Happy 14th Birthday, Allen!
Spending the afternoon studying for exams
wasn’t exactly best birthday ever kind of fun, but most of us tried to make his
day as entertaining as possible while exclusively focusing on our first exams
on Monday.
I probably mention Tai Chi way too often in
these updates; but starting the day doing that with some of my favorite people
is always wonderful – and especially when we’re outdoors by the river. Having Naomi and Aiden with us today was even
better; and Michael and I had fun working with the four younger kids. Ethan and Ehlana’s two best friends are doing
pretty well with their Tai Chi, though not many people know that they practice
at home on their own nearly every day.
When I’m off for the summer break, I’ll make sure that Naomi and Aiden
both get more chances to stay overnight at our house so they can exercise with
us more often than they have been so far this spring.
Since Michael and Rebecca were at our house
for breakfast yesterday, I was with them today – which works out really well
for me since Sunday family breakfasts at Michael’s house are the best in
town! Spending that time with Jake and
Stephanie was great too, and while they’re going to be very busy this summer; I
hope that we do get time to do some of the things we talked about doing
together while they’re home – and with Violet, Dillon, Christina, and Josiah
too. Getting time off together for the
six older teens when they’re working different kinds of jobs might not be easy,
but we’ll see how that goes.
The top news story for Michael and me at
church was a very exciting little surprise for us. Stacey Burroughs invited us to join the teen
praise team early so that we could help out with the Fourth of July parade and
the summer services that the teens will lead.
Normally, we’d have to wait to do that until we start Grade Nine in
September, but she has enough teens away, busy doing other things, or moving
away from home for college that they need the extra help. That means we won’t be able to play with the
school band in the parade too; but we’re both happy to sing and play with the
praise team instead – and the band has more than enough senior saxophone
players that we won’t be missed there anyway.
Our first practice is after dinner on Tuesday night, but Stacey also
gave us the music we’ll be doing for the parade and the holiday weekend
service; and we’ve both already started working on that already – though not
together yet. We’ll try to do that after
studying and baseball tomorrow night.
Michael had to help out at the Inn to get
everything ready for the lunch crowd, but he was set free early to come over to
my house for our afternoon study group and got out of the clean-up work. We couldn’t do anything to make the actual
study material more exciting for our friends, but there were birthday treats
for Allen that we all got in on, and a mini-roast for our friend that helped to
keep us entertained for the three hours or so we worked in the dining room
until Michael and I needed to get to the Inn to help out with the buffets and
the rest of our friends needed to go home and get ready for Allen’s party at
the Inn. While our exams were
temporarily forgotten by everyone; I was most happy that all of our friends
were pretty much as ready for our exams on Monday as they could be – and better
prepared than they would have been if they hadn’t worked with Michael, Rowen,
and me. There should be a handful of
very happy parents around town when the report cards come out in a couple of weeks!
To work at the Inn continued the fun for
us; and I really loved getting to work with Jake and Stephanie as well as
Rebecca and everyone else. Michael and I
took our dinner break so that we could spend some time with Allen at his party,
but the dining room was packed for both buffet sittings; so we kept our break
short and got right back to work again.
Since Michael had been getting so much extra time off this weekend, we
stayed and helped out until close; and then I walked home with Michael and his
family. After saying goodnight to
everyone else, Michael and I went to sit on one of the benches by the river at
his house for a little wind down time before sharing a few goodnight kisses,
and then I went home in time for Ethan and Ehlana’s bedtime story and snack –
which we did in the office while Dad was busy with his work there.
Mom let me skip the Magi lesson tonight; we
tucked the twins in; and then I hit the Jacuzzi for a quick soak. Some family business multi-tasking got done
while I was in the tub, and once I was ready for bed; I spent a half-hour doing
a once-through of the praise team music before climbing into bed with Mandy and
my computer. All I’ve had left to do was
the usual nightly computer checks and this journal update. It isn’t that late yet, but I’m ready to call
it a night anyway. That’ll mean missing
out on a bedtime chat with Violet whenever she gets around to sending Dillon
home and coming up to bed, but we should be able to get back to more of those
during the week once they’re back to being busy with their jobs again.
I’m really fired up about the coming weeks,
because if our first day of June is any indication; we’re going to have an
awesome end of the school year and start of summer holidays!
Until next time…
…Live long and prosper, fellow Magi of the
Light!
