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Siblings

Family Trip #03: Aviation Museum and Mackenzie Country

March 4, 2021 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

Well, it’s been a busy few weeks! I’ve been away from home again, helping a family for the past month, so I haven’t had a lot of time (or brain space) to get a post out. But today I have a bit of extra time, since my work finished a couple of hours early.

I got up to the second day of our family trip last, so I thought I’d continue that today. Here’s day three.

Our second night out, we stayed with some of the friends I helped last year. While there earlier last year, I learned about the church a family member owned, but never got to see it. On our way to Ashburton the morning of our third day, Mom and I found it and stopped to have a look! It’s a lovely wee thing, always open to whoever wants to go in and pray or have a few quiet moments with the Lord.

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The cactus outside was blooming (I guess you can tell how dry this climate is in the summer…!). So pretty!

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While Mom and I went to a used bookstore (lots of fun), my brothers went to an aviation museum. They didn’t find the aviation museum quite as interesting as they had hoped, but they still enjoyed having a look at the 20+ planes there. This (second picture below) is one of the earliest planes to be flown in NZ, I believe.

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Mom and I, meanwhile, found a stack of books to buy—whether we needed them or not! (Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the bookstore or our stack of books.) The museum was interesting, although I was thankful I didn’t have to be there the whole morning. There were some fascinating plane designs, as well as some older planes. When we finished looking around after lunch, we were all ready to get on the road again!

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After the morning in Ashburton, we took off for the Mackenzie country! Such a difference from the coast; it’s a very dry part of the country. But what it might lack in green, it makes up for in majesty!

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There are multiple canals in the area, but the parts that are undoubtedly my favorite are the lakes and mountains. The first lake you get to is Lake Tekapo, and it was a beautiful blue the day we went through. Every time we’ve gone past, we’ve tended to stop somewhere for pictures, and this time we got to see the new bridge and the old church. It was a beautiful day, although it was a bit cloudy!

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I am so thankful for the two sisters the Lord has given me!

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The younger ones loved exploring around the water.

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I loved the lupins there!

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My baby sister thought it was the perfect chance to do some rock throwing!

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That night, we stayed with friends who own the hardware shop in Twizel, Jake’s Hardware. They’ve been good friends for years, and it was wonderful to get to catch up with them again!

Filed Under: Life, Siblings Tagged With: Brothers, Family, My Family, Pictures, Traveling

Second Day of Our Family Trip

January 18, 2021 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

The second day of our trip dawned cold and clear, and by breakfast time, there was sunlight coming through the trees, so we soaked that up while we ate—a breakfast of fried eggs, bread and condiments, and granola (muesli) for those who wanted it.

We were on the road by 10:30 or so, and our first stop was Cave Stream. Dad and my oldest brother walked through there four years ago, but this time all the boys and my oldest sister wanted to make the trek, so they did that. While they were underground in the freezing, sometimes waist- or a bit higher water, Mom, my baby sister, and I walked the trail on top and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery!

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I admit it. I took far too many pictures while we were driving. But I love mountains!

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Looking up toward the Torlesse (?) Mountain range, down the Broken River valley.

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It was such a gorgeous area!

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My brothers at the cave opening, where Cave Stream runs out to join the Broken River.

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Dad and my oldest sister also went through the cave.

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The Broken River, downstream.

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Cave opening where my brothers came out.

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This is the kind of area I’d love to live in, except for the fact that it’s so remote!

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Lunch break.

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After lunch, we went to Castle Hill, where my brothers had fun climbing the gigantic rock outcrops. I carried my baby sister up there, hoping she’d fall asleep, but she ended up staying awake until we got back to the van.

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Meanwhile, Mom and I got to do a little exploring in the area—that was beautiful! I love how rugged it is and seeing the mountains in the background.

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My brothers were quite exhausted by the time they got back! They aren’t used to quite such strenuous work most of the time!

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Switchbacks on Porter’s Pass.

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Baby sister was tired!

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That evening, we stayed the night with friends, ones I lived with for six weeks this past May/June. It was lovely to catch up with them again!

The next day, Mom and I went to a used book store, and my brothers went to an aviation museum. Post coming soonish, hopefully. 🙂

Filed Under: Life, Siblings Tagged With: Brothers, Family, My Family, Pictures, Traveling

First Day of Our Family Trip

January 2, 2021 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

We’ve had a delightful family trip so far! We left fairly late Monday afternoon, and got up to Arthur’s Pass in time for a quick hour’s walk before we needed to set up for the night. I’ve been wanting to show the Devil’s Punchbowl Waterfall to the family for quite a while, so that’s what we did. I counted the steps on the way up—401 one way, not counting all the parts of the path that were not steps either up or down! Needless to say, we were all a bit puffed by the time we got to the top!

But the views…just gorgeous! This is from when we were heading out to the road to the pass.

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Heading up the Arthur’s Pass Viaduct…a gorgeous, sunny day!

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The Devil’s Punchbowl Waterfall:

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After climbing up to the viewing platform, all of us children went on to the base of the falls.

Brothers in the rainbow. 🙂 Baby sister wasn’t very impressed, though, and wanted to go back to “Mum, Mum!”

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My wonderful parents!

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Baby sister had fun climbing down some of those 401 steps by herself!

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View down the pass valley—this is the Bealey river.

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Enjoying the sunshine and company at the end of the walk.

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That evening, since it was cold out and the sandflies were attacking, we all gathered in the back of one of the vans on Dad and Mom’s bed and played a game of Ricochet Robots (a recommended game, by the way).

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And thus was the end of our first day of traveling. The next were fairly eventful, as well—perhaps I can take time to get some more posts together about that!

Filed Under: Life, Siblings Tagged With: Brothers, Family, My Family, Pictures, Traveling

River Walk

March 5, 2018 // Esther Filbrun 4 Comments

When we moved over here a month ago, I asked Mom, “Do you think I’ll always think of the East Coast as the most beautiful side, and miss it? Or will I eventually think the West Coast is the most beautiful, and if we move back to Canterbury, I’ll end up missing the West Coast?”

She answered, “I don’t know.”

I think I’ve now found my answer now:

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A month into being here, I think I can pretty comfortably say that I’ve fallen in love with West Coast scenery. Before we moved here, I already really enjoyed it—there’s a certain charm to the rugged beauty of this place, but I knew I didn’t like the rain. However, I’m finding I haven’t minded the rain at all (so far, anyway—better wait until I’ve gone through a couple winters to make that an absolute statement!). And we still do get a good amount of sunshine, which is lovely!

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But the colors here…I think at this point I’d really miss them if we would go anywhere else. Yesterday afternoon, we as a family had time for a quick walk, and we’ve been wanting to find out exactly where a creek is that we’ve seen signs for.

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So we took off to explore for that, and turns out it’s just a 10-15–minute walk away, around the corner, down a hill, and around another corner.

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It ended up being a lovely little creek that gushes under a rickety old wooden bridge (rickety, as in when I walked across it, several of the boards were bouncing under my feet!). It also has that special enchanting gurgle as it tumbles over several series of rapids on its way down to join the river.

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After exploring the creek, we retraced our steps, crossed the railway line, and headed down another road. We found what we assume is a fishing access road that follows the creek for a ways as it winds out to the riverbed. It wasn’t a very long walk from there to the river.

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The scenery along the way, though. Gorgeous. Even though we were less than a mile from town, we were immersed in the country. There were animals, green, green grass, trees galore, the river off in the distance, and the mountains behind that…. Ahh, it did my soul good.

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Skirting the gravel piles, we walked down a short four-wheel-drive trail and then headed west along the rocky riverbed. It wasn’t far until we hit the creek again, where it spread out and hurried over rocks and around hillocks of grass and small shrubs to merge with the river that flowed at its toes off to our left.

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Then a patch of sand, another bit of rushing water (perhaps a side-channel of the Grey river?), more sand, more rocks, and we hit what appeared to be one of the main channels of the Grey river. That water was moving much faster, and appeared to be just as big if not bigger than the river that flows past our town to the south. It had gouged out a cleft for itself in the rocky riverbed, and formed a swift-moving current through which it ran down to where the two rivers intersected. On either side, for quite a distance, smaller trickles of water fanned out, all heading downstream.

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The boys had heaps of fun wading in the rushing water, but the current was strong, so they mostly all stayed together to keep from being washed off their feet!

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Then they headed upstream to find driftwood to send down the chute.

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It truly was a lovely evening! And although pictures aren’t perfect, and don’t come anywhere near to doing it justice, the memories made will live in our hearts forever.

Thank you, Lord, for my family. For the time we can spend together. For laughter, and a beautiful creation, and most of all, for Your gift of love that we can share with each other.

Filed Under: Families, Life, Siblings Tagged With: Brothers, My Family, Pictures, Thankful

Christmas and Life Update

December 30, 2017 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

I’ve planned on stopping in many different times to do just a quick blog post, but each time, the thoughts just didn’t come together.

So here I am today, with a few spare minutes so at least I can say hello!

My time lately has flown by, often crazy busy but in other moments slow and wonderful, too—all wrapped up into one beautiful package called “life”.

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I’ve had my busy moments.

I’ve been working on a variety of projects lately—getting some sewing completed, starting some more sewing, in between swapping stories with my brothers and working at my away-from-home job quite a few different days.

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Besides some of my own projects, part of my time and brain space has been taken up in trying to understand how buying homes in New Zealand works, and what one needs to do or have to buy a place.

Beyond that, there are endless questions about how to organize a cross-country move (thankfully it’s only four hours away, but still…!), and all the technical little details about how we’re going to get ourselves and our stuff over there in good time—and still somehow leave this house in decent (i.e. mostly clean and tidy) condition.

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It’s an intense time. But it’s wonderful. I’m thankful I only have to do one day at once, and that the amount of stuff to think about for just today is all I really need to worry about for now.

I’ve also been away from home quite a bit these last few weeks, so that adds more socializing (yay!) and also another level of busyness.

But it’s also been slow…

As much as life has been full-on, though, there have been times that it’s been amazingly slow and I had time to just enjoy the moments.

When I was on a trip over to the West Coast to pick up my brother, I distinctly remember several times where I was able to just sit and soak in the gorgeous scenery flowing past. I also read quite a bit, and finished a book on that trip.

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Another afternoon, I had time to sit down with a cup of coffee and read a magazine for a while.

Over Christmas, my brothers and I played lots of different games. That was relaxing, and a great way to bond. It was beautiful.

Christmas Day, our family went out to the beach for lunch, and had a delightful time. The boys loved swimming in the sea, and I greatly enjoyed watching them and having some quiet time to enjoy nature and think.

Also over Christmas, our family did a little celebration of Hanukkah. I remembered the second-to-last day of the holiday, but we started then and lit one candle per night for it. But still, it was a time to reflect on the story from thousands of years ago, and for me, it’s always fun and relaxing to have candles burning in the window after dark.

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Otherwise,

I’ve been working on my plans for the new year. Due to moving, and lots of anticipated life craziness over the next few months, I’m (working on) keeping things down to more of the basics. They still aren’t all finalized, but I’m hoping to take more time for that on New Year’s day.

Despite everything that needs to happen in the next 3 – 3 1/2 weeks before I move over to the West Coast, I’m still feeling very relaxed about how things are going. God is good!

Oh—and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and will have a blessed new year!

How is life treating you right now?

Filed Under: Families, Life, Siblings Tagged With: Brothers, Family, New Year

State Park Visit

July 4, 2017 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

One Sunday afternoon when we were up north a ways, one of our aunts took us five oldest out to a local state park. There’s a lovely trail through some woods around different water courses, and we really enjoyed our time walking and talking. It was a good way for us to get some quality time with her.

Just after we started off, a kind woman offered to take our picture for us. I was thankful! It’s not often that we get to get a picture with our aunt!

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The irises there were gorgeous!

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At one point along the trail, it opened out into a small sand dune. The boys loved running down to the water and climbing back up!

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Filed Under: Families, Life, Siblings Tagged With: My Family

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Hi! I’m Esther, lover of the Lord Jesus Christ and brainstormer behind helping families find good books (read more about that here). My goal is to live a purposeful, fulfilling life—whether that is in what I read, write, cook, design, or do with my wonderful siblings. My life is full and often messy. But God is good. Welcome to the adventure!

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