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You are here: Home / Archives for Random Photos

Random Photos

Around Our House

August 18, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I looked at Mr. Sweetie’s memory card recently, and found some nice pictures he took out our bay window. These first three pictures show the view from the end of our living room that faces the street we live on. There are three other houses on this short street, which has no exit; we can easily see two of them. The local school is just beyond the buildings at the end of the street, in the third picture.

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This is the view out our street, across the highway. A trucking company is based there, and for a few days last month they were fixing this digger. I think they took the tracks off and fixed them, then put them back on. Of course, the activity over there is rather distracting on some school mornings!

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A tall tower!

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We can see the tops of some of the Paparoa’s over the neighbor’s garage. When they have snow on them, and the early morning sun hits them, the sight is stunningly beautiful!

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How do you like that mischievous look on Little Miss’s face?

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I found Princess sitting in the washer one evening. She was hiding from her daughter, Grizzly, in the next picture. There is all-out war between the cats a lot of the time now. During the day, Princess disappears; she spends a lot of time at the school.

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Doesn’t Grizzly look scary? Princess thinks so—but Goofball is worse; she actually chases her mother.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Ahaura, cats, Random Photos, West Coast

June 2018 Pictures

August 4, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Oops! Here we are in August, and I just realized I haven’t shared the last few miscellaneous photos from June!

When we were in Cheviot in May, a lady we visited gave Little Miss a packet of heart-shaped beads she had bought and saved to give to some little girl. I helped her get them strung one day, and she’s been wearing her bead string around her neck a lot.

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I asked Mr. Sweetie one day to get a picture of our cow. The house directly across the road, on the right of the picture, is ours.

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For two months I have been taking Esther and Simon to town to practice driving. Esther successfully got her driver license about a month ago, and Simon this week, so we don’t have to do that anymore! One of those days, we drove out on the north breakwater at the mouth of the Grey River. The mountains were so clear that day—it was gorgeous! I zoomed in with my camera, hoping to capture the scene, but this comes nowhere close to showing the real beauty of it. The car in the picture is on the south breakwall.

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We see a lot of rainbows here! This was out the bay window in our living room one morning.

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I love seeing my boys working with their daddy! This is Simon helping Gayle cut firewood to length.

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Mr. Sweetie and Little Miss visiting the cow. Unfortunately, we discovered about the time this picture was taken that she had slipped her calf, and as a result we had to give her up. We don’t have feed for a pet this size. One of those hard things in life….

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Ahaura, Random Photos, West Coast

May 2018 photos

June 16, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of my pictures from May. The little boys built this castle in the sandbox one day. Mr. Sweetie found his Ecuadoran flag (from Let’s Go Geography) and flew it from the top turret.

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One Tuesday evening near the beginning of May, a car crashed in the paddock across the road from us after a 6-hour high-speed chase. The boys (and some of the rest of us) spent a lot of the next two hours watching the police tracking down the driver, who had taken off on foot, and the tow truck loading up the car, which was escorted by the police back to town. The really amazing thing about this crash was how the fence of the paddock was flung up and over our cow who was standing just inside the fence; the car passed a meter behind her.

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On a sunny day, we can see these mountains, the Paparoas, from the girls’ bedroom window. This was a rare clear sunrise, with snow on the mountains.

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We find Goofball sleeping in the most contorted postitions!06-IMG_4566

Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligent rebuilding the fence destroyed by the car.

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Esther likes to raise bread in front of the stove in the living room. Goofball paid no attention, but Grizzly was very suspicious of it—maybe she could hear the yeast working in the bowl?

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Simon bought another car in May, a Suzuki. When the neighbor asked about it, I said, “My son is a mechanic. Need I say more?”

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We see a lot of rainbows here! This was one I could see one afternoon from my kitchen window. The end of the rainbow is at the edge of the paddock we use for our cow, where the car crashed.

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We spent a weekend in late May in Canterbury, and one of our days over there I took the children to Kaikoura. We enjoyed watching abseilers at work on the cliff faces.

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This house surprised us. During a cyclone a couple of weeks after we moved, a new slip came down and filled the house with rocks and dirt! Some of the walls were bulging out.

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We also spent a few minutes at Gore Bay, where the boys tried to move a log into the water.33-IMG_4604

We played on the playground for a few minutes, and Mr. Sweetie climbed his favorite net.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home, Away From Home Tagged With: Ahaura, Canterbury, Cheviot, Kaikoura, Random Photos, West Coast

March 2018 Pictures

April 21, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We were amused when we looked out one day and saw this truck, with its two very different trailers, stopped on the highway in front of us.

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Mr. Intellectual is still working through the Thinking Like an Engineer course that we got for review in October. He recently built this paper marble roller (this is the first step):

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Mr. Diligence had to look at an atlas one day for school. He complained about the assignment, but then I found him and Mr. Sweetie studying it for a few days afterward!

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Grandma recorded herself reading some picture books that we have, and Little Miss is loving having Grandma read to her! She quickly caught on to turning the pages at the bell, and is good at following along. Even though Grandma lives 9,000 miles away, we can still hear her voice! Esther helped with the first book, but since then, Little Miss is doing it herself.

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I chuckled one day when I saw Goofball watching intently as Mr. Imagination told himself a story while he washed his hands!

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My garden in March. It looks pretty bad now, since we had a hard frost.

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Mr. Imagination was given a toolchest and tools for his birthday, from his brothers and sister, and his daddy and I gave him the watercolor set.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Ahaura, Random Photos, West Coast

February 2018 Photos

April 3, 2018 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

The day before we moved, this cat knew something was awry. She was very restless, but she did settle down in the rag basket for awhile—I thought it looked like she was trying to shut the world out!

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The view from our new living room. This is a frequent sight—rain!

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Little Miss has started “feeding” her baby lately.

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We enjoyed some gorgeous scenery on our way to Christchurch in late February. There had just been a cyclone, and the tops of some of the mountains had snow on them.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Ahaura, Random Photos, West Coast

January 2018 Pictures

February 24, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Ok, time to catch up with January pictures. These are the last ones from Cheviot, as we prepared to move.

On New Year’s Day, we were able to do a video call with Gayle’s family in America. It was fun to be able to see them! Little Miss was fascinated, and made sure she was right in front of Esther’s phone all the time.

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The cats find the most interesting places to sleep!

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An aunt in America sent these balloons. Little Miss and Mr. Imagination had a lot of fun with them—until they popped.

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I took this picture to send to the person who gave her the dress.

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One afternoon I went into Esther’s room to talk to her. Grizzly came along, and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She immediately arched her back and fluffed her tail, staring at that strange cat. She spent 5-10 minutes absolutely terrified, and of course, Esther teased her by moving the mirror closer—which sent Grizzly, hissing and spitting, under the bed!

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Two weeks before moving day, we had a Saturday afternoon with not much that had to be done, so we decided to go to the beach. There were too many people at Gore Bay for our liking, so we went to Manuka Bay. See where Gayle is sitting, under the rock? The tide was coming in, and every so often a wave would come right up to him. He managed to push himself up on his hands enough that he didn’t get very wet—but after awhile he gave up and found another shady spot to rest.

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Mr. Imagination lined all the teddy bears he could find up on my chair one day.

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Mr. Sweetie made this boat for Little Miss for her birthday.

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The day we loaded the container, a week before moving, one of the boys discovered a turkey hen with six or seven babies. We normally take the babies away as soon as they hatch, but these were about three weeks old—she had been hiding well! We had quite the chase to catch them; they were already able to fly.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Canterbury, Cheviot, Miller Street house, Random Photos

December 2017 Pictures

January 23, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon helped me harvest the garlic on Christmas Day. We got 89 heads from an area about a meter square. 14-IMG_3928

We’re having a problem with fleas on the kittens. I don’t want to spend $30 each to buy the pour-on stuff from the vet, because the mama cat would just lick it right off and I don’t think that would be good for her, so we’re dusting them with diatomaceous earth every 2-3 days. They hate it!

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This cat has always loved to sit in boxes—but I think she found one almost too small for her, this time!

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This hen hatched six babies right after Christmas. We were able to sell the mother and all the babies.

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The positions we find the kittens in are sometimes pretty funny!

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Canterbury, cats, Cheviot, Garden, Kittens, Miller Street house, Random Photos

Just for Grandma

January 20, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are a couple of pictures just for Grandma’s benefit.

This is a Sandy-Tongued Paint Gobbler. We have finally discovered what they look like! (For the benefit of everyone else, we were discussing, when Grandma was here a year ago, why the roads going up to Arthur’s Pass had very little paint on them, and concluded that this creature must come out at night and eat it up. We didn’t know what they looked like, but when we got hold of some craft supplies a month ago, the little boys created models of them!)

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Do you remember this pair of pants? I have finally retired them. I believe you made them for one of my brothers, and then passed them on to another family, who then passed them to us. I think most of our boys wore them. Good fabric!

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

November 2017 Pictures

December 21, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 3 Comments

Here are the rest of November’s pictures.

The kittens were born about the middle of November, and we have really been enjoying them. I allowed Mr. Imagination to choose one to keep, since he so badly wants a pet of his own. He chose this one, and was thrilled when her eyes opened and he could hold her.

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For Mr. Diligence’s birthday, some friends came, and the boys went on a 31 kilometer bike ride around the area.

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School time!

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Esther helped Mr. Imagination make peanut butter balls one day. Little Miss enjoyed helping, too—and they both loved eating them!

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The roses are a bit past their peak now, but a few weeks ago Mr. Imagination picked a bunch and made this arrangement!

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Mr. Intellectual’s science experiment to show how the diaphragm and lungs work.

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He has also been trying to work out how to make a small hot air balloon. So far, none of his designs has been light enough to get off the ground, and now that we’re back into a bad drought, he has to halt his experiments so he won’t cause a fire.

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They attached a fishing line to the balloon, in case it would rise.

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The geese and 3-week-old goslings.

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The kittens at a day old.

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Everyone was rather distracted one morning when a trucker came to take away a truck trailer that had been here for years. Mr. Intellectual helped him load some other stuff on his truck as well, to take to the owners of this place. My little people really enjoyed watching the crane in action! Mr. Sweetie took his schoolbook outside so he could work while he watched. He actually got a little done!

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Canterbury, Cheviot, Miller Street house, Random Photos

October 2017 Pictures

November 4, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of the pictures from October!

It’s hard to see in this picture, but one thing they’ve done to stabilize this cliff face is to put black netting over the loose rocks. You can see it on the left side of the top.

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These are five-ton blocks of concrete—and a slip pushed them over!

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Mr. Intellectual is doing a course called “Thinking Like an Engineer.” He’s loving it, especially the experiments. In this one, he had to pile books an inch above the floor, using one sheet of printer paper. You’ll have to wait till I write the review of the course to see how tall a stack he achieved!

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Mr. Sweetie built this stack of animals, and then took 16 pictures of it!

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This was the latest dump find. Mr. Intellectual is loving his “new” roll-top desk!

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We got out the microscope one day to look at some algae. It was still out several days later when I was cutting up meat, so we looked at that, too.

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The first picture is skeletal muscle; the second is cardiac muscle. Mr. Intellectual had just been studying about these muscles a few days before, so this was a timely opportunity.

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Mr. Imagination and Little Miss spend most of the morning playing together while the bigger boys do school. They got out the rocking horse one day and had great fun on it for a long time.

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Little Miss can spend hours playing with these tiny animals. She loves sorting them.

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One day, Little Miss wanted to paint, so I gave her a brush and a bucket of water and told her to paint the house.

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Mr. Imagination was delivering quite a fiery sermon to his brother and sister! I enjoyed listening, while I picked lettuce nearby and pretended not to pay attention.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home, Away From Home Tagged With: Canterbury, Cheviot, Miller Street house, Random Photos

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The Family:


Dad and Mom (Gayle and Emma)

Girl #1, Esther, my right hand

Boy #1, Seth (Mr. Handyman)

Boy #2, Simon (Mr. Inventor)

Boy #3, Mr. Intellectual

Boy #4, Mr. Diligence

Boy #5, Mr. Sweetie

Boy #6, Mr. Imagination

Girl #2, Little Miss

Girl #3, Miss Joy

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