Happy 4th Birthday, Aiden!
Ethan, Ehlana, and Naomi have spent most of
the day with Aiden, and Ethan’s staying for a sleepover with Aiden; so I’m sure
that they’ve all had a lot of fun today.
Ehlana has Naomi here with her while Ethan’s away, so Mom and Dad didn’t
get a kid-free night out of the deal; though I’d have been okay with a
sleepover at Michael’s tonight if they’d needed me to take one for the team!
;^)
We’ve definitely had a fall weather day
around here; starting with near-freezing temperatures for our Tai Chi by the
river. It wasn’t raining or snowing,
though, and we decided to bundle up and go out to exercise anyway because we’re
just not ready to take our Tai Chi show indoors yet. Having Mom decide that we needed a hot
breakfast again was a nice bonus; but Ethan, Ehlana, and I won’t count on that
working every time. Michael didn’t stay
for breakfast, but that was mostly because he wanted the extra time to get
ready for school ahead of his morning weight training. He needed to get his guitar and saxophone
ready for the seniors’ Halloween party; and hadn’t gotten around to doing that
last night before going to bed.
With that party to help with all afternoon,
our school day was fairly short – especially when we needed to go over to the
church in the morning to do the set-up for the band instead of leaving it until
later. Tim helped out with that, and
half-wished that he was in the band too so that he could have taken the afternoon
off with Rowen, Michael, and me; but not enough to do the extra practicing that
Michael does to learn all of the music while not being able to practice with us
during football season.
That, by the way, will change soon enough. I won’t go into the boring details, but all
of the background prep work is still going on for our plans to have a marching
band that’ll go to play at Disney in Florida.
I’ll guess that every teen and tween that’ll be eligible to go will want
to join that band in some capacity just to be on that trip. I’ll keep you posted on that, but the real
work will begin in the spring – including actually starting band practices and
the major fundraising that’ll be needed to pay for the big trip – and any other
parades and football games we’ll do to get ready for the main event.
Getting back to the news from today, with
everything else we had on the go, our classroom time was more like a couple of
breaks in the morning; we had a quick lunch; and then everyone in the band got
together in the music room before heading over to the church. We used one of the Sunday school rooms for a
warm-up – for those of us who could do that without hauling major equipment
around; and then it was time to entertain our audience for a couple of
hours. All of our music was either
Halloween themed or dance tunes from decades-past; and I really loved getting
to play for some of our collective grandparents and their friends. Michael and I got in trouble for making too
many of the old ladies cry with our duet, but in this case, it was for the
right reasons; so we were okay with getting teased about that. I’m fairly sure that we tired out a lot of
people too, since we heard a lot of comments suggesting that a late afternoon
nap was on the schedule for quite a few of the party guests.
While the party had been a blast, Michael,
Rowen, and I really needed to get busy after that. We helped out with getting all of our band
gear back to the music room; and then we had to hurry to our football and
cheerleading practices. For the
cheerleaders, we’re working up a Halloween-themed halftime routine that we put
extra time in to polish today; so Rowen and I didn’t get done with that until
just a few minutes before Michael and Tim were finished their practice. That meant that they had to wait around for
us this time; but didn’t seem to mind that we needed extra time to get our hair
done and ready for our respective evenings with them.
For me, that was an evening at the Inn that
started out with joining in on the dinner rush already in progress. There was one major change for me tonight,
and that was Jenny’s first dinner shift as a server while I was there too. She seems to be happy to get out of the
kitchen work, and though she’s just learning the new job; Miranda is sure she’ll
do very well at it – just as I’m sure that Rebecca and I will when it’s our
turn to do that too. That’ll happen a
lot sooner for Rebecca than me; but then I like working in the kitchen with
Michael too – even if I know it’ll be a blast working with Miranda once I’m old
enough to help as a server.
The cooking and cleaning kept us busy up
until game night time; though we took a short break for a quick dinner once the
last of the main food orders went out.
We didn’t have time to do our homework before the gaming, but we stayed
to play with our families and friends anyway; and then Michael came home with
me so that we could do that work once we were set free from the Inn for the
night. Mom and Dad went to get Ehlana
and Naomi from Aiden’s house before coming home; so Michael and I had a bit of
time to make out while they were doing that.
The party had been over by then, but Hannah had kept the girls until Mom
and Dad could get them – and that had allowed the four kids to watch a
Halloween movie together once the rest of their friends and Aiden’s family
guests had gone home so that Nathan could get some sleep ahead of his early mooring
start at the bakery.
Michael and I did get to our homework once
we weren’t alone anymore; we had a chat with Mom, Dad, Ehlana, and Naomi before
he went home; and then Mom did my Magi lesson with help from Ehlana and Naomi
so that they could have some Magi-powered fun too. I took care of the bedtime girl chat with my
sister and her best friend while Mom and Dad worked in the office; and then it
was time for me to get ready for bed and start my own bedtime computing and
work.
It was a bit past-midnight by then, and
while I didn’t have to do any major family business work, there were a few
things that had come up since last night; so I decided to just get everything
done ahead of the weekend instead of leaving it for Sunday night or Monday. That would have meant staying up late, but I
cheated and used a time phase for all of that; which is why I’ll still be
sleeping before one o’clock if I hurry up and get this done.
The Halloween fun kicks up a few more
notches tomorrow, and we’ve got the football game on the road too; so I’d
better get to that sleep time. We’re
definitely going to have a couple of late nights that will hopefully be as much
fun as they’ll be tiring, and I don’t really have anything else particularly
important to add now; so, until next time...
...May the Magi Force be with you!
