Congratulations Amy and Jared – it’s a boy!
Drew Spencer became the newest resident of the Ridge River
District early this morning. We heard
the news when Aunt Leanne came over for Tai Chi and breakfast after spending a
couple of hours at the clinic with Uncle Adam and the Spencer and White
families when her own pregnancy – and Uncle Adam’s absence – was keeping her
awake anyway. Amy and Drew are doing
just fine; and while Jared was a bit shaken up by the whole thing, he’s going to
be okay too – and he’s already a very proud new Daddy.
Though Uncle Mark doesn’t officially start work at the
clinic until Monday, Uncle Adam got to find out one of the benefits of having
two doctors in town when he was relieved of duty for a few hours this morning
so he could go and have a nap while Uncle Mark took care of Amy, Drew, and a
few regular patient appointments that couldn’t be rescheduled. We got to hear all about that and about Drew
too while we had dinner together tonight; but I’ll get to that part of the
report in a minute.
Having Aunt Leanne with us made Tai Chi and breakfast more
fun; though she exercised with Mom and Dad while I continued my lessons with
Michael, Ethan, and Ehlana. Michael went
home and on to the Inn after we’d finished our workout, and I didn’t see him
again until he was finished helping out with the post-lunch clean-up. While he and Rowen were busy working at the
Inn and computer store; Dad had agreed with my suggestion to get the lawn cut
today in case it was either raining tomorrow morning or too wet to cut; so I
started working on that as soon as the kitchen was cleaned up from breakfast. I ended up weeding all of the gardens too
instead of doing any work in the office, but I didn’t have anything that
absolutely had to get done this morning anyway; and I’ll catch up sometime this
weekend on the work I do want to get done before Monday.
I hopped into the river for a cool off swim before stopping
for lunch that also helped to wash away most of the garden dirt. Mom and Alicia went with a quick and easy
lunch, so it didn’t take long to eat or clean up. Rowen came over after having lunch with her
parents; and we played in the back yard with Ethan and Ehlana for a while until
Michael and Tim met up with us and we headed out for some trail riding at the
park.
The clouds gradually grew deep and dark over the next few
hours, but the rain held off until about a half hour before dinnertime. Getting to spend some quality time on the
bike trails was great, and we followed that up with another very entertaining
swim with Ethan and Ehlana before going inside for a snack break. We ended up spending the rest of the
afternoon and most of the evening indoors after that; and Michael and Tim were
both added to the dinner guest list. Mom
and Dad weren’t doing a dinner and a movie night, but they had invited Grandma
and Grandpa over for dinner. Uncle Adam,
Aunt Leanne, Uncle Mark, and Aunt Grace were added mostly so that they’d all
have a little less work to do tonight after a busy baby day at the clinic.
Saving them some work meant that Mom needed some extra
help. Rowen and I were drafted for the
before and after dinner work crews, and while we were busy; Michael and Tim
played video games in the lounge and kept Ethan and Ehlana entertained. The rain didn’t affect the meal plan tonight
because Mom had already decided not to have anything grilled. She instead went with two casseroles, corn on
the cob, and Dad’s mashed potatoes with bacon and cheese. Yes, that’s mostly because it’s my favorite;
but Rowen, Michael, Tim, Ethan, and Ehlana all love it too.
In addition to the baby stories, there was some other news
we heard about from Aunt Leanne while having our meal. Tops for the family was that Josiah was going
to spend the weekend with Chrissy and her family. Going shopping in the city for some of the
things he needed before leaving for college gave him a good excuse for the
trip, but I’d say things are getting serious with them fast; since they’ll be
at school together anyway next weekend.
Aunt Leanne also had a chat today with Jenny’s Mom, and though we’d
already known that Joel was going home to spend a couple of weeks vacationing
with his mother and step-family; Emily’s perspective on that was different than
Jenny’s or Joel’s. Mrs. Warren does like
Joel just fine, but she thinks that a little time apart after practically being
glued to each other during most of July will be good for them.
Since Michael and I want to spend a lot of time together
right now too, if not as overtly and demonstratively as Jenny and Joel, I won’t
comment on that; but Rebecca will like getting her best friend back for a
while.
We haven’t been involved in the getting ready for college
action that’s been going on with Jake, Stephanie, Violet, and Dillon; but that
topic was on the dinner chat schedule too.
Getting ready to leave for college is different for Jake and Stephanie
than it is for Violet and Dillon or Josiah and Chrissy; mostly because they’re
packing light and will buy a lot of the things they’ll need once they’re in New
York. Violet and Dillon will have
Violet’s car, and though they’ll be limited by dorm restrictions for the first
couple of years; they will be able to take more with them from home than they
could if they needed to travel by airplane.
Note to me: stop in and visit Stephanie’s Mom more often
after they leave for school next weekend.
Miranda will still have two out of three of her kids at home, but
Samantha’s one and only baby will be away for a lot of the next four years; so
she’ll probably need some regular cheering up for a while.
While the adults weren’t going to be watching a movie after
dinner, that’s what Michael, Tim, Rowen, and I decided to do once the
post-dinner work was finished. Before we
moved up to the lounge to do that, though, Rowen and I had decided to have a
sleepover, so I ran over to her house with her while she packed an overnight
bag and grabbed her flute; and Tim invited Michael to stay at his place for the
night whenever they did eventually finish hanging out with us; so they went
over to Michael’s place so that he could get what he needed too.
We were going to invite Ethan and Ehlana to join us, but
they ended up having some play time with Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, and Dad
instead; so it was just the four of us in the lounge – and my room while we
played a little music in between the movie and video gaming that Tim had
suggested would be more fun for him and Rowen.
I’m sure that the second movie was also supposed to be girls’ choice had
nothing to do with his sudden interest in doing something else. I will cut him some slack on that, though,
since it would be a bit inappropriate for us to make him sit through a romance
movie in close proximity to Rowen while in the middle of a big fight with his
girlfriend. I don’t know how much Nora
knows about how much time Tim’s been spending with us for three nights in a row
now; but she wouldn’t be happy about it.
Tim needed to talk about his problems some more tonight, and
we mostly did that after the movie; the goodnight hugs and kisses that Ethan
and Ehlana stopped in for on their way to bed; and our music play time. I haven’t really thought about it until he
brought it up, but we all have another Quarry Lake
birthday party on Sunday afternoon and evening for Denise Burroughs. She invited Michael, Rowen, and me; and Tim
is worried about what’ll happen there if he and Nora are still fighting. We weren’t able to help him out with those
worries, other than to promise to be there for him if he needed us; and Rowen
gently suggested that he should try and sit down with Nora and have a honest
talk with her about everything he’d been discussing with us for the past few
days.
Once you’ve read these last few journal entries, Rowen, I’m
sure you’ll get why I don’t think that Tim should tell Nora the truth and
nothing but the truth. Yes, they do need
to talk about their problems to have any chance of working things out; but even
that is going to be tough to do right now when they’ve both dug in and don’t
seem interested in compromise.
The funny thing for us again tonight is that even with
having that fairly serious chat; we had a really great afternoon and evening
together. Outside of her involvement
with Vanessa’s plans for Michael and her problems with Tim, I like Nora; but
also understand that we’ll never be best buddies simply because of our
different interests. That won’t change
if she and Tim make up; and she won’t want to do the things we like to do
together – especially right now while her best friend is still mad at Michael
and me.
Hopefully Tim won’t have more problems once word of our
goodnight hugs and kisses on the front porch hit the town gossip network in the
morning. I’m sure there were witnesses,
and Michael, Rowen, and Tim all teased me about getting the boys mixed up when
I gave Tim a big hug and kiss on the cheek before saying goodnight to Michael. Those jibes led to Rowen hugging both boys
too; so how Nora takes that news flash when she hears about it will probably
depend on how wildly the story grows and changes between now and then.
All I can say in our defense is that Tim really needed those
hugs and kiss. Since Michael was going
home with Tim, and we had those witnesses too, our goodnight hug and kiss was
short and sweet tonight. He and Tim started
running as soon as they hit the ground, though they were going to get wet
whether they walked or ran over to Tim’s house.
Rowen and I watched them from the front porch, and had smiles and waves
for them when they looked back toward us before going out of sight around the
corner by Rowen’s house.
It was going on eleven-thirty by then, so Rowen and I
checked in with Mom and Dad before coming up to my room and getting ready for
bed. We’ve been having a nice long girl
chat since climbing into bed with Mandy while playing on our computers. Rowen has been entertaining both of us with
appropriately-themed YouTube videos to match our chat topics, and I’ve been
doing my usual nightly computing and a bit of family business work.
We probably won’t know until sometime in the morning whether
our game is on or not at noon depending on whether the rain ends early enough
to have the ball diamonds ready to use by then.
The morning games have already been rescheduled, and from the looks of
the weather forecast; it’s a good thing that I did cut the lawn and weed the
gardens this morning. Whether the game
is on or not, Rowen’s working at the computer store in the morning, and I’ll
either be helping with house cleaning or working in the office on the family
business; it’s now after one; and time for us to get some sleep.
Until next time, this is Magi Master Cassie Proctor; logging
out!
