Dessert this week

Declan has been keen to make a custard tart forever, so researched a recipe which we duly made. The best part was the pastry, but the tart was pretty nice too, as you would expect when it had eight eggs in it.

Movie was Pirates of the Caribbean.

Swimming carnival

This week was the swimming carnival. Declan had decided beforehand he was only going to enter one race. In the end, because he missed the breaststroke (too busy talking for his first choice) he entered the freestyle and the backstroke. He won his backstroke race (of two entrants) and now seems to be at risk of going to zone!

Callum did his usual strategy of just entering the breaststroke, but as he had forgotten his goggles, he crashed into the lane ropes too often to get a place.

Year 7 Camp

Declan went off to Year 7 camp this week, to get to know his fellow year 7s. He seems to have had a fun time, although as they went to exactly the same place he went for his end of Year 6 camp, his comments tended to critique the differences, rather than tell us the exciting parts.

He still came home tired, but happy, having made some more new friends, and reinforced some existing ones.

Racing

Callum and Declan and I did a 4K race this morning, in Centennial Park. It was the same place that Declan and I went last year (although last year we did the 7K).  It was a lot warmer this time, so we weren't hanging around the pancakes just to warm up before the race this time.

Callum went on ahead, and finished 2nd in his age group, in just under 22 minutes for his 4K. Declan and I were slower, finishing in 32 minutes (which was slightly faster per km than the 7K last year).

Declan was hoping that the zombies chasing him on his tshirt would speed him up, but they were too fake.

Duolingo racing

Because Declan is doing Year 9 maths this year, he is missing a few periods of other subjects. The most serious is language, where he misses two periods out of three. They start with Italian, so Declan has taken up Duolingo. The gamification is working very well for him. He and I both have the same goal (20 experience points per day) so we are racing to see who gets there first!

As an aside, I suspect that he has learned about three weeks worth in his first three days - his accent is already sounding better, and I think he has learned how to order a coffee!

ICT challenge prep

Today's activity for all is coding work - Declan and Callum are working hard on their respective websites so that they will be ready for the iAwards and Young ICT explorers this year.

Declan's BIN I.T! team is joining him this afternoon for a full afternoon of project work and codings, so Declan has been madly making sure he has something great to show for the two weeks since they last met.

More visiting

As an overlap with the grandparents, Angela and Tom (and later Rob, fresh from a gallery open) came around for the afternoon, and dinner. Tom, Callum and Declan all came and had a break from their computer games while charmingly having dinner with us.

There was an interesting discussion of the ethics of cannibalism and dog-eating before the boys managed to tear themselves away for more computer games.

Grandparental visit

Granny Marta is visiting from Israel, so yesterday we had lunch with her, plus Grandma, Grandpa and of course Granny. A good time was had by all. Marta gave us all chocolates, and exclaimed very satisfyingly over how much the boys had grown and how well behaved they were.

After a decent amount of time spent socialising over lunch, the boys got to go and play computer games all afternoon, with a small break spent getting dessert ready for all.

Maths homework

In what I am sure will not be the last time, Callum came home with a maths problem yesterday that stumped both Evan and me. I eventually helped him through it by peaking at the solution at the back of the book and giving Callum the smallest hint I could think of. The whiteboard needed several iterations before we finished.

Callum in the Mosman Daily!

Callum was featured in the Mosman Daily this week, in a great article about his timetable program.

Coding afternoon

We've (except me) spent most of this afternoon coding. Callum is making improvements to his timetable program, to make it look nicer. And Declan is updating his BIN I.T! website so that they can make it available to multiple schools.

They are both going to enter the iawards this year, which will be interesting as they will be competing against each other for the highschool category.

Running update

The boys and I did a run around Balls Head and back yesterday, which is more than 6K! We can all feel our legs today, even Callum, who I suspect is the fittest of the three of us.

And then today, we reprised our how long does it take Callum to beat us around the block test.  To our surprise, Callum caught us up when we had only done two laps, significantly faster than last week. I've done some calcs, and it was mostly because we were slower, although Callum did go slightly faster than 5 minute kilometres this time.

Dr Who fanaticism continues

Declan and I went to see the Dr Who Symphonic spectacular yesterday. And he looooved it. I would not have guessed that Declan would sit still, let alone enjoy, two hours of orchestral and choral music, but he did. It was helped by the periodic appearance of Dr Who monsters (notably the Daleks, who took over the stage at the end of the first half) and jokes from Peter Davison (5th doctor).

I really enjoyed it too, and we had a moment of fame spotting when we saw Adam Spencer two rows ahead of us.

This week's dessert - Kaiserschmarrn

This week's dessert was Kaiserschmarrn, made by Evan and Callum while Declan and I were off gallivanting to the Dr Who Symphonic spectacular.

It was delicious, and filling, and probably incredibly bad for us, given the proportions of butter and sugar.

The movie was the first (made for TV) movie of The Librarians series - a bit like a less plausible version of Indiana Jones, made with less money for special effects.

We all enjoyed it a lot.

This week's movie and dessert

This week our movie was Casablanca, which we were discussing the other night after someone used the phrase "The Usual Suspects". Watching it again, it was amazing how many famous lines there are in it (not just the often misquoted "play it Sam"). Deserving of its status as classic, I think, even if it does fail the Bechdel test.

Dessert was crème brûlée.

Running training

I've signed Callum and Declan and me up for a Sri Chimnoy 4K in a couple of weeks, so we have been training. We decided yesterday to do some laps of the block behind us. Declan and I did three laps, and Callum did four. Callum caught us up at 38 Hayberry St on the third lap - next week we will see if we can get a bit further before he catches us.

As an aside, Callum's run (approximately 3K) was at pretty close to 5 minute kilometres. I think he would beat me over that distance if I was trying as hard as I can. 

Callum's timetable program

Callum's timetable program was released into the wild (Mosman High year 7) this week. There was a fraught few hours on day 1, when he realised that it didn't work with internet explorer (something nobody here had thought to check, but sadly which is used by the education department). Fortunately, though, with Ian (software mentor)'s assistance, the fix was only an hour or so of extra programming.

Callum didn't actually get to present it to the year 7s, as he was too busy at various other of his own subjects, but Evan did it for him, as part of the programming orientation, and got all the year 7s signed up.

Callum hasn't quite got up the nerve to see how many of the year 7s are actually using it yet.

Start of highschool

So Declan started high school this week at Mosman High. I took him in on a very rainy Wednesday morning. He did recognise quite a few kids from Neutral Bay, but mostly kids he didn't like from the playground, so was a bit nervous about how many friends he would have.

But he came home on Wednesday night having had a great day, with "two new friends".

Right now he is playing computer games with one of them (Finbar) on skype.

This week all they have done is orientation, so it will be interesting to see how he goes next week when the work actually starts!