Happy 15th Birthday, Martin!
My condolences to Uncle Rick and Aunt Melissa as they deal
with two teenage boys with driver’s licenses!
The good news is that they still have a year to go before Martin will be
able to drive on his own too; but having Chris there already is probably enough
of a challenge for them anyway.
I’m sure that Martin has had a good day, but his birthday
didn’t affect us here at home except for a short phone call this morning before
breakfast that I’m not sure he was awake enough for to remember those early
birthday wishes. For us, that call came
between Tai Chi and breakfast; but I wasn’t surprised to find out that my two
cousins weren’t adjusting very well to the time change – Aunt Melissa had a
tough time getting them moving every morning; and especially on school days.
While we weren’t doing any birthday celebrations or anything
else special today, the countdown to March Break is on now; and having the
temperature climb into the high-sixties helped to make this a really good day
for pretty much every kid and teen in Witch Falls. Getting to spend our lunch break outdoors
helped to make the work and tests less stressful for those kids and teens who
actually get stressed by things like that; but the major effect the weather had
on my usual Monday schedule was that Michael, Tim, Rowen, and I skipped our
after-school study time in favor of biking a playing outside with Ethan and
Ehlana.
That was my favorite part of the day; though spending the
evening with Michael at his house was a close second. Rowen and Tim split up with us when we were
set free from school so that they could drop bookbag off at their houses and
grab their bikes; but they’d caught up with us again by the time Michael and I
had our bikes ready to go; the trailer hooked up to mine; and Ethan and Ehlana
ready to go too. We started out our
adventure with our first construction site tour of the year – biking around the
new section of town first, and then going across the river and checking out the
lab and medical center projects.
Those two sites were a real contrast – almost a before and
after look; though the medical center will only have one basement level, so the
hole isn’t as extreme as it had been for the lab when that dig was
started. While we couldn’t see most of
the work that’s happened at the lab over the winter; Ethan, Ehlana, and I know
exactly how much has been accomplished there; and they’re very excited about
only having about six months left to go before the lab opens. It won’t even be that long before they’ll
start spending time there because they’ll be there with Mom fairly regularly
once it’s time for her to start working on the computer systems.
While the lab and medical center projects are a big deal for
our little town; I think it’s going to be the houses and apartment building in
the new section that is going to be the most fun this year. The apartment building is going to be a big
deal for a lot of people, with one of the best parts of the new home
opportunities being the availability of housing for at least some of the
construction workers – particularly the ones who’ve been separated from their
families and living in the temporary bunkhouse trailers. The new homes scheduled for this year will
make the new section feel more like a community and neighborhood than it has so
far with just a handful of families living there now; though we’re still
keeping to our schedule and plan despite the fact that interest in buying homes
of every kind there could allow us to speed up construction. We won’t do that because too many new houses
would just leave us with empty houses in the rest of town right now; and we
don’t want that problem.
I don’t really need to cover any more of that right now; so
let’s move along. While the bike ride and
tour was fun, it was the play time at the park that was the most fun; and we
had lots of kid and teen company there.
While it was nice and warm out, the ground will still be wet and mushy
for a while yet even if the weather holds and we don’t get more rain or snow;
so our playground time was a little messy too – especially for my adorable
brother and sister. Mom was amused by
their insistence that they’d needed to act like ‘normal’ toddlers while we were
at the park even if she wasn’t impressed with wet, muddy clothes and boots.
Rowen and Tim moved on when we took Ethan and Ehlana home,
but Michael and I stayed long enough to help Mom with getting the twins
stripped, cleaned up, and into warm, clean clothes. That didn’t leave us any extra time before
needing to be at his house for dinner, and Jacob already had everything ready
by the time we got there; so we sat down to eat right away. Sometimes I wonder that Jacob doesn’t seem to
ever want to just have a night off from cooking on his days off, but then he
really does love getting to experiment with new recipes; and that is different
than cooking for hundreds of people at the Inn.
Since we hadn’t done our homework after school, Michael and
I needed to do that after we finished eating and cleaning the kitchen; and
Rebecca joined us for that since she’d been hanging out with some friends at
the park earlier too. Michael and I
still did our guitar lesson and some other music time too, but that didn’t
leave us with any alone time opportunities; and we only had a short chat with
his parents before it was time for me to get home for the night. Even the studying was fun; but a little more
quiet time – and cuddling with Michael – would have been nice.
I’ve been busy since I got home too, but I’m also sticking
to my plan to get more sleep at night; which is why I’m writing this before
midnight again – and needed to cut back on my language and archive studies to
make that possible. When I got home from
Michael’s house, I helped Mom with getting the twins bathed and ready for bed;
we did story time with Dad in the office; and then Mom did my Magi lesson with
me after Ethan and Ehlana were tucked in for the night. I headed to bed right after that, and have
been working on my computer since climbing into bed with Mandy. I did my family business work first, since I
can’t really delay doing some of those jobs, and though I needed to cut back on
my studies, I did have enough time for a little bit of studying for both my
languages and archives research even though I didn’t put in nearly the hour or
so of each I have been doing most school nights. I kept the nightly computer checks to a
minimum too; but I’m also going to start doing more of those checks during
other times of the day to help keep up with current events around the world
instead of doing that all at night.
I don’t have anything else to report for today, and I’m
seriously ready for the down time despite the facts that it feels an hour
earlier than it is and I’m used to much later nights; so I’m going to tuck my
computer into its case now and call it a night.
Until next time...
...Live long and prosper, fellow Magi of the Light!
