Random Photos

Here are the last several photos we took in February. Enjoy!

Mr. Intellectual has continued his boat-building hobby. His latest creation is this flatboat, made of plywood. By now, he has finished painting it on the outside, but they haven’t tried it out in the water yet.

The outside of the strip canoe is finished. The yellow is kevlar, which is intended to protect from rocks, of which there are plenty in our shallow West Coast rivers!

For the first time, we can see the inside of the canoe!

Mr. Intellectual made this crossbow.

One afternoon when Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination both had a little schoolwork to finish, they set this up. They both worked diligently!

Esther had to stop in at the garage where Simon works, one afternoon, so I asked her to take some pictures of Simon at work. He’s been there for 2 1/2 years and I still didn’t have a picture of him doing what he does best!

Miss Joy enjoying and being enjoyed by her big brothers, Simon and Mr. Intellectual.

Miss Joy

I bought some new clothespins in town one day, and when we came home the little ones put them in the bucket for me. Then, Miss Joy discovered the joys of dumping them!

My girls!

This first one was actually taken in late October. Mr. Intellectual got his Learners License, and that evening he persuaded his daddy to take him on his first driving lesson. Esther grabbed the picture as they were leaving.

Mr. Intellectual built this safe. He watched some YouTube videos on how to build a number lock, and then put it together. I’m not sure what he’s storing in it.

Mr. Sweetie drew this one evening, and then asked if he could take a picture of it.

Mr. Imagination drew this one, and posted it on the wall.

Mr. Sweetie flopped into the wheelbarrow one day as I was coming out of the house, and immediately Goofball jumped up and settled down on him for a nap. She’s quite a goofy cat—lives up to her name!

Gayle brought Little Miss the dolls she had left behind in Michigan in January, when he came home from his mother’s funeral. She is loving playing with them! I didn’t get  a photo of it, but one day she had several dolls, as well as her baby sister, lined up in the living room! It was quite cute.

Here are the rest of my pictures from July. This month went by crazily fast! And, now that we’re in August, we’re very close to meeting the newest member of our family—hopefully, in about three more weeks.

Esther achieved a major goal in July—she passed the test for her full license! Now, she can take passengers with her. She also bought a car, a Honda Accord, which she’s quite happy with.

Mr. Intellectual finished this cup, made from four different types of wood. With all the glue that went into it, we advised him not to drink from it, so he’s using it for a pencil cup.

Another of Mr. Diligence’s pictures of big trucks! He saw this load of sheets of steel going past one day.

I asked the boys to recover the frame I used for starting seeds last year with new plastic. They decided to scrap it and build me a new one, twice the size, to better utilize the sheet of plastic they had available! It is now finished and waiting for baby plants.

Last weekend, Gayle and the younger boys dug the last of our potato crop. Mr. Imagination was delighted to find this enormous one, and brought it in to show me. See the weight?

Little Miss played with the potatoes in her own way. That big one is her; she’s the mother, sitting on stones, and her babies are on top of her. The other stack, just on the other side of her, is more of her children, also sitting on rocks.

We had nearly a bushel of potatoes that needed used quickly, so we cut a lot up Saturday night for Sunday dinner. They needed a lot of trimming, between stabs from the fork and the wireworms that our garden is infested with.

Grandma asked what Mr. Imagination has been building from legos. He took this picture for her, of his fire ship. See all the nozzles for spraying water?

We’ve had a busy month! Here are a few photos from the first couple of weeks of the month.

We’ve had a few sunrises! It’s been a very rainy month, but here is proof that occasionally we see a little sunshine (actually, this week has been sunny). The person walking along the road is Mr. Intellectual, heading down to bring up the milk for me.

Esther went to the library one day, and the little ones spent a lot of time that evening reading library books!

Every time a pilot vehicle goes past, Mr. Diligence tries to grab my camera to get a photo of whatever big thing is passing this time.

This is a kayak going down the Nile River!

Something that makes me very happy! Mr. Diligence actually reads for fun sometimes now. This has taken a lot of years and much hard work to accomplish. He discovered he can enjoy reading when he was sick in the States in February and didn’t have an audio book to listen to, but couldn’t do anything else.

A few years ago, my boys found a huge ball of yarn at the dump. It was hand-spun, and fairly loose; I suspect it was actually roving, which was intended to be spun into better yarn. I crocheted it into a rough rectangle, and now I’m making it into the inner for a baby-sized duvet. It smells of lanolin—a smell I love! I’ve gotten as far as sewing a cover over it, and sort of quilting it together with the sewing machine, and cutting out fabric patches for another, removable cover.

So, we wash a tub and put it outside in the sun to dry—and what does Goofball do? Ensure that we have to wash it again! Doesn’t she look happy.

Here are the rest of June’s random photos.

Little Miss got hold of my camera one afternoon and took a bunch of pictures of the toys she was playing with. I saved a couple I thought were interesting!

One Saturday evening, Simon went with me to milk. Because of the steep hill down which we have to go to reach the cow right now, and the fact that I’m pregnant, I need help carrying the bucket back up, so the bigger three boys all help out. Simon rarely gets the privilege, because he’s usually not home from work yet when I head down. This time, though, he needed a piece of wood for a project he was working on, so he took his ax along and accompanied me. Just after we left our street, Esther and Mr. Sweetie came up towards us from a walk around the block, so she took our picture.

All seven children played a game of Skip-Bo Golf together one Sunday evening!

Mr. Imagination created this deer for his daddy’s birthday present!

I was amused when this happened one evening! I was helping Simon with a lesson for his apprenticeship, since he has trouble reading, and Esther wanted input on an order she was putting through for me with some company.

Princess is rather a spoiled cat. She thinks the space in front of the fire belongs to her. A lot of mornings, she will sleep there with her paw tightly clamped around her eyes, like this!

Mr. Sweetie built this train track one day, then wanted to document it.