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You are here: Home / Archives for Random Photos

Random Photos

October 2019 Photos

November 9, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Here are the last of my photos from October! This year is almost over already—how can that be?

One more bubble picture, from when that was the fad. This is Mr. Imagination.

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Gayle and all the children except Miss Joy went fishing one Saturday. They didn’t catch anything except a blackberry vine, and they lost some hooks and the handle of a reel—but they had fun!

05-IMG_249806-IMG_249907-IMG_250208-IMG_2504Little Miss wanted to dress her baby sister one morning, so I let her try. She discovered it’s a little harder than dressing a doll! Mr. Imagination helped her.

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The cow and calf enjoyed the sunshine a few days after the calf was born during a rainy spell.04-IMG_6076

The boys were trying to make a stack of people. Mr. Sweetie climbed onto Mr. Diligence’s shoulders, but when Mr. Imagination got on, the stack collapsed.04-IMG_6119

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination made these fish out of silly putty. The fish are playing with a ball, and the top of the frame is the sea.07-IMG_6091

Simon bought a new backpack, and Mr. Diligence wanted to try it out. He got Little Miss to climb in, and gave her a ride. She loved it!

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This enormous dump truck is used in mining, likely coal mining. It is not licensed for using on the road, so they had to haul it this way.08-IMG_6094

Mr. Imagination was quite impressed with the length of this potato sprout when he helped his daddy plant potatoes a few weeks ago!08-IMG_6126

We enjoy watching episodes of MasterChef together, and Mr. Imagination has been inspired to create pretty food. This was a “dessert” he made one morning. He has pieces of banana and orange, and he made a sauce with mashed bananas and cream.09-IMG_6127

Miss Joy at a little over two months. She lives up to her name most of the time, and is a joy to have in the family. As I type this, she is sleeping snuggled up on my chest.10-IMG_6128

Some friends gave us a praying mantis egg case. We were fascinated to watch the baby insects hatch! Esther took a video of it, then sped it up 8 times.

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

August 2019 Photos

September 8, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon turned 18 near the beginning of the month. We had visitors over to help celebrate, and Esther baked pavlova.

19-IMG_5945Indian wrestling in our living room! Simon and Mr. Intellectual are pretty evenly matched.

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Little Miss wanted to show me her new hairstyle one day! The sticks were her hands.01-IMG_5960

One morning I noticed this helicopter spreading lime just across the river from our town. There is a company just up the hill from us that has several helicopters, and we frequently see them fly over with the fertilizer spreader dangling underneath.

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More heavy equipment going past our house!

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Here are several pictures from Miss Joy’s second week.1-IMG_59792-IMG_59804-IMG_5989

I love seeing that little head snuggling up to big brother. This is a happy baby, very much a joy to all of us!5-IMG_5992

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

Last Part of July 2019

August 3, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

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.

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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.15-IMG_5857

Another of Mr. Diligence’s pictures of big trucks! He saw this load of sheets of steel going past one day.23-IMG_5871

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.

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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?3-IMG_58834-IMG_5884

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.5-IMG_5885

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.

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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?8-IMG_5889

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

Photos From Early July 2019

July 27, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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.

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Esther went to the library one day, and the little ones spent a lot of time that evening reading library books!05-IMG_5840

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.

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This is a kayak going down the Nile River!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

June 2019 Photos Part 2

July 13, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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!

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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.

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All seven children played a game of Skip-Bo Golf together one Sunday evening!03-IMG_5768

Mr. Imagination created this deer for his daddy’s birthday present!5-IMG_5822

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.11-IMG_5756

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!13-IMG_5788

Mr. Sweetie built this train track one day, then wanted to document it.15-IMG_579216-IMG_5794

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

May 2019 Photos

June 1, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Can you believe the first of June has arrived already? This year is flying past!

Here is the canoe the boys have built. Mr. Intellectual worked on the epoxy a day or two at the beginning of the month, then pulled it out of the garage into the sunshine to get the epoxy dry. With the cold, wet weather we’re having, it’s been next to impossible to work on this project.

One morning while her brothers did school, Little Miss played, “Going to a Conference.” She took all her dolls along. Here, she had been singing, pretending to be in a meeting; later they went to a bedroom (she carried all four at once) for lunch, and then went to the hallway to “sleep at Katie’s house.”

The boys noticed a pear tree across the road, beside where the cow grazes, with pears littering the ground under it. They asked the owner of the property if we could have the pears, and he gave them to us, so Gayle and the younger boys picked them all up one Saturday. We made a couple of large pans of pear/cranberry crumble–yum! Mr. Imagination and Little Miss helped me peel and cut up the pears for it.

When I placed an order recently for schoolbooks, I added the last two Pleasant Valley Farm picture books to the order for Esther. When they came, she showed them to these two, and they jumped up and down and squealed in glee–they love those books!

 

One day this week, we noticed a 20-foot shipping container being loaded into this truck! We had never seen that done before. Notice the rain falling heavily in this photo? That was the story of our week. For five days straight, we had torrential rains, for a total, here, of nearly 10 inches.

Mr. Imagination took this picture of a digger he is building. He loves to put things together.

Little Miss apparently brought a wasp in the house on her hair one day. It stung her just below the eye. She screamed for a good while. The next day, when I took this photo, it had swollen some, but not as bad as I thought it might. We had put plantain on as quickly as possible–it really helps!

I guess Mr. Sweetie was quite impressed by the way his milk foamed one day! I have several boys who love foamed milk (Esther found a foamer at a secondhand shop recently), but our milk often won’t foam.

This was our living room one evening this month. Simon and Mr. Diligence were listening to an audio book on Simon’s phone (which is only used as an audiobook player, by the way!). It looks like Mr. Sweetie was trying to listen in, as well. These boys are addicted to audiobooks.

My artist, Mr. Imagination, with the horse he made from marbles one day.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Children, Random Photos, Trucking

April 2019 Photos

May 18, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

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

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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.

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

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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!

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Simon can still get Mr. Diligence down!

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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.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

Bits and Pieces

April 27, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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.

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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.

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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!

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Random Photos

Children—March 2019

April 13, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I took quite a few pictures of the children in March! Here, we were doing a science experiment about camouflage. I bought some M&Ms, and they crumpled colored papers in three of the colors of the candies. Then, we put equal amounts of each of seven or eight colors of candy in the basket with the paper, and they were to see how many of each they could easily find in a minute. After counting and recording their results, of course, came the best part—eating them!

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Mr. Imagination and Little Miss were playing with the marbles one day and made pictures with them. I let Mr. Imagination take photos of their cats. The first is his, the second is hers, and they made the third together.

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The little boys asked for a box that came in the mail, one day, and they cut it up to make swords and shields. Little Miss wanted her own set, and struck this “fierce” pose when she wanted her picture taken.

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Little Miss badly wants her hair to be braided now. She hardly has enough, but she loves the results when I take the time for it! (She just saw me writing this and said, “That was when I had long hair.” Now she wants me to braid her hair again!)

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Mr. Imagination was picking up leaves to “start a campfire” one day, with Little Miss and Mr. Sweetie watching him.

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Last year, Simon gave Little Miss some cosmos plants for her birthday. This year, Esther bought her some seeds, so I started several plants. I couldn’t believe how huge they grew! She has loved having her own flowers to pick, although she can’t reach very many.

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While I was in the garden with the camera, I grabbed this picture of our marigolds. I haven’t grown many flowers in the past, but have decided it’s fun to have a few scattered among the vegetables.

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

Odds and Ends From February 2019

March 30, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

One evening, I took the camera down the hill to where I milk. We are deeply grateful to a local man for allowing us the use of this large paddock, and Poppy appreciates all the grass in it! Pansy has her own fenced-off corner to keep her from direct contact with her mother (for obvious reasons), but they can be fairly close. Notice the mountains across the river? I enjoy seeing them in all their different moods.

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To get into the paddock, we cut across the fence near the top of the hill, using this stile that my boys built (on the suggestions of the property owner). Then, we scramble carefully down a very steep hill.

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I wanted to make lasagna one day, so Mr. Imagination helped me make the noodles. Yum!

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This was one of our first big pickings of tomatoes. Last week’s, about a month after this photo was taken, we got about twice as many as are in this picture! We’re very thankful for such a good harvest from our 104 plants. Today, I’m making the third enormous batch of salsa, since my big boys eat so much. We just happen to have very spicy peppers this year, which makes the flavor they enjoy, so the popular vote this week was to make salsa instead of bottling whole tomatoes and juice. We had about 110 pints from the first two batches; I think we’ll have 60-70 more after today. Hope that’s enough! Hard-working teenage boys eat a lot, and one of them was eating it by the cupful when I asked for taste-testers this morning. Notice the pink and black tomatoes? We had a bumper crop from our heirloom plants this year. We’re loving eating those super-tasty ones!

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Little Miss is watching me write this. She wanted me to write down her story, too: The man was picking apples. Then he saw the big, bad wolf, and then he made a brick house quickly and then he went in it and the big, bad wolf said, “Let me come in, let me come in.” Then the guy said, “No,” and then the big, bad wolf said, “Well, then, I will huff and I will puff and I will blow your house in.” Then he huffed and he puffed and he couldn’t blow the man’s house in. He said, “There’s a farmer’s tree down the road. Will you get up at 6:00 in the morning and come with me to the farmer’s?” The end.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Cow, Garden, Homemaking, 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

Girl #2, Little Miss

Girl #3, Miss Joy

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