Wharf revue

Ever since last year, when we took Callum to the Wharf Revue (in lieu of babysitter) Callum has been desperate to go again, and Declan has been infected with his enthusiasm. So this afternoon, all four of us headed on out to the theatre. They both really enjoyed it (again), laughing along at much of the action (with the occasional joke going over their heads).

The finale was a take-off of the Wizard of Oz, which made me glad I had insisted we watched the movie (despite the protests of the musical hating members of the family). I shouldn't have been surprised, but was, that neither Callum or Declan really had any idea who Paul Keating or Bob Hawke were, which meant that they sadly failed to appreciate the superb Paul Keating impression done by Jonathan Biggins as the Tin Man.

Not really a Callum and Declan update

Julia and her spanish cousins

As Evan mentioned in his previous post, I've been in Spain for a week to see the boys' new cousin, Julia. Happily, my visit helped us finally get Callum and Declan to meet Julia by skype - Callum and (especially) Declan seemed more impressed by the experience than Julia did.

Julia doesn't like the Christening robe all that much

Callum and Declan are outnumbered in the cousins stakes by Julia's cousins from her other side - 12 of them came to Julia's special naming party  - where she got to wear the 166 year old family Christening robe (sadly she didn't seem to like the robe all that much, un-characteristically crying for most of the time she was in it).

We gave Julia a copy of one of our favourite Australian picture books - Alexander's outing -  so she could see what Sydney looks like. Ana promptly took the opportunity to read it to Julia in spanish.

Ana reads Alexander's outing to Julia in spanish!

Playing with knives when home alone

Jennifer has been off in Spain for the week and so we three boys have been home alone. To console ourselves because we didn't get to go gallivanting about the World we've been eating a lot of take-away. Turns out that may have been the safer option.

These days Callum and Declan usually help me cook dinner. We decided we needed lots of vegetables last night and so were madly chopping up healthy stuff for a stir-fry when there was a loud clattering sound. Callum had finished working on the snow peas, turned to put the off-cuts in the bin, and the chopping knife had fallen to the floor. As it fell Cal instinctively tried to grab it and ended up slicing the side of his hand open.

We headed on up to the medical centre where they confirmed he needed stitches. He was OK with that until the doctor said he'd have to inject local anesthetic. At the mention of the needle, Callum turned white and vomited.

Anyway, he is now 'proudly' sporting a bandaged hand and three stitches. 

Dungeons and Dragons

After watching the Big Bang theory, Declan decided that we must have a game of Dungeons and dragons in the house. So he bought it from Amazon, with his own money.

And today Callum had two of his friends over (Freddie and Jacob), with Declan as the dungeon master, to play a game. When Freddie's mum came to pick him up, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, as Freddy's character was at serious risk of death without someone to play him.

I'm quite surprised they like it, considering how slow it is compared with your average computer game.

Minecraft cartoon

Pondering evolution

Declan has taken to drawing pictures on our whiteboard. The latest is a Minecraft cartoon.

Maths homework

Declan gets quite difficult maths homework. He gets easy homework too, but he doesn't have to do that, as long as he has proved he is OK with the hard stuff.

So we've been trying to work out how to get him to check his work, rather than just dash the answers down so he can get on with playing computer games. My latest strategy is to make him do two more questions for every one he gets wrong (unless he shows his working, in which case it is one).

It worked really well last week, with his error rate much reduced, and his working much better.

But this week, he cleverly introduced a first line of defense - Callum. He got Callum to check the answers first, and fixed all his mistakes before I could find them.

Although I suspect Declan didn't check his work quite as well as the previous week, it was lovely to  listening to them both workshopping the maths homework (with the occasional pause for a sword fight).

Mountain Visit

Callum, Tom and Aidan cramming in some computer time

Today we went up to the mountains for a visit to the new Langdon Linigen house, and some tech support. Evan and I also got to see the remains of the old house. The boys had a wonderful time with the extended proxy cousins; visiting the pool (which is across the road from the new house) and then settling down for some extended gaming.

Some books and the ironing board

The bread experiment

The bread before the action of time

Callum has got into the habit of buying bread from the new french patisserie in Crows Nest for his lunch every morning. Which led to a discussion of preservatives in bread, and what they actually did. So he created the bread experiment.

First, he bought bread from Baker's Delight (advertising: no preservatives) and Woolworths, and did a blind taste test. Everyone except me thought that the Baker's Delight was nicer, and that it was Baker's Delight.

The mouldy bread after three or so weeks

Then he put four slices of each in bell jars to watch their progression through staleness into mould.

Riding in the smoke

As has become our habit on a Sunday morning, we went for a bike ride this morning. But one of our number found the smoke in the air a bit hard to cope with. Declan had to stop every now and again to have a drink to calm his lungs down, and we could all taste the smoke in the back of our throats.  While it wasn't as hazy as yesterday, the Air Quality was still pretty bad.

The epic wiki

Declan and his friends have made up a wiki about their fictional world. They play sagas from their world in the playground at school.

Declan's favourite character is Kalenz, and you can see the extensive character notes on the wiki. Another cool character, with character notes in progress from Declan, is Pulse.

Now if only there was this much energy available for homework.