Random Photos

Here are the rest of my pictures from January. The big project in January was to replace the roof of our church, Reefton Baptist. The building is an old A-frame Scout hall. The first picture here was the day they trimmed trees away from the building and took part of a wall off, and started taking the top off the chimney.

The next Saturday, more people went. They took off the old roof and replaced it, and a couple of people spent the whole day jackhammering and sawing the chimney to finish taking it down below the level of the roof. They had the building water-tight by late that night.

Little Miss wanted a picture of my harvest one morning.

One day, Mom and I took the three youngest on a walk to the bridge. We located all three geocaches that are around the bridge–what fun!

Esther was in Timaru for a couple of weeks in January, and one evening she sent me a picture of the sunset. I returned the favor–ours was more brilliant!

The budgies are tamer all the time. Mr. Imagination enjoys them.

So do the girls!

When I went to the greenhouse one day to work, I found two cats enjoying the dry warmth in there!

A friend of ours bought a berry farm last year. He allowed us to come in and pick crops that would be going to waste. These were blueberry bushes in among tayberries. We came home with enough blueberries to last us most of the year!

Picking peas and beans is very enjoyable–see all the colors!

I’m not going to attempt to organize these pictures into categories. I’ve had enough trouble getting anything posted that I’ll just put them up in a few posts.

We finally threw this old foam mattress out, after it hadn’t been used in many years and was just taking up valuable space. The girls had fun with it for a couple of days, and then Mr. Imagination cut it into pieces for archery targets.

Some friends from Australia came to visit one evening, and the girls appropriated the man’s hat and sunglasses for a little while!

The cat got dressed up, too. Think she liked it?

One of Mr. Imagination’s knives.

One Sunday we had lunch with and spent the afternoon with some friends at Maruia. They have an outdoor aviary with a number of budgies, and the girls enjoyed seeing them.

This is the view from their deck, as one storm after another rolled through the mountains.

We did a lot of puzzles with Mom. That was a great way to spend relaxed time together! This first one was Miss Joy’s; the others were a group effort.

We had another hatch of chicks in January. After I took them out, while the unhatched eggs were still in the incubator, Princess took a nap with them. As soon as I started picking them up, to take them outside and open them to see what went wrong, she was wide awake. She knows that they will be her snack!

I have not been keeping up with posting photos of our life very well! I guess this will just be a photo dump from November. Can you guess who took the first one? Yes, the cat lover–Miss Joy!

I’m guessing one of the girls took this picture, too, of a snail on the lemon tree.

Little Miss climbed the tall tree in our garden one day and took a lot of pictures. Our parking area was almost empty that day! The pink house is ours.

I took this picture one day while we were preparing the garden for planting. It sure looks different now! It’s a jungle today.

We were pulling up self-sown parsnips in this area.

We had visitors one day and I grabbed a picture of the water-gun fight to send to the friend who gave them the water guns.

When the children came inside a little while later they were cold, so Miss Joy got a pan of warm water for herself, and shared it with her three friends!

The greenhouse blew apart in the big storm the end of October, so the boys spent a couple of Saturdays rebuilding it. It is very nice now, except that the end wall still needs covered.

Towards evening, we heard the ice cream truck come through our village. A couple of the boys ran out to buy ice creams for everyone–think they enjoyed their treat?

Elijah saw the Southern Lights on the way home from work one night, and was able to capture them with his phone.

I think these two pictures should actually have been in the October post. We had a big truckload of compost delivered, and it had to be dumped on the edge of the street, so we spent an entire afternoon working hard and fast to move half of it in order to clear off the tarseal. We were glad, a few days later, that we had done that when the ambulance came to pick up the lady who lives in that house beside our garden. (This is the end of the street–it just stops there.)

Another cat-lover’s picture?

Sighting in the slingshot rifle he built. He actually killed a starling with it!

Here are the rest of the pictures I have from before we left home for our visit to the United States.

A new house is being built in front of us. The man for whom James and Joe work was hired to do the job. One day when they ran out of other work, they started building wall frames. It was pouring that morning, so James threw up a roof to shelter the saw.

By evening of the second day, they had all the frames built and stacked up–and then the boss dropped his nail gun down the stack! Joe was the only one small enough to climb down and get it; the other option was to unscrew the frames and dismantle the stack!

I went out and offered to take a picture of them with their pile.

Simon went hunting one night and got a pig. We turned all of it into sausage meat, and while I was mincing it, the girls used it for playdough. (Hands washed before and after!)

I loved seeing so many of my children lined up one evening, so tried taking a picture. Well, did you know what happens when a flash is used with hi-vis clothing? Rather startling!

I spent a lot of time sewing for the girls in preparation for our trip. I found simple patterns for both their sizes, and had a lot of fun. It’s satisfying to create something pretty as well as useful.

The girls got the Jenga blocks out to play with.

More work on the new house. This was assembling the forms to pour the pad. It was a different system than they have ever used before, and they aren’t impressed with the price. James is at the right in orange; Joe is in the middle with yellow rain pants.

The day I went to town to buy a washer, I stopped on the way home to take a picture of the cloud flowing across the Brunner Gorge near Dobson.

The chicken house that burned down is being replaced! By the time I left, there were walls and rafters, but I hadn’t gotten a picture.

Apparently, Joe was trying out a remote to take a picture from my phone, and he and a visiting friend were having fun!

This is a Bowie knife that Mr. Imagination made. I told him it must remain hidden!

I feel like I’m getting very behind with posting photos of our life. Let’s see what I can do today! Gayle took several of the children to the sea one Sunday evening to go fishing with a friend who has a long-line. This was the only fish they caught. Several of the rest of us stayed home and watched The King’s Speech, which is a movie with a wonderful story, but too much profanity for a family movie.

People around here often think of Grandma when they see interesting things in nature. Not sure if you like pictures of big spiders, but here’s one!

Mr. Imagination found this moth at Elijah’s house. I’ve never seen a green moth!

Our chicken coop burned down one early morning. That is a terrible way to be awakened, in case you didn’t know. We lost most of the chicks that were in it (a heat lamp fell down on the bedding), but a few lived. We took the little ones into the house to keep them warm, and the children enjoyed playing with them for a few days.

Gayle took the girls down to the river one day and they had fun there.

This part of the garden was beautiful all summer! I’ve started planting flowers in this bed, beside the driveway. It quickly turns into an overgrown riot of color.

We also had humor in the garden. I have so much trouble getting carrots to germinate that last year, in desperation, I started some in punnets and then set them out. They grew extremely twisted. Esther refuses to use them if she can help it, but they are rather funny!

One of the boys bought himself a set of tools, and they all loved investigating them.

Miss Joy and Little Miss must have taken pictures of each other goofing around in Elijah’s room while they were moving their things from that room back to their own.

The girls showed me this picture, and I thought these were large-scale weapons. Then, they showed me the real thing–they were about 3 inches long, made of dried grass and twigs!

James went to the first auction of his life and got some good deals. He bought these enormous steel beams for only $20! Then, he had to figure out how to get them home. He enlisted several brothers, a sister and a friend, and they spent an hour or so man-handling them onto the trailer. He brought them home overnight, and then got help to unload them at Simon’s house. He mentioned them to some dairy-farmer friends, and they needed beams to build a bridge, so he sold them for many times what he paid, and passed the money along to those who helped him.

We were eating dinner one evening when a pilot vehicle came past slowly. Then another… and then we saw this house pull up and stop at the end of our street! It stayed there for over half an hour while the truck unhooked and went to the trucking yard across from us to refuel.

I went with the boys to work at Elijah’s house one day, and they found an advertisement from Pizza Hut in the letter box. That made Simon hungry for pizza, so they bought enough for the family for dinner.

I got started writing this post last week. I had the first paragraph halfway written when the notice popped up that I was offline and the post could not be saved. I waited five minutes, because our internet randomly flicks off, and then comes back a little later. Then, we realized that there were only two websites that were not coming up–my blog and Internet Archive, from which Esther was trying to read a book. I restarted both modems, and got the same results. I gave up. Three hours later, both websites were loading again! So, I didn’t give you a post last week. Today, I actually have some time to think!

This summer has been even more jam-packed than usual. Not only do we have the normal garden work and preserving of the harvest to work on, but add in three renovation projects as well, and you can imagine what life has been like here! One project is finished, one is close enough to put it on hold for a little while. Elijah’s house is still a main focus. I have spent most of my Saturdays for the past six or seven weeks there, helping to paint. We can see the end in sight now, though! I should be able to share pictures of a finished project soon.

Meanwhile, here are the pictures I have left from the first two months of the year.

Over the Christmas break, the boys built a garage at Simon’s house. I only went over there once, but a friend sent me a couple of pictures he took of the boys working, and I grabbed a picture near the end of the project. I just realized I don’t have a picture of the finished building!

Mr. Imagination built several live traps. He tested them with the cats, and they worked for that–but no possums have been caught. He gave up on that project. (The cats were quite happy to be trapped, as long as it meant they got extra cat food!)

I was in the garden one day, and Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her with her hollyhock dolls.

I’m not sure what this was about–but it’s a shot of Elijah, taken by a friend who sent it to me.

Miss Joy is quite a writer! She frequently dictates stories, and one day she dictated this original poem, and the explanation for it.

Little Miss took a picture of Miss Joy inside these tubs. See her eyes peeking out?

After I harvested the first lot of onions in mid-January, I asked the children to braid them for me. They were happy to do that job, as long as they could listen to an audiobook while they did it!

This was the onions before braiding, when we laid them out to cure for a day or two in the sun.

James got his sleepout finished in early January. He used recycled rimu boards for the walls, and oiled them with linseed oil he was given. The ceiling is white-painted plywood, and Elijah laid secondhand carpet for him. This room is quite a comfortable place for James, Joe, and Simon when he’s here.

Elijah’s room has had a complete face-lift in the past six months. I don’t have any recent pictures, but this was Simon oiling the lower part of the wall in January. Those boards were originally on the walls, in that position. They were painted with a thick coat of yellow paint. Elijah was able to remove them carefully enough that he could line the lower part of the walls with them again after running them through a thicknesser to remove the paint and sand them down, and then they put a couple of coats of linseed oil from James’s drum on it. The upper part of the walls is plywood, and has now been whitewashed. The effect is beautiful!

Some of the random pictures I find on my phone!

A sunset over the mountains.

Mr. Imagination brought this bug in to show me one day. It was tiny!

Our first homeschool group meeting of the year was a picnic at Nelson Creek. It rained right after we got there, but then the sky cleared and it was perfect for swimming. See the boys up the bank, just above the midpoint of the picture? They jumped from there into the water.

We really enjoy these birds. The blue one, Reepicheap, is very active and curious, which makes him very fun.

Simon spray-painting the lounge ceiling in Elijah’s house. He has done a lot of painting there. This was immediately after he started; within minutes he had gotten hold of a respirator to wear for the rest of the job.

Little Miss sometimes helps Miss Joy with her flashcards. They like to make a game of it!

Esther made a pretty cake one day. I think it was a yellow cake; it had strawberries and raspberries on it.