We have a house full of family; most of them sleeping as I
write this. That’s made for a crazy-fun
evening, and I’ve loved every minute of it!
Everything was fun today, from Tai Chi this morning with Mom
and Dad through to another sleepover tonight with Dawn, Jaimie, and
Kaitlyn. Dawn and Kaitlyn are sleeping
in the lounge, and Jaimie and Mandy are sleeping in my bed. I’m sitting in the window alcove while doing
my nightly computing. Jaimie and Kaitlyn
have the last third floor bedroom for the weekend, just as Dawn has the room
across from Violet’s; but they’ll probably all be hanging out in my room and
the lounge most nights for the rest of the weekend.
I’ve gotten ahead of the day again, though, so let’s rewind
to this morning.
Rowen, Dawn, Emma, and I had most of the day to play again
until Claire picked Emma up after work, and Rowen needed to meet up with her
parents at the computer store before moving on to some Emerson family weekend
fun. Having Emma with us was probably
why Dad decided to make up a bigger-than-usual weekday breakfast; and we all
appreciated started the day with pancakes and bacon instead of cereal. Being on the clean-up crew wasn’t quite as
much fun for Rowen and I, but Dawn and Emma had fun playing with Ethan and
Ehlana while we were busy in the kitchen.
We spent a lot of time playing outdoors again; and really
just had a repeat of yesterday except for switching our home and Inn breaks; and exploring different parts of the park and
town. Guys playing football at the park
and school, and then watching football indoors when the bowl games for the day
started, were exactly the same. We
avoided the first, and appreciated having the great outdoors mostly
testosterone-free for a few hours. Ethan
and Ehlana spent a little time with us today too, but while Mom was busy with
more pre-cooking, she had them at KidZone in the morning, and Alicia worked
again today instead of her usual Saturday shift. That was a double bonus for me, since that
got me out of a few hours of house cleaning to get everything ready for our
guests.
Before we started welcoming our family home, after Rowen and
Emma were gone, Dawn and I helped Mom with making dinner and setting the dining
room table; we had another quick and easy dinner; cleaned up; and had some play
time with Ethan and Ehlana in the lounge while Mom and Dad were busy. Dawn’s parents and brothers were first to
town; and they pulled into the driveway at a little after eight o’clock. Grandpa Richard and Grandma Carrie drove down
from Woodvale with them, but were parked two doors down at Uncle Adam and Aunt
Leanne’s; where ‘the grandparents’, and Aunt Grace, were spending the weekend.
We were getting ‘the kids with kids’ members of our family,
and the timing for arrivals worked out fairly well; since we were able to get
Uncle Rick’s SUV unloaded, and had time to warm up a bit again before Uncle
Blaine, Aunt Alison, and the kids joined the party and we repeated the process
for the second and last time of the night.
Grandma and Grandpa had been over at Uncle Adam and Aunt Leanne’s, and
once everyone was settled in there too, they all came over to our house for a
little welcome home party.
The lounge was kid and teen zone for that after the first
half hour or so in the living room with everyone. Chris and Martin ruled the gaming system; and
the rest of us mostly played with Ethan, Ehlana, and Jayden.
While I’m thinking about my youngest cousin, first
impressions and comparisons between Jayden and the twins is always interesting
for me. Jayden’s three months older than
Ethan and Ehlana; strongly latent; and very intelligent. While I can’t study him with any overt use of
my gifts, I continue to learn a lot about the development path for Latents; and
how that compares to both Magi Masters like my brother and sister, and strong
Magi like Naomi and Aiden. Jayden also
gives Ethan and Ehlana a great model to emulate their ‘public’ development on,
but the more we study normal, latent, Magi, and Magi Master development; the
more I’m convinced that this is going to be something that is going to lead to
discoveries that will be very important for future generations of Magi.
I’ll write about that more in our Magi project archive, but
where I’m going with that is the possibility I’ve mentioned before about
nudging Latents into being actively able to use their Magi powers. The reason I’m more convinced than ever about
that is because it looks like the four development curves have an exponential
component. If we could determine the moment,
or moments, when those development paths diverge, we might be able to change
the outcome. Being able to do that
wouldn’t, for instance, change a Magi to a Magi Master; but it might be
possible to optimize each person’s full potential. A good example that I haven’t written about
in this journal is actually Violet.
She’s a comparatively low-powered Magi, but since she’s primarily been
trained by a Magi Master; she can do more than many more powerful Magi that didn’t
have the better training opportunity.
It’s probably more obvious that the training Mom did with Ethan, Ehlana,
and I from pre-natal awareness on similarly affected us; but we don’t really
have any contemporaries to compare that against. Maybe we’ll begin to learn more about that
potential with Magi mothers like Aunt Deborah; but that’s really something very
new to our Magi project research.
I’ll write more about that in the project archive in the New
Year, but for now, it’s getting late; and I should wrap this up soon and get
some sleep. The parties in the lounge
and living room started breaking up when Ethan, Ehlana, and Jayden were put to
bed for the night. Chris and Martin gave
up the lounge so easily that I’ll guess they’ve had a few too many all-nighters
with their buddies while Violet and Dawn were here; and just needed the
break. Whatever the reason, we were
happy to put a movie on and have a little girl chat time before Kaitlyn fell
asleep about a half-hour into the show.
Jaimie opted for moving into my bed with Mandy after that, and Dawn
decided to curl up on the other end of the sectional sofa from Kaitlyn then
instead of sitting in bed with me until Jaimie fell asleep; and she was
probably snoozing before Jaimie dropped off.
There’s more to write about for news around the family –
particularly from Aunt Grace’s Christmas with Mark; but I’ll get to all of that
sometime over the next few days. For
now, it’s just time for me to...
...say ‘goodnight, Cassie’.
“Goodnight, Cassie.”
