Random Photos

I think this happens every year–we take so many pictures early in the year that I get way behind with posting them, and then in the winter we nearly hibernate and I get all caught up. One of the younger girls took this picture one sunny day, and I loved it. Notice Princess, to the far left? She is convinced that all cats are terrible–even though those other two are her daughters. Grizzly, the one to the far right, is the fattest cat I’ve ever had. She weighs 7 kilograms.

This was a wedding the girls held one day. It took a lot of ingenuity to make the audience sit up.

Toothpick arrows to go with a miniature bow.

We played Code Names one day, and this boy decided to model the spy look.

The girls decorated a bicycle one day.

Reepicheep loves wet lettuce. First he bathes himself by rubbing all over it, and then eats it. Usually he gets it in his cage, but someone gave him some in the window one day.

This clown makes funny faces! He thought he turned it off before I took a picture…

The little girls fixed a tea party for Esther and I one sunny afternoon. They had great fun!

For her birthday meal, Miss Joy wanted Ambrosia.

This is the time of year for rainbows!

There are just a few more photos left from June that I haven’t used yet! I took this first one when we spent a day in town. We ate lunch at the Greymouth breakwall at the mouth of the Grey River. It was a beautiful day, and we could see the snow-capped Southern Alps way off in the distance, including Mount Cook. If you can zoom in enough, you should be able to see them just right of the center of the horizon.

I spent an afternoon cleaning dead bean vines off the trellis, and Miss Joy helped me. She wanted to climb as high as she could!

Her sharp eyes spotted a spider on this post. I had a hard time seeing it with the naked eye, and it’s harder yet in this picture! It’s along the left side, just below center.

Miss Joy wanted a picture of her hair done up like this when the girls were playing one afternoon.

This was the front view of her costume!

Esther came across a series on YouTube about life in Tudor England, and after watching one episode, Mr. Imagination and the girls created this eel trap. They decided, after completing it and watching an eel go in, grab the bait and go back out, that our eels are longer than English eels. Needless to say after that, they haven’t caught anything.

A lot of things happened in May! Here are the rest of our photos that we wanted to share. This first one was taken when Elijah was experimenting with the camera on his new phone. He took it down the hill when he was taking care of the chickens one evening as the moon rose.

Elijah took this one when he went up the road one day to try to find a place where he didn’t have cell service. He’s been paying for satellite connectivity for a few months, but it wasn’t working, so he kept testing different things and communicating with his phone company about it. They finally found a setting that was not turned on, in his phone. He thought I would like to see this waterfall (I did!).

Two friends (Mr. Imagination and a friend of his) eating jalapenos. These jalapenos hardly have any spice–very disappointing! I think I watered them too much.

Simon spent a week cutting and welding to mount a winch on his Land Rover.

The girls spent an evening building a zoo.

This is a space right next to our church in Reefton.

My last hatching of chicks for the season. That batch of eggs wasn’t very fertile; I only ended up with 31 babies from 56 eggs.

There was a large patch of these toadstools at a place where we had a homeschool gathering. Before Little Miss could get a picture, though, most had been knocked over.

Ahh… a fire!

Esther came upon a fascinating YouTube channel about Tudor farm life. After we watched one segment, Little Miss created paint brushes the way it was done then.

As I was working in the garden one day, Miss Joy joined me and spent a long time investigating earthworms!

Another day, she helped Esther peel garlic to put in the freezer, so that she could watch the video about 19th-century breadmaking that Esther had playing.

A woolen blanket next to the fire! What bliss. It didn’t matter to Princess that the shape was bumpy.

Esther went away for a weekend, and the girls decorated their room to welcome her home.

Joe wanted another picture of his screw when he had another checkup.

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!