Random Photos

Mr. Sweetie’s Pictures, Part 3

June 24, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This is the last set of his pictures for now. This is Esther at her desk in her new bedroom, which was our schoolroom.

I’m not sure why he took this picture! It is one of my favorite history resources.

The bike trailer Mr. Inventor built for Mr. Diligence. They painted it with paint they got free from the dump. The dump, actually a transfer station, is at the end of our road, and the two boys go there at least once a week to see what treasures they can find.

The trailer Mr. Inventor built for himself.

A conference between Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence.

Mr. Handyman.

Mr. Imagination.

Mr. Sweetie’s Pictures, Part 2

June 23, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

More pictures that 5-year-old Mr. Sweetie took on my camera. All these were taken across the driveway north of the house. One of many old vehicles that litter this place, this is a tow truck. If I remember the story correctly, the owner of the place sold this truck to someone a long time ago, and it hasn’t been picked up.

Our house and container from the tow truck.

The younger boys collected acorns awhile ago, and Mr. Diligence put his in this hole.

I guess they weren’t all taken from across the driveway. The picture above is back on this side. The creek hasn’t had any water in it since October. The picture below is taken in the yard between the middle and south driveways. (Yes, this five-acre parcel has three driveways! We have two blocked off with fences to keep wandering sheep out.)

Mr. Sweetie’s Pictures, Part 1

June 22, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Sweetie loves to take pictures. A few weeks ago he took my camera one Saturday afternoon, and took somewhere around a couple hundred pictures! I didn’t save all of them, but here is a nice selection. Gayle and Mr. Handyman were fixing a set of shelves given to us by the local farm store. That’s Mr. Inventor holding his baby sister.

The workshop part of the garage.

Mr. Imagination.

Mr. Diligence’s garden.

The house, from the other side of the garden.

May Pictures

June 19, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

First, a couple of pictures of Mr. Imagination:

We have some enormous carrots in the garden.

This stove is wonderful—we are warm this winter. I found this picture on Mr. Diligence’s memory card. That’s Mr. Sweetie on the right.

Our mobile flycatcher kept visiting until the weather got cold enough we no longer left the door open.

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence built this shed a few months ago. They recently put a door on it and built shelves inside to keep their tools organized.

Baby got her first “horsey rides” a few weeks ago, with help from Big Sis. The first picture shows her on Mr. Diligence, with Mr. Sweetie in the background, and she’s riding on Mr. Imagination in the second.

Mr. Diligence doesn’t always like to have his picture taken!

We recently bought The Timechart History of the World. It is a huge timeline in a book, which unfolds to 6 meters. I highly recommend this to any family! The amount of information in it is staggering. We’re using small post-it notes to add the books we’re reading so we can see where they fit into history.

Extra April Pictures

May 3, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Sweetie dressed up to go “tramping’

I’m not sure what is happening here, but this is Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination.

Our sweet baby girl likes the Bumbo we just got for her.

She rediscovered her tongue, and spent several days sticking it out. It’s a good thing that baby tongues are cute!

She discovered her feet a week ago—but forgot about them again.

Sunrise one morning; I think Mr. Handyman took this.

This little girl was practicing making funny faces Sunday evening, and her brothers and sister were in stitches!

When Martha was about six weeks old, a friend brought some of her friends, who were visiting from the North Island, when she came for milk. The woman she brought was from South Africa originally, and got started telling stories about the wildlife there and some safaris she had been on. The boys were all ears, and apparently the woman really liked the audience she found here. When our friend was up north recently and visited her friends, she was given a bag of gifts for us! The South African woman had made a small quilt for each of our two little ones! This is Mr. Imagination excitedly naming the African animals on his quilt; our little girl’s quilt is on the back of the chair.

More March Pictures

April 17, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Just a few more pictures I thought some of you might enjoy.

One morning, Esther looked out the window and thought she saw something white in the sheep’s water barrel. That seemed strange, so she called Mr. Intellectual to come see what he thought it was. They both had the same thought—a turkey—so he raced outside to see. Sure enough, one of the half-grown turkeys was in the water. It was still alive, so he pulled it out and they wrapped it in a towel, then put it in front of a heater for several hours till it recovered.

The eight baby turkeys only stayed in the house a few days, but we enjoyed them while they were there. It was nice to be able to send them out to the chicken coop after a week or two, though! That many babies fill up the box in a hurry. A couple of the boys built a new bridge across the dry creek in the front yard, using gates. This is Mr. Diligence on the bridge and Mr. Inventor in the creek.

Mr. Imagination had a birthday in March! He’s now three. That is him, as well, beside a barrel—just a random shot his sister got.

This was the first pumpkin we picked this year. The boys had fun bringing it in and cutting it open. Unfortunately, it didn’t taste that good. We raised some Atlantic Giants last year, and obviously the pumpkin we saved seed from had cross-pollinated with the Atlantic Giant, which is watery and tasteless. The cow likes these, though!

Early March Pictures (with cute little turkeys)

March 25, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Somebody (probably Joseph, but I’m not altogether sure) got hold of my camera during school the other day, so here are a couple of pictures in the school room.

This is our bedroom:

These cute baby turkeys hatched Saturday. Boy #2 was excited when he discovered six babies from the nine eggs, and then two more appeared later! They can sure hide. We had to take them away from the mother, though. It’s not safe to let them free-range, since we have hawks and ferrets, and we couldn’t catch the mother to put them in a pen. So, we have eight baby turkeys in the kitchen. Their owner loves to swat flies and feed them to the babies, and they love the flies.

Our onion crop, 110 onions drying, waiting to be braided:

February Pictures

March 24, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I’m not sure what was happening in this picture, but I thought it was a cute one of James and Nathan.

A late-evening game of Dutch Blitz (thanks to one of my sisters, we can now all play at once—thank you!).Left to right are James, Elijah, Seth, Simon, and Joseph, and Esther.

Here are some pictures taken on the way to church by Joseph. Most of the pictures he took were too blurry or sideways, but there were a few good ones. The first is along the Kaikoura coast, with a railway tunnel on the left; the second is the Kaikoura airport; third is a creek just north of Kaikoura; fourth is a restaurant on the corner where we turn off the highway to go to church; and fifth is our church building with the new Kaikoura museum/library/council chambers building rising behind it.

And, last but not least, this is only part of the cabbage crop. We brought in and put up literally bushels of cabbage (probably about nine altogether).

5-year-old Photographer

January 21, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

My five-year-old begs for my camera every so often. Sometimes I let him have it, and it’s interesting to see what he comes up with. (Good reason to buy a cheap camera?) Here are the most interesting/best of the pictures I found on the memory card last time I looked at them after he had it.

His little brother wearing the crowns some of the boys made for the Christmas Eve service.

Little brother “sweeping” the front porch.

All the boys spent hours for a few weeks, building this town out of mud in the dry creek bed (they hauled water from the tap).

Little brother rolling in the grass.

The boys have spent many hours building different things out by one of the sleepouts (the one close to the kitchen). They often have the CD player playing a recorded story. The boys who aren’t actively involved in building lounge around, listening, till Mom comes up with a job! I frequently hear requests to turn the CD player off for a minute while someone runs a noisy tool. Can’t miss a word of the story, you know!

This young photographer took my camera outside again the other evening, but I haven’t looked at the pictures yet. I suspect they won’t turn out very well, since the flash doesn’t work. He likes to take videos, but they are the type to make you seasick!

December Pictures

January 10, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Yes, I’m a bit late, but here are some more pictures from December. And, by the way, we are still waiting for baby to arrive. It’s due in a couple more days, but I won’t be surprised if it’s late—we’ll see! We’re pretty anxious to meet this little one and see who he/she is!

The day after Grandma left, the two littlest boys decided to lay in her bed and study a leaflet we got at Willowbank.

We cleaned the garage out one day. I finally gave the permission the boys had been waiting for since we moved: I let them haul out and burn a lot of boxes! First they loaded ALL of them onto the wheelbarrow Simon got free at the dump (he just had to buy a new tube for the tire and had a good tool!).

Seth’s birthday landed on Sunday this year, and he wanted to walk over the Kaikoura Peninsula. Gayle took all the children across, while I drove around to the other side. Two of the boys ran the whole way, so had to wait a long time, and one of them was so bored that I handed him my camera and told him to take some pictures.

We had three little turkeys in the house for a few weeks. They were rather fun to watch! Some nights, their owner, Simon, would go around catching moths for them to eat. That was pretty hilarious to watch, as at the time, the moths were bigger than the turkey’s heads! After awhile, it was time to put them outside. They are thriving in a small pen now. We let them free-range until they ate all the leaves off my pepper plants one day.

One sunny warm day I got all the newborn clothes washed and hung out. So fun!

Just for fun, a couple of random shots of some of our critters—the steers and the ducks.

On Christmas Eve, the local Anglican church always has a special service for the children. They are supposed to dress in Nativity-scene costumes and sort of act out the story as it is read. Our boys were asked to be Joseph and the wise men, and one ended up being Herod when the boy who had that role backed out. We still had enough wise men, as the two littlest boys decided at the last minute they wanted to be kings, too! Esther created the costumes, and each boy designed and made his own crown, except the two littlest.

This has been a common scene this summer. I have had the boys spend half an hour a day in the garden pulling weeds, and they are doing well at keeping the weeds under control. One of the days Gayle had off work over Christmas he joined them; they were doing the job before breakfast, before the day got hot. I’ll do another post soon to show the garden. It is gorgeous this year!

One afternoon, Nathan wanted to take a picture of a spider in his room. He couldn’t quite get a picture of it, but played with the camera for awhile anyway!