On his actual birthday, Brandan had a peanut butter sandwich on a plane for dinner. Back at home and settled in to our regular life, we celebrated his birthday dinner on Sunday.
Becky and Helen watched a lot of the Great British Bake-Off show in December and Brandan watched a bit of it. A showstopper challenge from season 9 caught his attention: a melting chocolate ball dessert where a chocolate sphere would be melted away with a hot sauce, revealing a dessert inside. We attempted to create one of the desserts ourselves. Lacking chocolate molds, we used inflated balloons to mold chocolate domes.
The dessert underneath the dome was a brownie filled with mascarpone cream.
The hot raspberry sauce worked perfectly to melt the chocolate dome. Then the raspberry sauce and the melted chocolate made excellent accompaniments to the brownie. The dessert was very fun to make and eat.
Here is Brandan's birthday math problem. The solution to the problem is Brandan's age.
It was less fun on Monday night when Gibson had a fever and sore throat. It was impossible to tell if his fever was a reaction to his booster shot or covid. Either way he couldn't go to school with a fever. On Tuesday morning, his fever was gone, but he still had a sore throat. Demand for testing in our area (and across the US) is high and it can take days to get results back. We decided to use a home test for speed and convenience. Gibson followed the instructions to mix his sample and the reagent together and apply the solution to the test strip.
The instructions said to wait up to 15 minutes for results, but we could instantly see that Gibson was positive. The line at C is the test control and shows the test was used properly. The line at T is the line that shows Gibson has covid. If the test were negative, there would only be a line at C. S marks the spot for the sample. Our school district just changed their policy for quarantining. Kids who test positive only have to stay home for 5 days now instead of 10. Our school requires everyone to wear masks so they expect there is low risk of Gibson transmitting covid when he returns to class next week.
Gibson's cello teacher had independently decided to return to zoom cello lessons because of the latest spike in covid cases so Gibson was set for lessons at home.
Brandan and Becky went to their first Spanish class on Tuesday night. We're taking a community ed class together. Our stake includes a Spanish branch and Brandan would like to improve his Spanish in order to communicate better with the members of the branch. Taking the class together will help us practice what we learn. We don't have to quarantine because we are vaccinated and asymptomatic.
Gibson has been a trooper at home this week. Luckily, besides a sore throat which went away after a couple of days, he has been symptom free. He wears a mask all day (we all wear masks indoors when we are around each other now) and works independently on the homework his teachers have emailed him, often without instructions. Becky and Gibson go outside every afternoon to get a break and enjoy some sunshine. On Thursday we played pickle ball.
On Friday we played tennis. The tennis court felt a lot bigger than the pickle ball court. On Saturday we went for a bike ride with Brandan.
Gibson also helped Brandan take apart our compost bin which was starting to turn into compost itself.
Before Gibson's positive covid test, our family had plans to meet some friends in San Francisco for the long Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. Our friends generously offered to take Helen with them after we canceled our plans. Helen is triple vaccinated and tested negative on Thursday so we felt reasonably comfortable she wouldn't get our friends sick if she went. She drove down Friday night with the Harnois' family. Here is a photo at Ghirardelli Square with Kate, Seth and Cocoa.
The friends spent Saturday sightseeing. Here are Kate, Annie, Helen and Mary at the Golden Gate Bridge. Helen is staying with Annie's family.
Another view from the bridge: Jason, Seth, Mary, Annie, Kate and Helen.
At the Palace of Fine Arts: Sam, Elsa, Vienna, Kate, Helen, Jason, Seth, Ike, Scott, Annie and Mary.
We'll have to wait for Helen to tell us who this pirate-y looking fellow is. We're glad Helen is enjoying herself with friends and we look forward to hearing about her adventures when she gets back.
We heard a lot about the disasters of 2021 as the year drew to a close and it was a year of upheaval for sure. But for our family, personally, we had a lot of great experiences and saw a lot of growth. Becky put up a piece of paper to capture some of our memories of the milestones of 2021, in many ways a great year for our family.
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