Random Photos

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.

Here are the rest of our pictures from December! One Sunday afternoon, Gayle took the girls on a walk down to the river. They found a field of wildflowers.

Elijah found this interesting moth somewhere.

James has been working diligently on his sleepout. Here was the first of three coats of paint to go on. His little sisters were delighted to help!

Little Miss took this picture to illustrate a story she wrote about her chores, which include feeding a bottle to the calf.

After our budgie died in July or August, the cockatiel got very depressed. We finally got him a friend, hoping to cheer him up, but it was too late and he died a few days later. So, we got another budgie to keep the new one company, and we have two birds again! The blue one is a very young male. Some friends had a pair and hatched this one; we got it when it was old enough to leave them. The green one is a female. They get along very well. We named the blue one Reepicheep and the green one Jewel, since Esther had just finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia aloud.

The hollyhocks are blooming, so many dolls get made!

One afternoon I walked down the hill to have a look at the chickens, and took this picture up the valley from there.

Daddy was taking a nap, and when Miss Joy noticed the cat sleeping with him, she joined them.

It rained on Christmas Day. A lot of the day was spent playing games, but for awhile some of the fellows worked on denailing some timber that James had salvaged.

As always, we enjoyed seeing the tuis and bellbirds drinking nectar from the flax blossoms.

The big project during the Christmas holidays was building a new garage at Simon’s house to replace the one they tore down over a year ago when it threatened to fall down.

Here are the rest of the pictures I found from August. I finally had time to look at memory cards and phones again!

This is a normal sight at 9:30 each evening. Just before I go to bed, I feed the cats so that this one goes outside for the night. She won’t let me forget to feed them! She is friendlier at that time of day than any other time.

This was one of the t-shirt dresses I made for Miss Joy this winter.

Little Miss took this picture of her flower garden to send to Esther while she was in America.

One day, I noticed that the bag of kindling had a lot of pieces of wood that were nice for building blocks. I suggested that Miss Joy do something with them. She spent a couple of hours playing with those blocks, pretending various things with them. The piece leaning against the couch at an angle is a scanner for credit cards. Watch the video to see what else she was pretending!

Little Miss used some of the blocks, too, as well as all of the Jenga blocks, to make a line of “dominoes.”

Simon bought a hut that someone wanted to get moved off a local farm. We went one day to watch it be picked up and moved to his property.

The little girls like to make huts in the living room!

Elijah finished his apprenticeship! He is very happy to have that behind him and to be a fully-qualified carpet- and vinyl-layer.

Little chicks, a day or two after hatching.

Miss Joy wanted to have a candle-lit meal for her birthday celebration, so we did.

She also wanted candles on her dessert, which was ambrosia, a mixture of yogurt, whipped cream, berries, and chocolate. We don’t normally do candles, but I did get some for her.

Here are the rest of the pictures I have in my computer from these months. It’s time to sort through everyone’s photos again!

This picture should have gone with the post about building the new library shelves. A few days before Elijah built them, the younger boys and I painted them. It was the middle of winter and very cold, so paint dried very slowly–unless it was in the sun. So, we set the boards in the sun at the end of our driveway and got started as soon as it was almost warm enough. That was about 11:00, and there was still frost in the shade. The paint dried fast enough in the sun that we were able to do another coat every hour, until about 3:00 when we lost the sun. At that point, we moved them into the garage and did the last coat in there, then locked the cats out for the night and left the boards to dry overnight. It worked!

Because both Esther and Simon had birthdays while Esther, James and Mr. Sweetie were in America, we celebrated them early on an evening when Simon was here. Esther made him a trifle, and I surprised her with meringues that I made while she was away the morning before. We rarely have dessert, so having two desserts was fun!

Little girls + flowers = beauty!

James has been working on his sleepout when he gets the chance.

Mr. Imagination has been helping me with the incubator this winter. Here are a couple of pictures he took when we candled the eggs for the first batch. The first is an egg that hasn’t started to develop yet; we candle them before they go into the incubator, to check for cracks in the shell. The second is an egg we took out halfway through incubation. It has a blood line across the middle, indicating that the chick started to develop, and then died. He tried to get a picture of a viable embryo, but it came out so dark I couldn’t see anything.

I found this picture when I sorted them–someone was playing!

Esther bought a game to take with her and play en route to America. Her little sisters love to make patterns with the blocks.

The first hatch was very successful–80% of the eggs produced live chicks!