Random Photos

Here are the rest of my pictures from July. This month went by crazily fast! And, now that we’re in August, we’re very close to meeting the newest member of our family—hopefully, in about three more weeks.

Esther achieved a major goal in July—she passed the test for her full license! Now, she can take passengers with her. She also bought a car, a Honda Accord, which she’s quite happy with.

Mr. Intellectual finished this cup, made from four different types of wood. With all the glue that went into it, we advised him not to drink from it, so he’s using it for a pencil cup.

Another of Mr. Diligence’s pictures of big trucks! He saw this load of sheets of steel going past one day.

I asked the boys to recover the frame I used for starting seeds last year with new plastic. They decided to scrap it and build me a new one, twice the size, to better utilize the sheet of plastic they had available! It is now finished and waiting for baby plants.

Last weekend, Gayle and the younger boys dug the last of our potato crop. Mr. Imagination was delighted to find this enormous one, and brought it in to show me. See the weight?

Little Miss played with the potatoes in her own way. That big one is her; she’s the mother, sitting on stones, and her babies are on top of her. The other stack, just on the other side of her, is more of her children, also sitting on rocks.

We had nearly a bushel of potatoes that needed used quickly, so we cut a lot up Saturday night for Sunday dinner. They needed a lot of trimming, between stabs from the fork and the wireworms that our garden is infested with.

Grandma asked what Mr. Imagination has been building from legos. He took this picture for her, of his fire ship. See all the nozzles for spraying water?

We’ve had a busy month! Here are a few photos from the first couple of weeks of the month.

We’ve had a few sunrises! It’s been a very rainy month, but here is proof that occasionally we see a little sunshine (actually, this week has been sunny). The person walking along the road is Mr. Intellectual, heading down to bring up the milk for me.

Esther went to the library one day, and the little ones spent a lot of time that evening reading library books!

Every time a pilot vehicle goes past, Mr. Diligence tries to grab my camera to get a photo of whatever big thing is passing this time.

This is a kayak going down the Nile River!

Something that makes me very happy! Mr. Diligence actually reads for fun sometimes now. This has taken a lot of years and much hard work to accomplish. He discovered he can enjoy reading when he was sick in the States in February and didn’t have an audio book to listen to, but couldn’t do anything else.

A few years ago, my boys found a huge ball of yarn at the dump. It was hand-spun, and fairly loose; I suspect it was actually roving, which was intended to be spun into better yarn. I crocheted it into a rough rectangle, and now I’m making it into the inner for a baby-sized duvet. It smells of lanolin—a smell I love! I’ve gotten as far as sewing a cover over it, and sort of quilting it together with the sewing machine, and cutting out fabric patches for another, removable cover.

So, we wash a tub and put it outside in the sun to dry—and what does Goofball do? Ensure that we have to wash it again! Doesn’t she look happy.

Here are the rest of June’s random photos.

Little Miss got hold of my camera one afternoon and took a bunch of pictures of the toys she was playing with. I saved a couple I thought were interesting!

One Saturday evening, Simon went with me to milk. Because of the steep hill down which we have to go to reach the cow right now, and the fact that I’m pregnant, I need help carrying the bucket back up, so the bigger three boys all help out. Simon rarely gets the privilege, because he’s usually not home from work yet when I head down. This time, though, he needed a piece of wood for a project he was working on, so he took his ax along and accompanied me. Just after we left our street, Esther and Mr. Sweetie came up towards us from a walk around the block, so she took our picture.

All seven children played a game of Skip-Bo Golf together one Sunday evening!

Mr. Imagination created this deer for his daddy’s birthday present!

I was amused when this happened one evening! I was helping Simon with a lesson for his apprenticeship, since he has trouble reading, and Esther wanted input on an order she was putting through for me with some company.

Princess is rather a spoiled cat. She thinks the space in front of the fire belongs to her. A lot of mornings, she will sleep there with her paw tightly clamped around her eyes, like this!

Mr. Sweetie built this train track one day, then wanted to document it.

Little Miss draws a lot of pictures! This is a horse she drew for me a few weeks ago—see its hooves?

Mr. Diligence and a friend built this bike trailer for Mr. Imagination’s birthday. The little fellow has had a lot of fun pulling it around behind his bicycle.

Little Miss built a house in the living room one day.

Mr. Intellectual has done a lot of wood working lately. Here is one of his recent creations, a pancake turner from an old electric pole. The wood was very hard, but brittle, so this turner ended up breaking beyond repair, unfortunately. It was beautiful, though!

Simon can still get Mr. Diligence down!

One evening, the fire got going so hot that the children asked for marshmallows—and toasted them through the closed door! We’re being more careful now as to how full we load the stove with the offcuts from Gayle’s work at the mill.

When we were in America a few months ago, I was trying to explain to a few people exactly how small our kitchen is. These two pictures show all of my workspace. Quite often, the first step, when starting to cook a meal or do anything else in the kitchen, is to wash and dry dishes and get them put away.

A month or so ago, the electric line to the garage started blowing fuses. When Gayle and the boys looked into it, they found that a hole had been rusted through the box around the connections, and the wires inside were bare. No wonder it shorted! They got the wiring replaced, and decided to replace the old, rotting pole, as well. That turned out to be a huge ordeal; they had to chip through concrete several feet down. The replacement pole, while not new, is much better—and it, too is concreted in securely! This photo shows part of the process of chipping out the old concrete.

Mr. Intellectual has been enjoying making things out of wood lately. Here are two of his recent creations. I really like the pancake turner for doing stir-fries!

Mr. Imagination grabbed this winter radish and pretended to be a rhinoceros!

The younger children have harvested most of the pumpkins by now. They enjoyed all those different shapes and colors!

One evening, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss got out all their soft toys and lined them up on the couches. Someone enjoyed it enough to take a couple of pictures.

We had a few mornings chilly enough to start the fire in the living room. One of those times, someone noticed a flame coming out of the center of a log! He was impressed with it and wanted a picture.

As part of the process of installing fibre optic cables in our village, the company had to put everything back into the state it was in before they started working. The last step was to put some tarseal on our driveway where they had cut through to put the cable in. The boys really enjoyed watching that!

Whew…I’ve been getting a bit behind. I really don’t recommend taking a three-week trip overseas in the middle of summer, then trying to jump right back into school and preserving the harvest when you get home, if you want to stay on top of things. And then, of course, pregnancy to add to the mix…and a three-day trip to the other side of the island last weekend…well, anyway, here are the last few photos from January. Sometime this week I hope to look through memory cards again so I can start catching up on everything that’s been happening since the middle of February!

The canoe got its last strips inserted, and Mr. Intellectual finished sanding the outside, before we left. They got the fibreglass they need to cover it, but haven’t started that process yet.

When we see an escort vehicle go past with an “Oversize Vehicle” sign on it, we usually watch to see what is coming. Usually, we see a large digger (excavator), but sometimes it’s something more exciting, like this bulldozer from a gold mine near Reefton. This machine is HUGE!

Here is a more common sight. I think a little boy was experimenting with my camera to see how he could best get pictures of vehicles going past.

This was one of our first harvests of zucchini. Isn’t it pretty? We’ve had many times more than this with subsequent harvests; I’m very happy with a number of the crops from the garden.

Here is a bellbird, as the flax blossoms were coming to an end.

One day, the boys picked a bunch of peas from a neighbor’s field, after he offered us what we wanted. The boys spent the morning building a pea sheller. It worked well—for a few minutes. Then, something stripped out and they finished the job by hand!

We sure enjoyed the kittens before they went to new homes!