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You are here: Home / Archives for Random Photos

Random Photos

July 2021 Photos

September 1, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Finally, the last few photos from July!

Two little girls reading. Miss Joy is sitting on a bag of little bits of firewood.

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I’m not sure what Simon was doing here! It was bedtime.IMG_0885

Our backyard most of the winter. I was glad when the boys dug in and tidied up that pile of wood.IMG_1706

I went out “shopping” one evening and brought all this in. It made two meals.IMG_7678

The blocks got used for a few days, as the younger ones enjoyed building towers.IMG_7683IMG_7686

I was delighted one evening when Simon and Elijah, both in their upper teens, played a game with Little Miss, age 6, for an hour or more.IMG_7687

What is he holding? Spider webs! We read a science lessons about spiders and their webs, so he went around the house collecting silk to see how strong it is.IMG_7689

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

June 2021 Photos

August 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I never got a post up last weekend. I always plan to do that on Sunday after we come home from church. This week, though, we came home for about 10 minutes and then took off to a hut the boys have been going to every so often the last couple of months, hunting possums. We stopped before we got there, though, and took off through the bush on a walking track the boys have been unsuccessfully searching for for about six weeks. I had been telling them they might find it more easily in the daylight (they hunt at night)…. This track, they were told, goes to a hut beside the river. We spent almost an hour walking along it before we decided we’d better turn around so we wouldn’t get caught in the dark. What a tramp! It obviously used to be a fairly easy walking track; it looks like it may have been the grade for a bush railway back in the logging days. Now, it’s getting overgrown, and there are trees laid down across it in many places from a cyclone 3 1/2 years ago. Someone had gone through with a chainsaw and cut out enough that we could get through, over and under the trunks, but it was a fun adventure! I may post about it sometime; Esther had her camera and took pictures. Anyway, that’s why you never saw a post last week, in case you noticed it was missing!

Here are the rest of our June pictures. Esther happened to be with Elijah at his job one day, and got a couple of pictures of him working. He was spreading glue on the floor, and when it dried, he laid down carpet tiles.

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Two brothers conferring about the tiny house.IMG_0823

We went to Canterbury one weekend for a midwinter dinner, and then visited a couple of other friends. One person gave us a large stack of puzzles she was clearing out, and as soon as we got home, they were all being used!IMG_5551

We had to replace our stovetop. The boys enjoyed working on that!IMG_7631

This truck stopped across the road one day. IMG_7633

We grew a mixture of colors of carrots last year. Look at the white, yellow, orange and purple! It’s been pretty fun to have so much variety.IMG_7641

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

May 2021 Photos—Part 2

July 4, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of our photos from May!

Esther took photos one evening of what everyone was doing. The little girls were reading books.

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The younger boys were playing a game.IMG_5435

The bigger boys were also playing a game, and I was working on a puzzle.IMG_5437

Esther, Elijah, and Mr. Sweetie stayed up late to watch a lunar eclipse one night. A few of the rest of us woke up briefly to see it at this stage.IMG_5447

Just a typical evening! Simon and Mr. Diligence were wrestling.IMG_7608IMG_7609

Our little girls are good friends!IMG_7612IMG_7613

She loves yogurt!IMG_7617

We were working on a writing assignment, and someone who wasn’t even doing the course came up with a funny story!IMG_7622

Potty-training the doll!IMG_7625

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

May 2021 Photos—Part 1

June 27, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The pictures we took during May don’t fit very well into categories, so I decided to just do two posts of random pictures.

This happened every day during May. This must have been a Saturday morning, since it was daylight. The cow in the lead is Poppy, the older one; the other is Pansy, her daughter. Pansy is now dry, so we’re only milking Poppy. They live in the paddock we use out of town; it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk them up here to the shed for milking.

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Elijah has new clothes for work. He doesn’t often wear the high-vis pants, but he wears the orange shirt all the time.IMG_7586IMG_7588

The younger ones love to bike around. They often hook a trailer to one of the bikes so they can take Miss Joy for a ride, too.IMG_7590IMG_7592

The little girls found a snail! They spent a lot of time watching it.IMG_7593IMG_7594

A cold morning! It felt good to cuddle around the fire to do schoolIMG_7599

Miss Joy loves her babies. She spends a lot of time carrying them around, usually trying to get someone else to hold them.IMG_7600IMG_7604

Our entire herd of cows spent a few days up here across the road from the house. It was fun to see them, even though it was pouring rain. There are six: two cows, two steers and two heifer calves.IMG_7605IMG_7607

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

April 2021 Photos

June 20, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of our photos from April—and a video clip of Miss Joy drawing! This little girl loves to draw. She frequently requests—or demands—paper and pencil; she wants to “ite!” Since these photos were taken, she has progressed from scribbling all over a piece of paper to drawing little circles. She also cuts things; scissors are her other frequent request. Yesterday, she cut one piece of scrap paper into little bits, then pointed to the stack and wanted another. It was soon in bits all over the floor, too!

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Simon helped a neighbor kill and skin a few sheep, and a few days later, he came home with one of them! He and Elijah soon had it cut into pieces. I’m so happy that they can—and enjoy—cutting up meat.15-IMG_541116-IMG_5414

Late one afternoon…I was making applesauce while Mr. Sweetie tried to finish his school work for the day.19-IMG_5421

A few weeks after Esther and her brothers built the shelves, she and I spent a day organizing the container. This is what it looked like when we started. We never got a picture when we were done, but it’s usable, now! It’s still crowded,but we can find things and get to them.20-IMG_5424

Simon starting on the tiny house.21-IMG_5425

They lined it with these sheets of insulation, and then put plywood over that.22-IMG_542623-IMG_542724-IMG_542825-IMG_5429

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Miss Joy, Random Photos, Video

March 2021 Photos

June 6, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I am way behind with posting these pictures!

This is what the girls’ room looked like for several weeks, while we were redoing the carpeting in the hallway, which doubles as our library. All our books were packed in boxes for a few months, and stacked in the hallway, and when a date was finally set for putting in the new carpeting, I moved the books to Esther’s room. She was away for a month, and Little Miss doesn’t need all that space, so it worked.

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Elijah got a new set of tools for floor laying. Here he is giving Simon a guided tour on the day he got the set.IMG_7555

I am doing Sonlight Kindergarten American History with Little Miss this year. One of our early read-alouds was The Missing Mummy. Mr. Imagination listened in, and was so intrigued by the story that he read ahead. He was so involved with it that he didn’t notice I took a photo of him reading!IMG_7560

We were given a tiny house by a man from Nelson! We met him at a friend’s funeral up that way in December, and he spent a night in our driveway in March. Several days later, he called and asked if we were interested in taking the tiny house he had been living in but didn’t need anymore. Our boys borrowed a vehicle and trailer, and drove up to Nelson on Friday night to get it. They got home with it late Saturday afternoon, also having purchased a vehicle for Elijah while they were up there!

IMG_5388IMG_5390Our little flock of goats. We don’t have any of them anymore; when one of the kids decided she was going to jump the fence and get out no matter what, we decided to get rid of them, and then we sent the nanny off to get bred. At this point, we’ve decided that they are enough work that we are better off without them, although we like goats and Gayle does well on goat’s milk.

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Mr. Imagination with a katydid one Sunday afternoon at church.IMG_0587IMG_0594

Esther took this picture to show me the grain mill that a neighbor needed to get rid of. We helped this lady clean out her house when she moved away, and this mill is one of the things we took.IMG_0595

One week’s harvest of tomatoes!IMG_0601It was quite a process to get the tiny house into place! The boys put rollers under it and used a logger’s winch and chain to pull it to its corner. I was thankful that nothing—and noone—got broken!

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Inside. It was just a shell; by now, it has been insulated and lined with another layer of plywood, and we plan to paint it and put down a vinyl floor covering.IMG_0618

We got one largish watermelon from our greenhouse this year. When we ate it, Mr. Diligence requested an entire round slice of it. Apparently, this has been a long-time wish of his!IMG_0623

One Saturday, Esther organized her brothers to help her build shelving for the container. She, Elijah and Mr. Diligence spent the day building two sets of shelves.IMG_0695

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

February 2021 Photos

May 2, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the last of the pictures we took in February! It seems like we haven’t been taking a lot of pictures since our trip, so I may end up getting caught up soon.

The Sunday afternoon right after Simon sprained his ankle on their tramp, we were relaxing after getting home from church when we heard the ice cream truck coming. It plays the traditional tune of ice cream trucks, and comes through randomly, several times a year, on Sunday afternoons. Simon decided that his little brothers needed practice making purchases, so he pulled $20 out of his wallet and sent them across the road to flag down the truck and buy ice creams for all the boys and Little Miss! While the truck was stopped there, several other neighbors came out to buy ice cream as well.

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I have no idea what this was about!IMG_7530

I found this blossom one day when I was picking zucchini. I have never seen one so huge!IMG_7532IMG_7533

The garden was so beautiful in February! Picking green beans in this tunnel was so easy; I’m definitely doing that again. I planted two varieties of runner beans—Blue Lake and Cobra. The Cobra beans came on first, and produced bushels and bushels, then stopped; the Blue Lakes came on about that time. They, too, produced bushels and bushels. Meanwhile, the Cobra looked like they were dying; the leaves were even turning yellow. Then, when the Blue Lakes quit, the Cobras came on again, with new foliage and lots of nice beans—not nearly as many as the first round, but enough for several meals for the ten of us in a week’s time. I’m planning to plant both varieties again, but maybe more of the Cobra and fewer of the Blue Lake. That way, I can do the bulk of the canning at once with the Cobras, and have the Blue Lakes to fill in for eating on while the Cobras take a break. (A bit of trivia: It’s easy to tell the difference between the seeds—the Cobras have black seeds, and the Blue Lakes have white ones. This is significant because the labels I used to mark which kind was which got lost, so I wasn’t sure which I liked better till I saved seeds from both and compared with what was left in the seed packets!)IMG_7534IMG_7535

Little Miss wanted me to take a photo of this dill plant, since I had asked her to bring the camera out to get a photo of the beans. The garden doesn’t look this pretty anymore. Almost everything is dead now.IMG_7536

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Garden, Random Photos

January 2021 Photos

April 18, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had a lot of things going on in January after we got home! Gayle decided to paint the garage roof. He went over all the rusty places with a wire brush, and then painted them with something to stop the rust. He got two coats of paint put on all those places, and one coat on the rest.

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Little Miss turned six in January! She was delighted to have a birthday! We had chocolate cake and lime ice cream for dessert.IMG_5285IMG_5286

Esther stripped our dining table and refinished it with teak oil. It’s pretty now!IMG_5287

We were given a deer! It was a huge red deer stag, and we got 39 kilos of meat off it. What a blessing!IMG_5288IMG_5291IMG_5292

Mr. Imagination put a bowlful of meat through the mincer.IMG_5294

Then, Simon took over and put a lot more through, faster!IMG_5298

The boys fried up some of the meat immediately, and pronounced it delicious!IMG_5301IMG_5303

Simon was doing exercises for awhile to strengthen his knees. One evening, he tried pushups with a load on his back!IMG_5304IMG_5305

Baby turkeys!IMG_5306

An apple tree at Simon’s house. I still haven’t gotten over there with a camera, and now the house is full of furniture, being stored till it’s needed by other people.IMG_5324

Esther took some friends to see the old dredge at Ngahere one rainy day.

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They also went down to our picnic spot by the river. Near the end of a week of torrential rains, this is what it looked like!IMG_5329

Later that week, also on a rainy day, we took some other friends to Shantytown, a historic village. We got to the school in between lessons on using old-style pens, but with the supplies laying out on the desks, we figured out how to use them.

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More exercises!IMG_5346IMG_7514

Elijah spent a few months building himself a desk (he finished it just when he quit school to start his apprenticeship!).

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This was our second picking of cucumbers. The next four weeks or so, I got twice this many each week.

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Our salad one evening. Mr. Imagination and Little Miss decorated it for us!

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Filed Under: Activities at Home, Away From Home Tagged With: Random Photos

December 2020 Photos

April 12, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Now that I’ve finally uploaded all the pictures and stories about our big trip over New Year’s, I can go back to sharing photos of daily life. Here are the rest of December’s pictures.

Princess loves large black-and-white stuffed animals. Does she know she blends in with them?

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I had a miscarriage in early December, and spent a day in hospital. That evening, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss put a lot of flowers on my night stand!17-IMG_7055

After many years of struggling to teach dyslexic children to read, I love seeing scenes like this. Mr. Sweetie is reading a Hank the Cowdog book here. I bought several of them when someone was selling them used, and they are quite popular!

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I’m not sure what was going on here, but this is all of my children except Esther—in one photo! From left to right are Mr. Sweetie, Miss Joy, Simon, Little Miss, Mr. Imagination, Elijah, and Mr. Diligence.04-IMG_7106

This little girl loves to sit on or in anything!09-IMG_7104

When he was cleaning, Mr. Imagination found this white-tail spider. They are somewhat venomous, so he made sure it died.11-IMG_7085

My sister sent a packet of Koolaid and a recipe for playdough made from it. Once I finally got around to making the recipe, Little Miss had great fun playing with it!16-IMG_4479

Goats are quite amusing.17-IMG_4481

One afternoon, this tractor stopped in front of our house, and Simon, the mechanic, went out to see if he could help. It turned out that the fuel line had been turned off, so the man got about two blocks from the local garage, and ran out of diesel in the lines. Simon helped him bleed the lines. Esther and I were amused at how many boys it took to  help! (This isn’t all ours; two neighborhood boys also stopped to help.)17-IMG_4483

One really exciting thing that happened just before Christmas was that we got “new” carpeting in the living room! This is what we had on the floor before—a very wornout carpet on the bottom, with several pieces patched together to make a top layer.15-IMG_066116-IMG_0662

After supper the evening before the big day, we pulled out the carpet. This was the old carpet underneath.

12-IMG_7088This is the subfloor.

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The day before Christmas, a friend came right after breakfast and started laying the underlay. Since then, Elijah has started an apprenticeship with this man, laying carpet and other floor coverings.

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The finished carpet! We shampooed it and left the furniture out till the next day.03-IMG_7094

There was still somewhat of a cat smell for a day or two. Princess was extremely suspicious, and wouldn’t enter the room for a couple of days.07-IMG_7097

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

November 2020 Photos

December 8, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Esther is enjoying having goats again. This was awhile ago, not long after we got the nanny. They are now being moved over the hillside in the background, across the road from us.

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Recovery: Simon and Mr. Diligence spent a few days playing Phase 10, before they both got fed up with sitting around healing. Then, they found other things to do, outside, of course, while still being as careful as possible with their knees. Simon went back to work yesterday, after two weeks off. His knee didn’t hurt when he came home last night, but his calf muscles and feet did. Mr. Diligence is still limping around.

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On his 2nd or 3rd day of recuperating, Simon’s back was hurting, so he laid on the floor for most of the day. He was listening to audiobooks, and helped his baby sister listen, too.04-IMG_6963

She loves to have someone to cuddle up with!17-IMG_6964

After a week, I took Mr. Diligence to the doctor to have the dressing changed. I took this picture to show Esther how it was healing.

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After several days of sitting, they couldn’t stand it any longer, and went out to do something useful. They scooped sawdust from the chicken coop into buckets, and the younger boys hauled it to the potato patch for mulch.

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Ten baby turkeys hatched the day Mr. Diligence was in the hospital! I took this picture to email to Esther, who was with him.

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Our young chickens started laying in mid-November. We’ve been inundated with eggs! The chickens are selling, though; there are only four of the young ones that aren’t spoken for yet.05-IMG_6966

Mr. Diligence took these pictures of the bridge construction just outside of town the day I took him in to get his stitches out. The bottom picture is our current bridge, the one that’s being replaced. It was built in the 1930s; the deck is wooden, with tarseal on top—although that is no longer being maintained, since the new bridge should be ready within a year.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: 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

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