiated out of him to others. We often marveled at how complete strangers would end up telling Dad their life stories within a few minutes of meeting him. He was a good listener and had a way of asking penetrating (and sometimes uncomfortable!) questions.

Dad was a slow reader, but what he read he remembered. He did a lot of writing, mostly articles for the church paper. He would write them by hand, and then Mom would type them for him. One of my treasured possessions is a collection of his writings that she typed and copied for each of us children.

Dad was more than head over heels in love with Mom. He had his own terms of endearment for her. She was the “Beauty Spot of West Michigan,” the “Mother of Multitudes” (there were eight of us), and “Pretty as a Peach Pit.” One morning on our way to church, he suddenly remembered he hadn’t had his morning kiss, so he pulled over on the side of the road for a kiss. I could still show you the spot!

We never had new vehicles. One station wagon was rusty enough that he would hand a piece to a visitor, casually offering him a souvenir of his visit! A truck had a handy apple-core disposal hole beside the driver’s seat. These vehicles got us around most of the time, though. A joke in our house was that if he saw someone stealing our truck he’d run over and tell the person he was welcome to it–but give a long list of things you had to know in order to make it work!

Happy April 8th Day!

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You mean to say you have never heard of April 8th Day? Don’t worry, very few people have. Once upon a time, my dad decided we needed more celebration days. I think we had just read All of a Kind Family, about a Jewish family in New York City. They had a number of celebration days, and Dad thought we needed some. Therefore, he declared April 8th to be a family holiday! I’m not sure if we ever really celebrated, but it was a fun family joke.

On a different topic, I’ve been pondering for a long time how to refer to my boys on this blog. I don’t want to use their first names, to give them just a little more privacy, but for family and friend’s sake, I want some way to identify them. In the last several posts, I’ve said “Boy #1” or whatever, but it occured to me sometime since I last posted that I could say “Mr. Handy Man” or “Mr. Inventor”. Which would you like better? Please comment with your opinion.

And now I need to take care of a crying baby girl. Whenever I have time, I plan to post about our trip to Timaru over the weekend, and a walk up a river looking for fossils today. Sometime!

Encyclopedias

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We had a good laugh at the dinner table tonight. We were discussing the fact that Esther’s boss just got another donkey yesterday, hoping to have a baby donkey eventually. That led to a discussion about how long various animals are pregnant, and when I mentioned that horses are pregnant for about a year, someone wondered how long elephants carry their babies. I said about two years, and then Esther asked about whales—five years, maybe? And what about mice? a month? Well, of course we had to check it out, so I suggested that someone get the encyclopedia to figure it out. We suggested looking under Gestation, so one of the boys ran to the other end of the house to fetch the G volume. It said, “See Pregnancy.” So, he ran to the other end of the house again to get the P encylopedia. It said, for animal gestation periods, “See Animals.” Bother! He ran to the other end of the house for a third time, to get the A encyclopedia! Finally, we had the information we needed. Did you know that a mouse produces babies after only 21-24 days? Elephants, on the other hand, take 20-22 months. We found this investigation very interesting.

I was reminded, when we had to keep getting a different volume of the encyclopedia, of a story my Dad once told. He would occasionally get in the mood to make up a story, and we would periodically get another installment of “The Great White Hunter.” I don’t remember much of these stories; the Great White Hunter would go around the world having adventures. The one story I do remember involved something about shooting a Snow Leopard out of season in Africa. This was a crime, and the Great White Hunter found himself clapped into jail. Now, an African jail is not a place you want to be. It’s terribly boring. The poor man was only allowed to order in one book a year! He wanted to figure out some way to get himself freed, so he decided he had to find out, first, if he really had shot a Snow Leopard, or if it was some other creature. So, the first year, he ordered the S encyclopedia, so he could look up Snow Leopard. Imagine his feelings when he got it and it said, “See Leopard, Snow.” And he had to wait an entire year before he could order the L encyclopedia! That’s all I remember of the Great White Hunter stories. What a fun memory of Dad, though!

And by the way, a whale’s gestation period is 12-17 months—but we still don’t know about Blue Whales, which was the particular species in question!

Revenge!

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Once upon a time, somewhere around 13 years ago, a certain little 2-year-old watched her mommy fix a book. After the book was fixed, her mommy went into another room to do some other job. The little girl saw where the glue bottle was put, and she decided that her mommy’s Bible needed fixing. So, she got the glue bottle, and she very carefully squirted glue between many of the pages of the Bible, until the bottle was nearly empty. After awhile, her mommy realized how quiet the little girl was and came to investigate. She was not happy at what she found! She quickly grabbed a roll of toilet paper and started wiping glue out of the Bible. She was able to get most of the pages wiped clean, but some had already stuck together too much and there were holes in them when she was done. She still uses the Bible today, but she will always remember the day she fixed a book while her little girl was watching.

Now the little girl is a big girl, and has a little brother. The big girl likes to drink tea with milk. She doesn’t always finish her cup of tea, and she leaves it sit till later. Her little brother loves to visit big sister’s room while big sister is not in it, and yesterday, little brother decided big sister’s Bible would look good with tea dumped over it! Big sister got to spend half an hour separating pages of her Bible and trying to dry them. Now, she will always remember the day her little brother found her tea and tried to help her (with what we aren’t sure!).

This is the little girl-turned-big girl, drying the pages of her Bible. And by the way, I did have her pre-read this post before I put it up, and she said it was fine to share.

Black Chicken

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I was putting a chicken and a duck in the crockpot this morning to roast for supper, and told the boy who happened to be in the kitchen, “I’m cooking a purple chicken and a wild duck!”  He laughed and reminded me about a Mexican who once bought some chickens from us.  When we lived in Michigan we sold a lot of old laying hens to Mexicans–they liked them better than fryers and bought a lot from us live to butcher themselves.  This particular man wanted a white chicken, and we happened to have one that was covered with white feathers.  Now, it so happens that some white chickens (I think Silkie bantams) happen to have purplish skin, and the meat and even the organs are quite dark.  This man took the chicken home and killed and plucked it, but the next day he was back complaining about the “black chicken.”  His exact words were, “We eat cat, and we eat dog, but we don’t eat black chicken!”  I think we gave him a different chicken, and we’ve been chuckling about it ever since.

By the way, this is a great way to use a tougher chicken, like an old laying hen.  My sister-in-law discovered this method by accident, and I now do it a lot.  Simply put one or two chickens in the crockpot with no water and turn on high for 6-10 hours, till they are fully cooked.  Delicious and tender!  I take off the breast meat when we’re ready to eat, and the drumsticks and thighs, then add water to the pot and cook again to make broth from what’s left.

Times Have Changed!

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Yesterday when we were cleaning I saw some notebooks I used to keep a journal in for the older children when they were young.  I tried to write something once a week for each of them.  I actually kept that up for about four or five years before life got too busy!  I brought out the book I wrote for our oldest, and read her a few excerpts.  She enjoyed that so much that she copied some things into her blog, and scanned a few pictures from the photo album I made her when she was small.  I was reading that book and looking at pictures from back when we had a 3-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a baby.  How times have changed!  Back then, if something needed doing, I did it.  Now, I can assign it to be done.  Then, I was working with babies all day, with no adult conversation–no wonder I liked talking on the phone!  Now, I can converse intelligently with my nearly-grown daughter, and the boys are even old enough to really talk to.  And, they can do so much by themselves.  For example, yesterday afternoon the 8-year-old wanted some play dough.  He had come across a recipe in one of our science books.  I told him to make it himself.  He did, with only a little coaching while I was working nearby, and then he taught two of his brothers (10 and 6) how to, also!  He also made dinner rolls, but was confused about Tablespoons and teaspoons and used the wrong one to measure the salt!  Oops.  Now we know what happens to yeast when too much salt is put with it.  He made the rolls into tortillas instead and I’ll use them for a casserole that needs salt.

Notice the tabletop. So many blogs I read have pictures of immaculate kitchens. They always seem a bit unreal to me. This is very real life in our house! The ingredients for a meal or two are sitting there waiting to be used!