Our family's life in New Zealand
The garden is at its peak of beauty right now, so I decided to do a video walk through it. I was especially thinking of you, Mom, and hoping you can watch it.
I had fun photographing some of our harvests lately. The first picture was my harvest the evening of Christmas Day; the rest were this past week (the 3rd-8th of January). I love bringing in gorgeous fresh vegetables!
For Christmas this year, we decided to go on a picnic at Jim’s Hut, about a half-hour drive east of here, up the Ahaura River. Our boys have been there a lot of times, hunting, and Gayle has been there once, but the rest of us hadn’t seen it yet. I got a picnic ready, and we headed off, in two vehicles. Our van wouldn’t make it up the track, so Simon and Elijah each drove his 4WD. We got almost to the turn-off to Jim’s Hut—and Simon turned off the other way, onto a two-track going into the bush. It turned out, once we got together again and heard the story, that James had heard about this track (at least he thinks it was this one!), and they decided to explore something new! Here we are, following Simon’s Pajero. He wanted to use his kayak in the river, so he had a trailer on behind. These pictures were taken through the windscreen of Elijah’s Rav4, while we were bumping around.
Mudholes don’t faze that truck!
These ruts, however, were a different story. The reason for the blurriness is that we were being thrown around a lot. I think this was a few seconds before we stopped and all piled into the Pajero, leaving the Rav behind. Just ahead, the track got even rougher, with gullies at least two feet deep to navigate. Simon did very well, and the Pajero performed beautifully; I held on tightly!
The end of the line—Simon decided he wouldn’t try going through this creek, because the bank on the other side went up too steeply. The track goes on, but we decided not to walk it this time.
The bush is beautiful back there! I couldn’t possibly record the colors of the ferns, or the cool dampness, or the sound of the rushing water. You’ll just have to imagine!
Simon found a dead tree right away, and his trusty hatchet came in useful. Soon, we were treated to the sight of a tree crashing down into the ravine.
We laid out the picnic on the trailer, and had lunch, then packed up, got turned around, and went back out to the main road.
Finally, we were on the track to Jim’s Hut…and there was a tree across it. Out came the hatchet again!
The Ahaura River in front of Jim’s Hut.
Elijah tried fishing, but when someone is swimming in the same place, it doesn’t work very well. Several of the boys ended up swimming across the river and back.
The boys often take this cage across the river.
Some of us walked down to Jim’s Flat. It’s an open meadow surrounded by thick bush.
Looking upstream, to the mouth of the Ahaura Gorge…
…and downstream.
The girls wanted a ride over the river in the cage, so Simon and James obliged.
The kayak made a couple of trips up the gorge.
One more picture… I took this on our way out, going from home toward the mountains. Notice the bales of hay? Whoever mowed the roadsides baled it, too!
Simon recently completed his apprenticeship, and is now a fully-qualified mechanic. His boss put on a party this week to celebrate. I had been thinking about doing it myself, but the boss wanted to combine it with an end-of-year party, so that worked out well. The family who run the workshop where Simon works did most of the work for the party, although we had it at another friend’s house. These people have an outdoor pizza oven, so pizza was the main course of the meal. A number of people helped get the pizzas ready to go in the oven. The owner had built a fire in the oven earlier in the day, and then scraped the fire out when it was time to bake the pizzas.
One of the boss’s daughters made the Land Rover pinata, and Elijah bought a race car pinata in town. There was plenty of candy!
They had a lot of fun with the drinks! I didn’t get any pictures of the dessert bar, but the idea was to build your own car, with pink wafers for panels, oreo cookies for wheels, jello for grease, different colors of custard for paint, and other bits and pieces, like nuts and bolts made out of chocolate. There was also ice cream. Some people got very creative, but it didn’t occur to me to take a picture till all the creations had been eaten.
The children had a lot of fun, hopping around in feed sacks while the older children played soccer. Some of them tried to hop up this steep bank to the house with their feet in a feed sack!
Simon has these two certificates as a record of his accomplishment.
It was a great evening, with lots of talking and laughing (and good food!), as well as a time when anyone who wanted to give Simon some encouragement could stand up and give a speech.
Last Sunday, we went to Punakaiki to have Thanksgiving Dinner (a few weeks late due to unavoidable changes in plans) with some friends. Esther and I and the little girls went early to get the turkeys cooking and spend the afternoon hanging out with our friends, and Gayle and the boys came later. On the way, they climbed Mount George. There is a track going off the main highway, but the beginning of it is rather obscured. Only locals know where it is, for the most part. Some of our boys climbed it a couple of years ago, and have wanted to go back, ever since. This time, both Simon and Elijah took a bunch of pictures with their phones, and let me have them. I’ll see if I can combine the photos in an order that makes sense.
This first one is a panorama that Elijah took from the top. What a view! It was quite foggy, but cleared a bit for a few of these shots.
On top the mountain! The bits of white near Gayle’s head are the surf breaking on the shore of the Tasman Sea.
Mr. Imagination
Elijah taking a picture…
…of Simon taking a picture of him!
Mr. Sweetie decided to climb up a cliff.
This part of the track looks doable to me.
See the bit of road off in the distance? Mom, you have been on that road, when we drove from Pancake Rocks to Greymouth, on our West Coast trip seven years ago.
This part of the track, on the other hand, looks, to say the least, challenging to me. The phone was pointing straight down to take this one.
Apparently, it’s easiest to back down this section!
Climbing a mountain is on my bucket list for someday. I hope to give Mount George a try. Someday, when I no longer have tiny children and pregnancies to deal with! In the meantime, I’m thankful that my boys can have experiences like this, and bring back pictures to show me.
Can you believe it’s December already? Here are the last of our photos from November.
The first weekend of the month, on Mr. Diligence’s birthday, we drove across the mountains to attend a friend’s 21st birthday party. Mr. Diligence turned 16, so I’ll start calling him by his name, James. He is excited to be working full-time, and, Lord willing, will be starting an apprenticeship in the new year. Anyway, this picture was taken on the way over. The boys in the back of the van thought they were tired! James is on the bottom, with Mr. Imagination to the left and Mr. Sweetie on the right. Now, of course, since James has his license, you won’t catch him in the back—at least willingly!
This was taken that evening. After we sang Happy Birthday to the 21-year-old, her mother cut a slice of cake and put a candle on it for James, and we sang for him.
This may actually have been taken in September or October—I’m not sure. I just found it on Gayle’s phone recently. It was taken in Waikari, near the church we attend when we’re over there. Near the church is a public restroom, and these concrete sheep are in front of it.
Mr. Sweetie went with Gayle and some friends to the sea one day, and Gayle took this picture of him.
Someone found a crab that day.
Simon often picks up vehicles for his boss. This was a day he had driven an hour to pick up a farm vehicle to be fixed, and stopped by home for a few minutes before taking it to the workshop.
Elijah was laying on the couch reading one evening when Princess decided he would make a perfect place for a nap!
Elijah saw this pretty flower when he was doing a job in Westport one day, and took a picture to show me. It sure brightens up an otherwise uninspiring fence!
I started going through a new science textbook with my three schoolchildren in October (sure seems strange to only have three in school! Technically, there are four, but Mr. Diligence is now working almost all the time, since he turned 16.). We are working through Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics, from Apologia. I’m finding it quite interesting. I think I may have done some chemistry in high school, but I really don’t remember for sure—and if I did, I don’t remember it! The children are struggling to understand what we’re learning and to enjoy it, but they love the experiments!
This experiment was to show how substances of different densities react. We mixed differing amounts of salt into these cups of water, and then put some into a straw. It was a lot of fun to figure out how to do this.
One jar held salt water, the other plain water—the egg floated in one of them.
What things float and what things sink?
Each of the children got to fashion a boat from a piece of foil. Which ones would hold up the most coins?
Mr. Sweetie was the winner! He shaped his foil over a bowl.
Elijah is enjoying his apprenticeship as a floor layer. One job he did a couple of weeks ago was to lay carpet tiles in the dining room/lobby of a seven-story hotel in Greymouth. He was given this diagram to follow. It is supposed to symbolize the Grey River, the sea, and the mountains. I was in town several days later, while he was working on the upper floors, and stopped in so I could see this amazing floor. It was still under plastic to protect it while renovations continue, but even so I could tell it is beautiful!
Here is a picture Elijah took from an upper floor. What a view! That is the Grey River, emptying into the sea in the distance.
It is so much fun having two little girls in our home. After having a lot of boys, I especially enjoy the girls. Miss Joy is old enough now that the two of them play together a lot. Playing house is now a thing in our home, something we rarely, if ever saw, while we had lots of young boys. This day, they had most or all of the dolls, doll clothes, and soft toys in the hallway, and were doing puzzles while holding their dolls.
Miss Joy loves to write and draw. She often spends a lot of time writing long letters or stories like this. The most recent example had a lot of circles, carefully drawn in the lines.
She discovered Little Miss’s pick-up-sticks. Her way of playing with them is to dump them on the floor and then carefully lay them back in the box.
I glanced out the window one afternoon this week and saw Miss Joy walking down the street in front of our house (it’s basically a driveway), telling Grizzly to follow her.
A few weeks ago, I remembered a funny video Esther took in September 2010, so we found and watched it. It made me laugh again, just as in the past! The baby is Mr. Sweetie. Seth is in the yellow shirt on the bike. Simon has a yellow and brown striped shirt, Elijah has a blue striped shirt, and Mr. Diligence is the cute little fellow in the maroon shirt. They sure have grown up since then!
This was yesterday, with Little Miss and Miss Joy starring. Puddles were made for children!
I took this picture one afternoon to send to a friend who had left here a few hours earlier. The entire weekend they were with us, it was dry, and the morning of this day, the children played outside on dry ground while she and I worked on potting my tomato seedlings. As they left, it started to rain, and soon we had this again!
Mr. Imagination adopted this baby blackbird after a cat knocked it out of the nest. He diligently dug up earthworms and fed it, a couple hundred a day, for a week. We were trying to teach this baby to be independent when it suddenly died one morning. It took a while to work out what happened, but he thinks it may have choked on a large kernel of corn. That was a sad day. Then, a week later, the cat bit his budgie when someone opened the door while he was letting the budgie exercise, and that bird died. Not a good week for birds in our house. We’re missing the budgie.
Mr. Sweetie made this arrangement for Elijah’s birthday!
For science one day this week, we mixed cornstarch and water, and played with it. What fun the children had! We were learning about the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), and this was to demonstrate a non-Newtonian fluid.
Inside the tiny house. It’s crowded—but we can sleep a lot of people in there now!
I think I should be taking more pictures! I’m running out of fodder for posts. It doesn’t help that my camera doesn’t work very well, so I forget to take it along when we go places. Mr. Sweetie let me use his last week when we did a fun science experiment, and I got a good video of what we did…and then he deleted it without thinking. Sigh. Anyway, here are the rest of what we took in September.
This is Mr. Imagination with his pet budgie, Tammie (short for Tamarillo). The budgie isn’t very tame, but he keeps working on it.
We killed a beef and dressed it out ourselves, for the first time! That was pretty exciting. We had never done an animal bigger than a sheep before. We got a friend to kill the animal, and the boys and Gayle got it skinned and gutted. We hung it here, in the woodshed, for a few days, wrapped in clean, old sheets to keep flies off. As soon as I could get to it after the weekend, I found videos on YouTube about boning out quarters of beef, and went back and forth, watching a bit, then doing that step. It wasn’t too hard. Gayle boned out one back quarter, but I mostly did the other three. I wouldn’t mind doing this job again.
This was the pile of steaks. Yum! This is some of the tastiest, most tender beef we’ve ever eaten.
The day I finished putting the beef in the freezers, Elijah brought home four deer legs! We decided to make venison sausage. The whole family got into it, and Gayle got to share his expertise in linking sausages. He did that for many years at his last job. These sausages are delicious!
Elijah got to lay the carpet in the tiny house. It looks good! Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie now sleep in there. We have two sets of bunkbeds now in that house, and can sleep five people in there when we have company (the boys move to the container then). I need to get some pictures of it now that it’s finished.
She’s licking out the pavlova from the mixer!
Sitting in a dishpan to suck her thumb!
Reading to her baby. 
This is a craft project we did for our study of England. These are guards at Buckingham Palace, made from clothespins.
The boys’ old sleepout, which is slated for demolition. They are enjoying having more space.
