New dessert

We tried a new dessert this week. I'd read the recipe in one of the weekend papers, which claimed it was perfect if you found yourself in a holiday house with few ingredients. Having tried cooking in a few holiday houses, we didn't agree (one of the ingredients was almond meal, and it suggests using a mandolin to cut the apples) but it was quite easy, and tasted delicious. Recommended.

School holidays

It has been a huge term for both boys, what with the iawards, Callum doing Year 11 maths, and various other bits and pieces, so they have both been hanging out for the school holidays.

We are not going anywhere, which means that Evan gets the job of trying to gently extract them from the house and showing them the outside world occasionally. To be fair, they are not playing computer games the whole time; they are both still working on their various programming projects, with Callum introducing a dashboard for his timetable program, and Declan making the graphs for BinIT! hugely professional.

Declan has also planned a busy social calendar, with a movie afternoon and Lan party for his friends.

Pie reprise

Despite us coming into spring, we decided it was time to make Rhubarb pie again this weekend; using the same recipe.  Still absolutely delicious. We made it on Sunday, rather than Saturday as we already had a surfeit of dessert on Saturday.

Move was the Truman Show, which Declan's english teacher had introduce him to - a better movie than I remembered.

Happy 14th birthday Callum

Callum turned 14 today, and seemed to have a very enjoyable day.  He woke to a present of a new game from Declan, which he duly played for most of the morning.

He went out to a locked room mystery with three of his friends (Ben, Freddy and Jacob) which was topped and tailed by a complex nerf war, including mystery terrorists.

And there was a vanilla cake cooked by Declan and me to finish off the party.

At 14, he is now taller than me, with a baritone voice, but still with his blonde curls (possibly curlier than ever, given that a comb is not allowed anywhere near them). He is currently very interested in nuclear reactors, and many other aspects of physics, plus very much enjoying coding whatever he can lay his hands on.

Happy birthday Callum!

Measures

As always, we have measured the boys. Callum is now officially taller than me (and I think both grandmothers). He is 166 cm tall (5 foot 5 and a half in the old money). Declan hasn't grown much in the last four months, and is now 13 cm shorter than Callum, the most ever. They are now both at the same percentile ranking for age - 58th (Declan) and 59th (Callum) which is interesting, because Declan has always been taller for his age than Callum before.

Maths Exam week

Callum explaining a maths Olympiad problem to his grandparents

Because Callum is doing Year 11 maths, he participates in the serious Year 11 exams. The school let's him have the day off before each exam to study, which meant that last week he wasn't at school on Monday or Thursday, for his exams on Tuesday (2 unit) and Friday (3 unit). To add to the maths focus, he also did Maths Olympiad (a four hour exam) on Wednesday.

He came home pretty happy with how he did. 2 unit he had time to check everything, 3 unit he got everything out, and checked some of the harder problems, and maths Olympiad he managed to get answers he was happy with to 6 of the 10 questions.

I don't think I've mentioned this here before - Beyond Visible (which is one of his electives this year) has as its assignment working your way through Maths Olympiad preparatory problems. His teacher said that nobody would get full marks for it. She was right, but only because Callum didn't realise on the first one just how much working and proof he needed to show - it wasn't enough to get the right answer, you needed to show why it was right.

He got 2 out of 4 for that first one, and 4 out of 4 for all the rest.

I'm sure that helped him hugely in his Maths Olympiad, I think 6 out of the 10 problems is MUCH better than he did last year.

Festival of Callum begins

We had a family pizza celebration for Callum on Friday evening. In attendance were three grandparents and Uncle Andrew, to make much of Callum, and celebrate his birthday two days early. Judging by Callum's face, his favourite present was from Andrew and Amanda, a chocolate and caramel model of the When That app.

Callum hasn't shared any of it (or eaten any of it yet), it seems sacrilege to actually eat such a beautiful thing, but he did agree to share a small part of the extra chocolate and caramel that Andrew brought (since they had some left over). It was delicious.

The birthday cake was a sponge covered in icing sugar, most of which ended up on the dining room table after Callum blew out the candles.

Simnel Cake

In honour of spring, we decided to make a traditional easter cake - Simnel Cake. It is a traditional cake from England (and later much of the British isles) which handily for us involves lots of marzipan. Traditionally there are 11 balls of marzipan on top, which honour the twelve apostles (except for Judas). We decided to use 12, but couldn't think of any particularly meaningful symbolism to go with them.

It was very very tasty (probably because of all that marzipan). Movie was a James Bond - Dr No (to improve Declan's Sean Connery impression)