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Leaf Fun

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When the leaves fell off the peach trees in May, the three youngest had great fun raking them up and playing in them. I remember loving maple trees when I was young, because of the wonderful leaf piles! This isn’t as good, but as close as our children are likely to get to that. While they were playing with the leaves, they got the idea of making a movie about it. I’m not sure what the plot was supposed to be, if any, but I put together the clips they got. You might want to turn it off when it starts getting crazy–when all three are tumbling together in the pile.

January 2024 Photos

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I’ve finally finished posting the pictures from our North Island trip! Now to catch up on the photos from around home. Here are the rest from January.

After a couple of four wheel drive trips, the boys’ trucks were in need of a wash. Miss Joy happily helped operate the power washer!

James spent more time working on his sleepout. This was the day he started cladding the outside.

The boys cleaned the carport and garage. They decided it was time to get rid of this old stationary engine that had been sitting there for about three years. Simon wanted to restore it and get it working again, but finally gave up. Elijah listed it on Trade Me for a $1 reserve auction, and it went up over $250! The next challenge was to load it on the buyer’s truck. This was the test run with the tractor-mounted crane that Simon and James built to hoist cattle they are butchering. It worked, so when the buyer came to get the engine, that’s how they lifted it! The engine had wheels under it, so it was easy to get it out of the carport, but too heavy to lift by hand.

We went to Nelson Creek for a baptism one Sunday afternoon, and of course the children wanted to swim.

See what James has on his feet to go swimming? They were actually very light-weight boots, full of holes so they didn’t fill up with water.

I think this was taken down at the river.

Little Miss wanted to make braided bread, so Esther helped her.

Part of the second hatch of chicks. It’s so fun to see them hatching!

Huka Falls

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Our last stop that morning was Huka Falls. Now, what do you think about when you hear a term like that? I picture a vertical waterfall, and since this was such an attraction I figured it would be a very tall one. What a surprise, then, to walk through a row of trees from the carpark and see this! The first picture is the view upstream, and the second is looking downstream from the bridge over the falls.

I called Simon on a video call while we were on the bridge. He had tried to call me the night before and I missed him, so since this was his lunch break I got hold of him. That way, he got to see what we were seeing, in real time, and we could hear about what had just happened to him. The gear box on his truck had blown up the day before, and he was borrowing one of our vehicles, so we had some things we needed to discuss (no, it wasn’t a problem that he was borrowing a vehicle from us!).

Looking back upstream toward the bridge, after we walked down to another viewing platform.

At the end of the narrow gorge, the water leaps over a ledge and rushes away.

And, of course, we took a video of this, too! It has to be seen in action to be believed.

Huka Falls was not quite our last stop of the morning. Before heading back to our friends’ house for lunch, we stopped at an overlook from which most of the city of Taupo could be seen. My favorite part of the scene was the mountain that stands over the city and the lake.

Late that afternoon, Gayle took the children to swim in the lake. It was chilly, so they didn’t stay long, but they had a lot of fun collecting pumice that washed up on the shore. When they got back, we gave the girls a bubble bath–the first one in their lives! What fun!

Craters of the Moon

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While we were in Taupo, we wanted to see Craters of the Moon. This is a geothermal valley with steam vents everywhere you look. The walk through that valley was my favorite place to explore in that area! It started raining while we were about halfway through the walk, but that didn’t last long and we soon dried off afterwards. It did make it a bit confusing for me to sort through our pictures and put them in order, because I switched from taking pictures with my camera to my phone, as it is supposed to be waterproof.

It’s pretty amazing to look out over a valley and see steam coming up everywhere! As Miss Joy said in the first clip I included in the video tour in this post, it looked like a lot of fires–she thought it was houses burning!

The children were getting goofy!

Miss Joy wanted to take a picture of the three of us.

Esther wanted one of the three sisters.

Part of the track went along the top of the hill at the edge of the valley.

Aratiatia Rapids

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We spent two nights at the home of some dear friends in Taupo the first week of February. The morning of the day we were there was spent doing some sightseeing in the area. Our first stop was the Aratiatia Rapids on the Waikato River. A dam was built there to produce hydroelectricity; because there is such a drop in the river at that place, the dam does not have to make a very big lake. The gorge below the dam has very little water in it because of the dam, but several times a day, at set times, water is released so that tourists can see the gorge fill. That was fascinating to watch! When we first arrived, one of the gates was open a little, so there was some water in the gorge, and that was beautiful. Then, the gate was closed for ten minutes, and almost all the water drained out of the top of the gorge. Soon, the siren started going periodically, to warn people who might be in the gorge below that the water would be coming soon. Then, both gates were opened, and we watched the river fill up. What a sight!

I put together a few video clips to show some of what we experienced here. Warning: this starts with a loud siren, which is intended to warn people to get out of the gorge before the water starts coming.

On our way to the next attraction, we passed this plant which produces electricity from geothermal energy.

Devonport

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On the afternoon of the day we spent in Auckland, we took a ferry to Devonport, on the other side of the harbour. That was more of our field trip–to experience riding a ferry! This cruise ship was tied up to the dock near where the ferry docked.

There were also a lot of huge freight ships.

When we landed in Devonport, we started walking toward Mount Victoria. I quickly realized, though, that I wouldn’t make it much farther, as my sciatic nerve was playing up. Gayle and all the older children went up to the top, so these are Esther’s pictures. They saw this banyan tree along the way.

At the top is a gun bunker leftover from World War II.

A view of the Harbour, with Auckland on the other side and Devonport in the foreground.

Meanwhile, Mr. Imagination, Little Miss and Miss Joy stayed with me at a playground at sea level.

After the children played for a little while on the playground, they wanted to check out the beach, so we wandered over there.

I watched ferries go back and forth while the children played in the sand.

Mr. Imagination was delighted to find a crab in the rocks.

Soon it was time to return to Auckland. We went back to the ferry dock and watched it come in, then boarded.

We noticed several Navy ships tied up on the other side of the harbour.

When we reached Auckland again, we caught the train and returned to Drury.

November 2023 Photos

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Here are the last of the pictures we took in November! We went to Canterbury to visit friends early in the month, and Mr. Imagination and his friend went hunting. They were pretty pleased with themselves!

Miss Joy was worn out on the way home. She fell asleep a few minutes after leaving, and slept most of the three hours home. Little Miss pretended to be asleep, but she never actually dropped off.

The children found this toy truck at the dump, their favorite “shop.” They got their big brothers to help bring it home, and then Mr. Imagination replaced the motor with one from a lawn mower, and got it running. They had great fun driving it around for a couple of weeks, and then broke something. Simon took it up to his house to do something with it.

Simon and Elijah went hunting one night and Mr. Imagination went with them. They were pretty excited to get this deer! It was a young hind, so very tender.

While Esther and I were cutting up the deer, I asked Miss Joy to peel some carrots for the next day’s soup. She got one or two peeled, then got distracted eating them!

One Sunday afternoon, Miss Joy was having fun spinning around. She wanted me to get a picture of her dress swirling out, so I did, and took a few seconds of video footage, too.

We got to go on a field trip to Shantytown, a historical village close to us. We had a short lesson about using native plants for food and medicine, then went on a brief bush walk, collecting leaves. Then, we investigated the leaves, learning what we could from observing them.

We also got to watch a demonstration of sluicing, a method for mining gold that was used in the Gold Rush days.

We put 56 eggs in our new incubator.

We found the cat cuddled up to the incubator one evening!

James’ Birthday

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James turned 18 the beginning of November. I have a very hard time coming up with gift ideas for my older children, as a rule, but this year I came up with the perfect gift idea–something he had been talking about for a long time. Watch the video here to see what we gave him!

He ate all of those saveloys within two weeks!

His littlest sister gave him a bag of jelly beans she picked out for him. He made a game of tossing them to his younger brothers; if they could catch them, they could eat them, but if they couldn’t, he ate them!

Elijah’s Birthday

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Elijah had a birthday last week. Most of us went in on a high-lift jack to go along with his truck, and when it was delivered here, on his birthday, I decided to hide it in the truck. It has tinted windows, and we knew he wouldn’t be using it that evening. That gave us the idea to make him a treasure hunt to find it, so the other children all put their heads together and wrote up a trail of clues. It took them about five minutes to write and distribute all the clues! I got a video of the last two stops so that Simon could share in a little of the fun, since he couldn’t be here. The first clip shows him finding the clue for which he was given “Words in Red.” He found the last one there, which was, “Red Monster,” meaning his truck. Then, though it’s dark, you can see him finding the gift. After that, everyone came back inside and he was given a few other things. First, James challenged him to an arm wrestle–the winner could have the gifts! Unfortunately for James, Elijah is quite a lot stronger still! After that, James started a newspaper-ball fight with the gift wrapping. (Do you get the idea that James keeps things lively here?)

Busy Birds

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Several months ago, I took several of the children to the library. One book they picked out was about birds, and the three youngest enjoyed acting it out. Mr. Imagination is reading the book while his two little sisters do the actions. This video clip is rather blurry and shaky, but there are enough cute parts that I thought Grandma might enjoy it.