It's been quite an achieving year

Posts have been happening less often than in days past, so here's a bit of a round up of some achievements from the second half of the year.

Callum and Declan won the NSW iAwards with their Hi-Viz Bike project. They also came third in NSW Young ICT Explorers with the project. They are also finalists in the BHP Science and Engineering Awards 2017 which is huge.

Callum came second in the NSW Young ICT Explorers with his Do You Know About game.

The boys featured in an episode of the ABC's This is Me TV program.

Declan and his team were finalists in the Aust Centre for the Moving Image's Screen IT awards with their Down to Earth Game.

Declan's team came a slim second in regional debating.

Callum won academic prizes at school for Maths and Software design.

Declan won three academic prizes - Maths, Science, and English and was the Master of Ceremonies for the Presentation Night.

Callum completed the HSC in 4 Unit Maths and has great results.

Declan gave speeches at the Pearcey Awards at Parliament House and at the AIIA AGM.

Callum has been accepted into the UNSW's HS1917 computing course for next year.

A flight and the Prado

Declan and I set off on Thursday night on our Spanish trip with excitement as well as some trepidation. Declan pointed out to me that it will be the longest and furthest he has ever been away from Evan, and I was realizing  that I was in sole charge of the passports and the money.

The flights were pretty uneventful, with both of us reinforcing our position as the family champion sleepers, but still taking some time to enjoy Qatar's world champion entertainment (the whole Marvel comic universe!)

We arrived at our cosy flat near Bob and Ana to be greeted by mum and Marta, with a fashionably late Spanish lunch of ham and cheese, with dad relaxing on the couch

(two days before dad had an infected tooth that turned into a fever nasty enough that he was taken to hospital for antibiotics and close attention.. He is slowly recovering, but still very tired).

Marta whisked us off to the Prado, which Declan had picked as his art museum of choice while in Madrid, as it has the famous Velazquez painting Las Meniñas, which he had studied at school this year. After a few false starts, we found it, admired a few more of the masterpieces, on the way in and out, and then retired to the gardens for a well earned ice cream. the Prado is room after room of European masterpieces, but it was kind of nice to pick the eyes out of it this way.

And finally, as it was Friday night with the grandparents, we had a takeaway pizza from around the corner before retiring to bed. Not before Declan had remembered to give Granny Marta the hug he had been tasked with giving her from Granny in Sydney.

Spanish wedding

Declan and I are in Spain for a wedding - my brother Bob is marrying Ana. They are also taking the opportunity to formally welcome their second daughter Eva to the world in the family christening robe that Bob and I have both worn. 

This is just a quick post with some photos. There may be more with some story!

Mountain Easter

We went up to the mountains for Easter Saturday, which was lots of fun, as we had a bonfire to help get rid of some of the mountains of firewood that collects on the grounds of the new Langdon Linigen place.

Boys admiring the fire

As well as playing computer games extensively, the children also managed a game of spotlighting (hide and seek in the dark) some swordfighting around the grounds, toasting marshmallows, and an introduction to the game Magic, the Gathering.

Melting Moments

The chefs in the tidy kitchen

Declan and his school friends decided to make Melting Moments for Harmony Day. Jac, Finbar and Danny came over one Sunday afternoon, and they made two batches of melting moments, with lots of different colours (as well as preparing their presentation for class the next day).

I had to go to work, and so Evan left them to it, which they were very pleased with, as they managed the whole lot with basically zero adult intervention. They even cleaned the kitchen up to Evan's satisfaction at the end.

So this weekend, when we went up to the mountains for a night for Easter, Declan decided to make them again, and was very pleased when adults and children alike scoffed them down.

Update

So since I last posted, here's some news

• the boys had three more weeks of school holidays, which was mostly hanging out and playing computer games
• they also tidied and decorated the lab, so that it is now a thing of beauty and geekiness (including a motion sensitive welcome sign, and remote controlled colour lighting)
• Callum has had three year 12 maths exams already (2 unit, 3 unit and 4 unit). He did very well relatively (2nd, 3rd and 2nd, I think) but the marks got lower and lower the harder you got
• Declan has started Japanese, which he loves, and has added a friend, Danny, to his group
• The boys took two days off school last week to be filmed for a new ABC TV show called This is me which is a series of 5 minute programs showcasing kids their age and the cool things they do
• Both boys are planning out projects for Young ICT Explorers and the STEM video game challenge this year, probably at least one entry each, and possibly a joint one
• we tried out snorkelling at Balmoral this weekend, and Declan decided he wasn't as terrified as he thought (despite the extreme murkiness)
• we have been looking after Harvey (Martin and Kevin's dog) who has agreed to go for walks with only Declan (having previously only going if Evan went with them).

Hiatus

Some of our readers have complained about the lack of posting here. It was because Callum and Declan had both, recently, objected to us writing about them.

So I had a chat with them about it, and explained that this blog isn't searchable (although if you know the address anyone can see it) and they decided that that was OK. So I'll post some more. But given we have one teenager and one almost teenager, I suspect we'll say less and less to spare their sensibilities.

Ice skating

A year after we all kind of learned to ice skate, Callum and Declan and Evan decided that a rainy Sydney week was a good time to see if they could still do it. Sadly most of Sydney had the same idea, but they managed to get back into it, not too shakily, and enjoyed it.

New year measurement

As is traditional, we measured the boys on our first day back (not quite New Year, but close). Callum has grown 9 cm this year, and is now 168cm (which is taller than me, which has been since Declan's birthday. Percentile wise, that puts him at 61st percentile for height, which is about the highest percentile he has been in his life.

Declan has seen Callum grow more away from him this year than ever before - there is now 13cm between them, and he is at a slightly lower height percentile (56th). I suspect next year will be the year of Declan shooting up, since he always seems to grow slightly earlier than Callum.

Callum and Maths

I haven't got around to describe Callum's fascination with maths this year. If anything it has increased.  His Beyond Visible course had a segment where they had to do the maths enrichment prep for maths olympiad - Gauss section. They weren't allowed to get any help from anyone, so Callum spent a lot of time staring at whiteboards and moving things around as he got the right answers.

He was able to share his solutions with people, so he also spent a fair bit of time with me and with his grandparents taking us through the various problems.

In our stopover in Bangkok airport on the way to our holiday, Callum also grabbed the serviette and tried to write out his equation for the time it takes for something to fall from a height, depending on its horizontal velocity, as well as the gravitational force on whatever planet you happen to be at the time.

And in quiet moments in the bus on our holiday, Callum spent some time musing on relativity, trying his various equations out on me, to see whether I thought they were correct. It seems we have less time than we thought before he overtakes us  - the combination of Grandma and Grandpa (with multiple maths and physics degrees between them, albeit more than 50 years ago) is being stretched to its limit.

Declan's Award Night

We just got back from Declan's Award Night where he received 5 awards: Academic Extension, English, Science, Maths and the Rolf Adams Award for Academic Excellence.

Declan's Report

Declan had a wonderful final Report for the year.

He came 1st in English, 1st in Science, 3rd in Year 9 Maths, 2nd in Geography, 3rd in Art, 4th in Technology.

All fantastic and the combination of the English and Maths positions is particularly pleasing.

And the comments were equally pleasing summed up by the Princial with "diligent, intelligent, conscientious, motivated and committed to learning"

His award night is next Monday.

Callum's Award night

Callum won two awards for Maths (2 Unit and 3 Unit) and one for Beyond Visible and the Rolf Adams Memorial Award for Academic Excellence (which means he was the top student in Year 9).

He also came 8th in English in spite of missing much of the classes, 2nd in Science and 4th in Engineering.

His report was full of glowing comments about his maturity and application and how happy the teachers were to have him in their class.

There was even a nice comment from the sports teacher. Callum had clearly been labelled geeky non-sportsman after less than shining in the ball sports they did in the first half of the year. But the teacher had clearly been surprised when they moved on to cross-fit in the second half of the year and all Cal's TKD training paid off handsomely.