Random Photos

Little Miss draws a lot of pictures! This is a horse she drew for me a few weeks ago—see its hooves?

Mr. Diligence and a friend built this bike trailer for Mr. Imagination’s birthday. The little fellow has had a lot of fun pulling it around behind his bicycle.

Little Miss built a house in the living room one day.

Mr. Intellectual has done a lot of wood working lately. Here is one of his recent creations, a pancake turner from an old electric pole. The wood was very hard, but brittle, so this turner ended up breaking beyond repair, unfortunately. It was beautiful, though!

Simon can still get Mr. Diligence down!

One evening, the fire got going so hot that the children asked for marshmallows—and toasted them through the closed door! We’re being more careful now as to how full we load the stove with the offcuts from Gayle’s work at the mill.

When we were in America a few months ago, I was trying to explain to a few people exactly how small our kitchen is. These two pictures show all of my workspace. Quite often, the first step, when starting to cook a meal or do anything else in the kitchen, is to wash and dry dishes and get them put away.

A month or so ago, the electric line to the garage started blowing fuses. When Gayle and the boys looked into it, they found that a hole had been rusted through the box around the connections, and the wires inside were bare. No wonder it shorted! They got the wiring replaced, and decided to replace the old, rotting pole, as well. That turned out to be a huge ordeal; they had to chip through concrete several feet down. The replacement pole, while not new, is much better—and it, too is concreted in securely! This photo shows part of the process of chipping out the old concrete.

Mr. Intellectual has been enjoying making things out of wood lately. Here are two of his recent creations. I really like the pancake turner for doing stir-fries!

Mr. Imagination grabbed this winter radish and pretended to be a rhinoceros!

The younger children have harvested most of the pumpkins by now. They enjoyed all those different shapes and colors!

One evening, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss got out all their soft toys and lined them up on the couches. Someone enjoyed it enough to take a couple of pictures.

We had a few mornings chilly enough to start the fire in the living room. One of those times, someone noticed a flame coming out of the center of a log! He was impressed with it and wanted a picture.

As part of the process of installing fibre optic cables in our village, the company had to put everything back into the state it was in before they started working. The last step was to put some tarseal on our driveway where they had cut through to put the cable in. The boys really enjoyed watching that!

Whew…I’ve been getting a bit behind. I really don’t recommend taking a three-week trip overseas in the middle of summer, then trying to jump right back into school and preserving the harvest when you get home, if you want to stay on top of things. And then, of course, pregnancy to add to the mix…and a three-day trip to the other side of the island last weekend…well, anyway, here are the last few photos from January. Sometime this week I hope to look through memory cards again so I can start catching up on everything that’s been happening since the middle of February!

The canoe got its last strips inserted, and Mr. Intellectual finished sanding the outside, before we left. They got the fibreglass they need to cover it, but haven’t started that process yet.

When we see an escort vehicle go past with an “Oversize Vehicle” sign on it, we usually watch to see what is coming. Usually, we see a large digger (excavator), but sometimes it’s something more exciting, like this bulldozer from a gold mine near Reefton. This machine is HUGE!

Here is a more common sight. I think a little boy was experimenting with my camera to see how he could best get pictures of vehicles going past.

This was one of our first harvests of zucchini. Isn’t it pretty? We’ve had many times more than this with subsequent harvests; I’m very happy with a number of the crops from the garden.

Here is a bellbird, as the flax blossoms were coming to an end.

One day, the boys picked a bunch of peas from a neighbor’s field, after he offered us what we wanted. The boys spent the morning building a pea sheller. It worked well—for a few minutes. Then, something stripped out and they finished the job by hand!

We sure enjoyed the kittens before they went to new homes!