My Family

Month in Pictures, Week 3

May 24, 2019 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

Wednesday, May 15:

A storm blew in, and I loved watching the clouds forming over the mountains that are visible from my room! The colors were spectacular, too, as different waves came through. It was sunny for a few moments, then I looked out and saw this!

Thursday, May 16:

I was amused, this evening, as the boys did a quick tackling wrestle match right before our family Bible time. #2 brother pinned #3 brother down first (#3 is on the floor in picture 1), then #1 tackled #2, and in the end #2 and #3 ganged up to get #1 brother down! It’s a wonderful life—and I love watching my brothers!

Friday, May 17:

Got a glimpse of the sunshine after a rainy day—I love seeing the rays peeking through over the mountains at work!

Saturday, May 18:

I got a shipment in with the last of the pictures for my sister’s new photo album! Mom stopped making them about 10 years ago, I think, as life got busy, so she didn’t have any printed out for my sister yet. Now I have 524 pictures to sort (that’s what I’m working on here), then put into a scrapbook! I’m looking forward to working on this over the winter.

Sunday, May 19:

It was a beautiful day for a walk—so that’s just what we did! I’ve been wanting to get a picture of this gravel pile that stretches along the local creek for a while, but the perspective of my brothers and a friend or two going along the top was too good to miss. I live in such a beautiful area!

Monday, May 20—forgot about the challenge

Tuesday, May 21:

Had some prep work to do for my driving course today, and also got to work on the photo album a bit! The latter was fun, and the former informative! It’s interesting (albeit a bit disgusting) to learn about how drugs and alcohol affect driving, and what the results can be.

This week turned out a bit different than expected, and it seems as if winter has moved in to stay. Today was nice and warm, but tonight there’s a chill in the air. I’m thankful for warm clothing and fires, and that our house hasn’t been too cold yet!

This weekend, we’re planning to be with some friends, which I’m really looking forward to. We’ll see how the challenge goes through that; I’m hoping I won’t forget like I tend to do when there are others around. Enjoy your last week of May, and I’ll see you next week!

Month in Pictures, Week 2

May 16, 2019 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

Wednesday, May 8:

One afternoon, all the younger ones were busy playing Lego—such fun! (And I couldn’t decide which picture to keep, so you get both.)

Thursday, May 9:

The table next to my desk showed remnants of the day’s work: Time spent on some studies on American History, and my first handwritten letter in ages! (So much fun to do! I hope you get it soon, Marlène!)

Friday, May 10:

Our dishwashers. Such a fun bunch!

Saturday, May 11:

Building a shelf in the lean-to garage (for holding a car engine?). My brothers are hard workers!

Sunday, May 12—forgot about the challenge

Monday, May 13:

Our enthusiastic laundry sorter. I love this boy so much!

Tuesday, May 14:

Cake- and pie-baking, little sister style. It’s a good use of time when you’ve finished school, but everyone else is still working!

It’s been a fun challenge to try to remember to take pictures of each day—and it’s fun to look back on things that already are nearly forgotten! It’s the mundane and ordinary of life that makes up all those years we look back on…and how precious to have a few pictures to remember those moments by!

One interesting thing I noticed this week, as opposed to last week, is that it was a lot harder to remember to take pictures on the second week. Hence, several evening/nighttime pictures with not the greatest lighting. I remember noticing this before with other challenges—what is it about the second week that makes it so hard to keep up? During NaNoWriMo, if there’s one week where the going is especially hard, it’s the second week.

If there are any spiritual applications, they’re escaping me right now. I was away at work all day, and my brain is tired. It’s been very windy and rainy here today, with racing clouds overhead, and the sun peeking out for a few seconds or so now and then (“Look, guys, the sun is out! Look outside quick, because it might be the only sunshine you’ll see all day!”).

For now, keep pushing through those second weeks, and I’ll see you again next week.

What has your weather been like today?

Month in Pictures, Week 1

May 9, 2019 // Esther Filbrun Leave a Comment

Well, my grandma has inspired me once again. Last month, she decided to do a photo-a-day challenge, and I had such fun seeing pictures of her normal life! I’ve done something similar before, but it’s been a few years. Somehow, I always got caught up taking flower or landscape pictures because I couldn’t find anything else worthy of photography (or so I thought). After seeing Grandma’s lineup, and especially enjoying the pictures she shared of parts of the family I don’t see very often, I thought it would be fun to try the challenge again.

So, without further ado, here goes:

May 1:

The strip canoe project my brothers have been working on for nearly a year now—ready for more epoxy coating! They brought it out in the sunshine one afternoon so the epoxy would harden faster.

May 2—forgot about the challenge

May 3:

An impressive lump of coal a local miner gave my boss’ family! It burned for nearly 24 hours on their open fireplace.

May 4:

Several years ago, I bought our first copy of a book in the Pleasant Valley Farm series, Shadow the Barn Cat. It quickly became a favorite—a great series of picture books! I’d be tempted to replace Shadow now, because our first copy has been so well-loved that it came apart last week! Mom just ordered the last two books, to finish off the series, and my two youngest siblings were thrilled! This is their first look at the new books.

Bonus picture: Little sister helped me mix up a brine to soak a pork leg in. We’re looking forward to seeing how it turns out and if homemade ham is something we want to do again! I’m pretty excited about this project.

May 5:

Sunday evening: Playing Skipbo Golf with Dad.

May 6:

Monday evening schoolwork and reading. A fairly typical evening around here!

May 7:

Making peanut butter while sitting in the chair he made (didn’t he do a great job on that?)—and fresh peanut butter can’t be beat!

Have you ever done a photo-a-day challenge before? What has been happening in your normal life lately that might not be normal for some people?

What Will be Left? (An Abandoned Gold Mine Adventure)

October 13, 2018 // Esther Filbrun 1 Comment

Last Sunday, several people in our family had colds, so we had a family worship time together instead of meeting with our normal church group. Then, since we had an afternoon to spend together, we decided to go explore some new part of our local area. We finally settled on Waiuta, a town located north and east of us, what once was a gold mining town from 1905 to 1951, when the mine closed.

The first place we explored was the township area itself, around the first mineshaft to go in, the Blackwater shaft. There was a good-sized vein of gold-bearing quartz in this area, and apparently the operations were quite profitable while they lasted—they produced almost 750,000 ounces of gold altogether!

What Will be Left 02 — Old mine air vents, we’re guessing

What Will be Left 03 — Wetas on a cave ceiling

What Will be Left 04 — Old swimming pool ruins

What Will be Left 07 — Back of the carpenter’s shop (red roof) and boiler house

After exploring around the Blackwater shaft area for a while, we went up through a twisty, narrow, bush-clad gravel track to the top of the hill. The Prohibition shaft had been dug up there, to meet up with the extension of the Blackwater shaft work–both were on the same mine, but eventually the mine had extended almost too far to make it easy to access from the Blackwater end. The Prohibition shaft ran from 1938 until the mine closed in 1951, when the Blackwater shaft collapsed.

What Will be Left 08 — Prohibition mine (up the hill from the old town), looking toward the processing plant

What Will be Left 09 — Part of the powerhouse, I believe, where they generated energy to run the Prohibition mine shaft

What Will be Left 10 — The old safe in part of what once was the mine shaft’s office

What Will be Left 11 — The view from the top of the Prohibition mine shaft—the little red-roofed building in the bottom middle of the picture is where the town of Waiuta once was.

After seeing these ruins, and marveling that less than 70 years ago, this was still a living town, it really makes one think about what kind of a legacy we are going to leave? These miners poured years into working here, building a town, having families, making a livelihood—and yet today, only a few bricks, chunks of cement, rusty iron, gangly trees, and holes in the ground are left to mark what had been their life’s work.

What kind of a heritage—physical and spiritual—are you leaving in the lives of the people in your circles of influence?

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.

New Home, New Memories

February 10, 2018 // Esther Filbrun 2 Comments

Well, moving week is behind us now. And I’m thankful.

At the same time, it was hard to say goodbye to our old place. I have some wonderful memories of being there, and even more great memories of living in that area. Over the last eight years, we haven’t moved any further than about 10 minutes’ distance from any one place, even though we lived in four different houses in that time.

This time, it’s four hours away. And I miss our friends from over there.

Still, I can’t help but be thankful. We aren’t renting any more. Yes, we’ve got a mortgage, but this is our house. We were able to choose where we could go. And I love this place already, even though we’ve only lived in it for a week! We have wonderful friends over here, and I’m looking forward to getting to know them (and others in the area) even better over the next few years.

During this move, I’ve realized I’m also very thankful for my memories. While it was hard to say goodbye to an area that was very much home for eight years, I’m thankful that I can remember all the good things that happened there. Like I wrote the day before we moved,

“There will always be a part of me left behind here. Life was lived to its fullest many days. There were heartaches and joys in the three years we’ve lived in this house—one dear sibling was added to the family, and another was taken away. I’m thankful for the time we’ve spent here, and the memories, and in some ways, I’ll miss it.”

Now, we’re working on developing new memories…growing deeper as a family, getting to know each other better. We’re all thrilled that my oldest brother can live with us again, since his work is only six minutes’ drive away. We love being able to hang out again.

God is good.

New Home, New Memories 03 — These guys? They’re experts at this unloading thing by now!

We’re still settling in, for sure. I haven’t finished unpacking yet, because I don’t have a place to hang my dresses yet. I’m thankful for room in Mom’s closet, and for the fact that an old solid-wood wardrobe was left here, which I’m currently refinishing (that post will be coming soon!). The house is mostly tidy now, and Mom got all our books sorted and up on shelves again which is wonderful! I love seeing all our books together in one place. Makes me want to get reading again. 🙂

There’s this huge old ivy bush at the front of our place, and right now my youngest siblings are having heaps of fun climbing to the top and bouncing down the sides. I love watching them play together and enjoy each other’s company! God is good! I’m so thankful for all He’s done!

Well, I’d better get out and do some more sanding on the wardrobe. I glued a few cracks this morning (one that I inadvertently crunched earlier after I glued and sanded it a couple days ago—oops!). Just a bit more to do there, I think, and then I can apply the stain/varnish stuff. Can’t wait to see what it looks like in the end!

What are you working on right now? What’s one memory that you have that you’re thankful for?