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February 2024 Photos

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We didn’t take many pictures in February, after we got home! I was too busy trying to catch up. This first picture shows part of what I had to catch up on. We harvested a couple of bushels of beans every week for about a month.

We had fun, too. This book that Elijah and Simon were enjoying is one that my mom sent along with a lot of other books that I had stored at her place. We went to the North Island to meet up with people who came from the States and other places to hold a conference, and it was a good opportunity to have books brought in suitcases. This book is hilarious, and I thought Mom would enjoy seeing it being enjoyed.

Kea, the budgie, does not like humans to touch her. She will not allow us to pick her up or hold her. However, we got home from church one day, and found her desperately trying to push out between the bars of her cage. We let her out to fly–but she wanted right back in! She was so focused on pushing through the bars that she let us hold her until she could go back to her cage. We ended up putting her in a smaller cage with narrower spaces between the bars, and the next day she was back to normal.

This cat is often found sleeping in very strange places. Anything confined is perfect for her–especially if it’s something new!

January 2024 Photos

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I’ve finally finished posting the pictures from our North Island trip! Now to catch up on the photos from around home. Here are the rest from January.

After a couple of four wheel drive trips, the boys’ trucks were in need of a wash. Miss Joy happily helped operate the power washer!

James spent more time working on his sleepout. This was the day he started cladding the outside.

The boys cleaned the carport and garage. They decided it was time to get rid of this old stationary engine that had been sitting there for about three years. Simon wanted to restore it and get it working again, but finally gave up. Elijah listed it on Trade Me for a $1 reserve auction, and it went up over $250! The next challenge was to load it on the buyer’s truck. This was the test run with the tractor-mounted crane that Simon and James built to hoist cattle they are butchering. It worked, so when the buyer came to get the engine, that’s how they lifted it! The engine had wheels under it, so it was easy to get it out of the carport, but too heavy to lift by hand.

We went to Nelson Creek for a baptism one Sunday afternoon, and of course the children wanted to swim.

See what James has on his feet to go swimming? They were actually very light-weight boots, full of holes so they didn’t fill up with water.

I think this was taken down at the river.

Little Miss wanted to make braided bread, so Esther helped her.

Part of the second hatch of chicks. It’s so fun to see them hatching!

December 2023 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures from December! James worked on his sleepout for the first two days of the Christmas holidays. He and Mr. Sweetie got all the walls framed up.

Miss Joy busy doing school!

Elijah grew a beard for a couple of months. I got a picture of him just before he took it off.

The younger boys built this bike ramp and had a lot of fun doing jumps and taking pictures of it.

We’ve been enjoying watching the birds on the flax blossoms outside our windows. This is a tui; we have also see a bellbird and a lot of starlings.

We had a lot of rain the last couple of days of December, so the afternoon of the 31st, the girls and I walked down to look at the river. It had already gone down several inches.

Esther got the game Ticket to Ride, and we spent a lot of time playing it.

She’s a bookworm already!

Esther has been making masa, and Miss Joy helped her grind it one day, and then played in the moist dough.

November 2023 Photos

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Here are the last of the pictures we took in November! We went to Canterbury to visit friends early in the month, and Mr. Imagination and his friend went hunting. They were pretty pleased with themselves!

Miss Joy was worn out on the way home. She fell asleep a few minutes after leaving, and slept most of the three hours home. Little Miss pretended to be asleep, but she never actually dropped off.

The children found this toy truck at the dump, their favorite “shop.” They got their big brothers to help bring it home, and then Mr. Imagination replaced the motor with one from a lawn mower, and got it running. They had great fun driving it around for a couple of weeks, and then broke something. Simon took it up to his house to do something with it.

Simon and Elijah went hunting one night and Mr. Imagination went with them. They were pretty excited to get this deer! It was a young hind, so very tender.

While Esther and I were cutting up the deer, I asked Miss Joy to peel some carrots for the next day’s soup. She got one or two peeled, then got distracted eating them!

One Sunday afternoon, Miss Joy was having fun spinning around. She wanted me to get a picture of her dress swirling out, so I did, and took a few seconds of video footage, too.

We got to go on a field trip to Shantytown, a historical village close to us. We had a short lesson about using native plants for food and medicine, then went on a brief bush walk, collecting leaves. Then, we investigated the leaves, learning what we could from observing them.

We also got to watch a demonstration of sluicing, a method for mining gold that was used in the Gold Rush days.

We put 56 eggs in our new incubator.

We found the cat cuddled up to the incubator one evening!

October 2023 Photos

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Here are the rest of the photos from October. One of the younger children’s favorite places to go is the dump down the hill from our village. I was informed, “You don’t give us Christmas presents, so we have to come up with our own.” So, they drag home all sorts of “treasures.” These beams were among recent finds. One of the boys took pictures of them to send to Simon to see if he wanted them, and Goofball obviously wanted to be in the picture.

Our friends in Ngahere had a bonfire to get rid of Simon’s garage, which he dumped in their paddock (with their permission) to get rid of it.

We took some friends to Waiuta the beginning of October, and someone got this picture of Esther and Miss Joy.

Gayle often takes the children on a walk or to go swimming when he comes home from work. The day they begged him to take them swimming, they quickly decided it was much too cold, so they played in the warm, dry sand instead.

Another day they made a different kind of castles by the river.

My sister asked me how to make t-shirt dresses, so I sent her a picture of some I recently made for the girls.

This picture shows something amazing. That Jersey calf gave us a lot of trouble when he was born. He was born one afternoon, and by bedtime we could tell he hadn’t had a feed yet. I milked his mother and gave him a bottle, and he took it greedily. The next day, he wouldn’t suck at all. We tried him on a bottle a couple of times, and tried to get him to suck on his mother, but he absolutely refused. The next day, we forced a few cups of milk down him, but he was getting very weak. He struggled to stand up, and when he sucked it was very weak. Simon got us a tube feeder, and we tubed him twice. I asked for advice on a house cows group, and we prayed a lot for this calf. The third day, we followed the advice we got, and did something called the Madigan squeeze on him (google it). We did that twice, and the second time, he started making sucking motions. That evening when we put his mother in with him, he sucked on her for the first time! The next day, we went away for the weekend, so we left this calf with his mother. When we got home, he was bouncing around happily, acting perfectly normal and healthy. Two days after that, we had to move the cows to another location for grazing. Since that place isn’t calf-friendly, he had to stay behind with the beef-cross calf, so we gave him a bottle. The first time, he wouldn’t drink; the second time, he took nearly a whole bottle, and the third time, he was away. Since that day, he has greedily sucked down every bottle we give him, and wanted more. I took this picture to remind us of the miracle God did for us.

Little Miss had an assignment in her Language Arts book to write a poem about spring. She decided to illustrate it, too!

Sand art. This kept them busy while Gayle and I were away, and then the sand went in the trash.

This also happened while we were away. The girls made bouquets to sell to Esther!

This quad bike went up to the farm with Simon, so he can fix it.

September 2023 Photos

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Here are the rest of the random photos from last month. I don’t remember what the occasion was for the pie, but I took this picture because we made the ice cream from a recipe that my sister-in-law gave me. It was delicious!

Simon spent a few of his days off fixing the old ute to make it able to pass its inspection. We were thankful not to have to junk it, too–the gray van couldn’t pass, so we have just replaced it.

James started building a sleepout for himself. Here he is setting up the joists and building the floor. It hasn’t gotten past that yet.

There are lots of Lego creations around. I thought these were pretty nice.

Mr. Sweetie requested a chocolate pizza for his birthday cake. (If you don’t understand, read The Candymakers by Wendy Mass. Esther baked a base from sweet roll dough, and we spread it with Nutella, then topped it with M&Ms and miniature marshmallows. Next time, we’ll make the dough thinner–it was too thick.

Our little lime tree produced a lot of fruit this year! I fermented some, and juiced the rest to freeze for later use.

Somehow, I don’t think Princess appreciated having a pillow on top of her.

Mr. Sweetie made these moccasins for himself.

July 2023 Photos

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Here are the last several photos from July! The boys found this typewriter at the dump one day. They brought it home and we found that it worked fine. I bought a new ribbon for it so they could actually use it, and they occasionally do.

Mr. Sweetie working hard at his school work while Princess enjoys her favorite resting place–the penguin that matches her coat.

We went to North Canterbury to visit friends in late July, and saw a lot of snow on the way home. This is near Hanmer Springs, and there was even more near Lewis Pass. We didn’t stop to play in it, though, because Miss Joy was asleep and we didn’t want her to wake up. Travel is a lot easier when the youngest is asleep!

It’s the time of year for rainbows, and this one, viewed from our living room window, was especially beautiful.

Our homeschool group spent a couple of months building and racing go-karts. Mr. Sweetie was the leader of this team; here, they are putting on the final touches before the big race. Unfortunately, his team lost.

We killed a steer in July. The boys are getting very good at this job! Simon and James built the crane, which mounts on Simon’s tractor. It works well! Sure is easier to skin an animal this way than if it’s laying on the ground.

A few days later, Esther and I did our bit, breaking down the carcass and boning it out. This first picture is both hind quarters; the second is the front quarters.

We ate lunch outside that day! We were thankful to have a warm mid-winter day, since the kitchen table was so full. Simon fried up some scraps of meat that were too small to make into steaks, but very tender. Yum!

June 2023 Photos

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Here are last month’s pictures!

I was working in the garden one day, digging oxalis corms and buttercups out under the edge of the greenhouse. Miss Joy came along and laid down flat on the freshly-dug soil, and started digging through it, finding earthworms. I suggested she “plant” the earthworms in soil in her container, so she did, and then tried to dig them out.

Jo-Jo the cockatiel and Kea the budgie get along pretty well most of the time.

We had a lot of frosty mornings the first two weeks of June. Mr. Sweetie used my camera one morning to get pictures of the sun coming up through the trees across the road.

He also got some pictures of a cold kingfisher that sat on this post for awhile. Once, we saw it fly down to the mud, pick something up, and eat it–probably a worm.

Another day, the children found this tiny frog in a flax bush behind the house.

Miss Joy loves to brush hair. One morning when Little Miss needed her hair brushed, and Miss Joy was at loose ends, I suggested she brush her big sister’s hair. She was delighted, and it kept her busy for quite awhile. She’s very gentle, and does a good job.

Mr. Sweetie was outside with my camera one day and took a picture of Grizzly. That cat is always looking for a new place to sit for a nap.

May 2023 Photos

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May was a busy month–but not many photos! Here are the ones I have to share.

I was sitting here at my desk one rainy day (it rained the entire month of May) and glanced out the window to my right. There were two wekas walking around in the drainage ditch!

This was a Sunday afternoon that we spent at home. A friend came for lunch and played a game with the children. It happened to be Simon’s weekend off, so he was here, too.

This was the most exciting thing that happened in May. We hatched some eggs in our incubator! We started with 36 eggs, but threw away 21 after a week and a half because they were duds. We ended up with 9 babies. So exciting to have some success!

Our jalapeno plants in the greenhouse, did very well this year. There were so many that I decided to try pickling them. I thought this bowlful of sliced peppers was so pretty!

The final product is pretty, too. I used a few slices in a soup I made for church today, and they flavored it very nicely. The boys like to add these to hamburger sandwiches or tacos.

We often see James sleeping in odd places when we finish family prayers in the evening. He goes hard all day, and then sleeps hard at night.

February/March 2023 Photos

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Barring our trip to Karamea, detailed in the last several posts, I haven’t taken many pictures this year! I’ve been living life, not documenting it. Here are the ones I have from the last couple of months, though.

The last time I went to the States, four years ago, Mom gave me a quilt top that my sister had pieced, from blocks I cut out of a lot of fabric scraps before we moved to New Zealand, over 13 years ago. I put the quilt top in a closet and basically forgot about it because I didn’t know what I was doing with it. After she got through all the other sewing projects we had on hand, Mom still wanted something to do, so we figured out what to do with this quilt top. We found an old sheet for the back and a couple of flannel sheets for the middle, and she tied it together for a comforter. The next problem was to find a place to do the work. Our house is too small to lay it out on a floor, so she took it outside! The ground was dry, so it worked. It was amusing, though, to see a quilt laid out on the grass.

We found a playground in Karamea, and Miss Joy and Little Miss played on it for a little while one afternoon. This little girl is infatuated with playgrounds!

We arrived home from Karamea on a Friday, and spent the entire next day working through the ripe produce that had accumulated in the garden while we were away. This was over 250 pounds of tomatoes, and the green pile in the living room was cucumbers. As you can see, we ran out of room on the table for the washed tomatoes and had to make piles in the living room, too! We are very thankful to have a lot of jars of tomatoes to use over the winter.

The little girls love to dress up. I love how Little Miss sometimes reads to Miss Joy, who obviously loves that, too.

James is helping to build a house behind us, on the edge of the hill on which our village is situated. We took a field trip one morning to watch them pour the pad for it. How do you like the view? The mountains you can see are the Paparoa Range, between us and the Tasman Sea.

Just before Mom left, the children decided they needed to make Chocolate Cream Doughnuts, after we read a book in which the main character built up a business making them. I had the stove covered with pots that day, as I was canning, so they used a camp stove on the table to do the deep frying.

The children liked helping us peel tomatoes when we canned them this summer. What a mess they made of themselves, but we appreciated their help!

On the way home from taking Mom to the airport, we bought a budgie. Kea now lives with Jo-Jo in his cage, and they are very happy together. We started out with them in separate cages, but the birds soon let us know they wanted to be together. The funny thing is that Jo-Jo has put on so much weight since he has company that he can hardly fly now! We’re trying to force him to fly every day, hoping to slim him down a little. Kea flies very well. We can hold Jo-Jo, but Kea won’t let us touch her. She readily goes back into the cage after a fly, though.

Simon was feeling enough better by March that he looked for things to do outside. Obviously, the children benefited from this!

One Saturday morning, we started seeing vintage cars cruising around the village. Mr. Imagination took my camera and went out to take pictures of a lot of them. It was a rally that went around the various villages in the Grey Valley.