Our family's life in New Zealand
In this picture, there are 38 baby turkeys, 3 chicks and 1 duckling. All were hatched by their mothers, but we took them away to raise by hand, for the babies’ own safety.
Grandma and Little Miss admiring the nine chicks hatched a few weeks ago, which are being raised by their mother.
The little ones caught 20 snails after church and were playing with them.
Drilling a new well in a better location than the first one.
An aunt gave Little Miss a couple of nightgowns. She loves her “pretty dress”.
Mr. Inventor built this trailer for a friend, who was then not able to take it. He’s trying to sell it now.
These chicks were hatched a few days after the funeral. So cute!
The cat found a lovely soft, warm place to rest on Mr. Diligence.
Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence with their aunt in our garden.
Mr. Imagination drew this picture.
This silly cat slept like this for an hour or so—back end twisted one way and front end twisted the other way.
A friend spent a week with us, and one evening the boys made a bunch of crowns. He had fun being a king, while Mr. Sweetie had fun giving him rabbit ears!
One day, the boys found a couple of newly-hatched chicks. I sent them to get hay for a bed for them. Instead, they came back in with eight new turkeys! I sent them back out. Mr. Diligence came back with another baby turkey! They finally did get the hay and made a home for all the babies. A few days later, Mr. Intellectual got these two pictures. I love how the turkeys woke up and were so curious in the second picture.
Gayle’s aunt cut out new dresses for all three of us while she was here, and got the ones for Esther and I mostly finished. The next week, I was able to get them done and make the one for Little Miss. It’s fun to have new, matching dresses!
Little Miss must have found a mud puddle! She loves them. Just recently, she came out while I was milking and found a puddle about six inches in diameter and less than a quarter inch deep. She sure splashed in that tiny bit of water!
Mr. Imagination and Little Miss playing at church.
Mr. Inventor and Seth spreading compost. This was the last thing they did together. I was going to assign Seth to do it by himself, but they got into an argument, so I had them do it together. They did, very cheerfully.
Mr. Diligence doing his schoolwork in the morning.
Mr. Intellectual made a pinata for his birthday. This is the first stage.
Mr. Imagination loves to make up tunes on the piano!
Spring flowers!
Mr. Diligence
I sorted our library and organized all the books one afternoon. This was Seth’s bedroom and he was a bit grouchy about the mess—and glad when I got it all cleaned up the same day!
Mr. Imagination and Little Miss
Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence like to go to the dump at the end of our road every week. They find some incredible treasures—like this all-metal, antique globe. The picture doesn’t do it justice; it was huge! They were able to sell it for quite a lot. I would have loved to keep it, but it was too big for our house.
We haven’t been taking very many pictures lately, apparently. I have time today to write a blog post, though, so I’ll share the few we have. We’re on our way to Dunedin for the weekend, so while we’re traveling on a straight, flat road between Ashburton and Timaru I’m taking advantage of a good battery in my laptop and writing. I do apologize for the fuzzy pictures; after noticing that several were that way, Esther noticed that someone had touched the lens of my camera and it was very smeary. She sweetly cleaned it for me.
Here she is, rocking her little sister right after we arrived home from church.
This is Mr. Inventor’s flock of turkeys. Too many toms! Five of them went into the freezer a few days later. Aren’t they gorgeous though? We’re planning to pick up a new tom for our flock on this trip, to avoid inbreeding.
A week or so ago, Mr. Intellectual helped me dig the rest of last year’s carrots. It was such a warm, sunny day that we cleaned them outside, and a few days later the boys helped me chop all of them and get them in jars. That will make quick soups even easier for the next year.
Little Miss was playing with this hat. She was delightedly waving “Bye-bye” to Esther in this picture. She is so much fun! She’s talking more all the time. Yesterday, she was chasing Mr. Imagination around and around the living room, and finally, in exasperation she exclaimed, “He has it!” It turned out that he had been given a small piece of candy, and she wanted it.
Mr. Sweetie was being silly one day, twirling around and around on my desk chair in this position! Little boys can be pretty amusing.
Little girls can be amusing, too. Little Miss has obviously been watching people lay down to read, so she did the same thing one morning while I was doing oral reading with some boys.
Little Miss helped Mr. Intellectual make breakfast one morning.
I was getting her ready for bed, and she ran away, jumped up on Daddy, and giggled.
This is why I record a lot of the books I read aloud to the boys. Mr. Sweetie spent an afternoon this week listening to Mountain Born, by Elizabeth Yates—a lovely story about a little boy and his lamb.
My sister made this dress and sent it with Esther and Mr. Handyman when they were in America last year. It finally fits her—but now I need to let the hem out! She’s growing fast.
Mr. Intellectual has been making kites lately. He’s frustrated, though, because either we have no wind, or we have too much wind to fly it.
Several of the children went together to buy the game Settlers of Catan recently. We’ve been enjoying playing with it.
Mr. Sweetie took this picture of Mr. Imagination.
Little Miss is a bookworm!
Mr. Intellectual was given a glass prism recently. He’s been having fun making rainbows on sunny days.
I was reading to Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie, and Little Miss decided she needed to be right in the middle!
Little Miss playing at church, in the foyer.
I sorted all the extra clothes recently. Mr. Diligence found this old shirt, which was his for a few years. He was thrilled to find an old favorite, and managed somehow to get it on! It was difficult to get off again.
We are really enjoying our kitten. He isn’t as playful as he used to be, but still gets himself into funny places. He also sleeps in very strange positions.
I got a book from the library about the Denniston Incline. One of my boys liked it so well he took pictures of most of the pages in it!
Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence go to the dump at the end of our road (a transfer station) every time they can. It’s only open for three hours, three days a week, one of which is Sunday and another of which is Tuesday, our day for going to Dead Boring! They go almost every Thursday, and the Tuesdays that we are home, to search for treasures. One week, they brought me this incubator! The thermostat didn’t work, so I bought one online last week, and plan to try hatching chicks. I’ve never done it before, but have wanted to.
The pot this kitten is sitting in is another dump treasure. Mr. Inventor found the skillet underneath it at the Kaikoura dump for less than a dollar. He has since cleaned it thoroughly with a wire brush and seasoned it, and I’m now using it in the kitchen. The pot is a little harder, and in worse shape, but he’s hoping to restore it as well.
Mr. Inventor made these two knives. He sold the bigger one.
The children playing at Dead Boring. There were a lot there that day!
Our Dead Boring group—even Esther was there that day!
My computer finally seems to be fixed. We had to send it back in to be worked on again in late June, and when we got it back and set up again, we ran into the same problem as before. I had to install updates one at a time, because it wasn’t handling more than that. Suddenly, the same problem appeared that we had before, with the computer demanding the product key for Windows 8. We uninstalled the update I had just installed, but nothing changed. I contacted the company—again. However, a day or so later, after a couple more restarts, the demand for that key disappeared! The computer is working perfectly again. What a relief. So, maybe I’ll get back to more regular posting…or maybe not. No promises. Anyway, here are pictures for Grandma of the two littlest during June.
Little Miss asked for some yogurt in her bowl. Then, she stepped in it! What a terrible catastrophe!
Little Miss and Mr. Imagination reading stories together.
Mr. Imagination was pretending to be a gorilla.
Little Miss took ashes out of the coal range, and then tried to clean up her mess!
She’s all girl! She likes pretty dresses.
Looking at pictures with big sister.
Playing at Dead Boring (homeschool group).
Esther’s boss gave the little ones a toy lawn mower. Little Miss claims it for her own.
Helping Esther make snickerdoodles.
I happened to have my camera in my pocket the other day when I was in the garden and discovered this beauty!
Preparing lunch the night before for our trip to town. It takes a lot of sandwiches to feed this crew! Making them assembly-line fashion helps.
What do you do with a big pile of coasters from the dump? Build castles!
Sunday afternoon fun. The little boys were trying to play the organ.
Mr. Diligence was playing with a bean bag.
My computer is still acting up; we reset to factory setting two weeks ago because it had automatically updated to Windows 8.1 and this computer won’t work right on that operating system. Now, it’s demanding that we put in the product key for Windows 8! I’ve been talking to the technical support at Acer, and getting very frustrated. Most of them are difficult to understand, and don’t really want to listen to me. When they told me what to do, it didn’t work, so I called back and they said to reset to factory settings again! So, I’m going to write and schedule a bunch of blog posts with all the pictures I have ready, so I can delete those folders, and then back up my computer, and then reset it. Then, we get to set it up again for the third time in three weeks, and copy everything from the backup into the computer again, and spend a day installing updates again, because there are so many that they overload the system, and search for the particular update that enables the upgrade to Windows 8.1 and block it, and reinstall all the programs I use! What a bother. Esther is getting really good at setting up a computer. I tried, I really did, but messed things up so she had to fix them. I told Gayle today that Esther isn’t allowed to leave home—I can’t figure out my computer without her! I have a feeling I’m allowing myself to be lazy about it, though and could do it if I spent a lot more time with it.
Anyway, here are the random pictures from May.
Little Miss loves to drape clothing around her neck as a scarf.
Socks and shoes are her favorite items of clothing. Socks over pajamas? Why not!
One afternoon on the way home from church the sea was so still we could see reflections. Barney’s Rock was so beautiful this way!
An apple in a cup—the perfect way to eat it!
Mr. Handyman holding our biggest pumpkin of the year. I can’t remember how much it weighed, though.
A new dress! This came from either her grandmother or an aunt, on Gayle’s side.
I thought this was funny—three boys using three computers.
We had quite the harvest of peppers. I planted four types, Bell Peppers, Anaheim Chilies, Jalapenos, and Cayenne. Such a pretty assortment. Today I need to be washing the last of them; I picked a bushel basket full (40 liter tub) a few days ago when the plant were mostly killed by frost.
Mr. Intellectual was given a margarine tub full of stamps from around the world. He had great fun sorting them and discovering what countries they were from. There were a lot of double-ups, so his brothers got some, too.
