Ethan:
Congratulations to Ehlana, Naomi, and their
Panthers’ team mates – they’re the champions for their division of our little
baseball league this year! They did that
against the first-place Wildcats, and while the game was close for the first
few innings; my favorite Panthers took control of the game in the fourth
inning; and went on to lead the way to a twelve-to-seven win.
Baseball was the entertainment highlight of
the morning for us, but the rest of our day to this point has been awesome too –
starting with Tai chi by the river for six that Cassie and Michael joined us
for – and they had breakfast with us too while his family was either busy at
the Inn anyway or sleeping in after working late at the pizzeria. Cassie led the cheer squad for Ehlana’s
ballgame too; and they got some credit for helping out with the victory –
including getting to join in on the ice cream treats celebration. It was time to share Cassie and Michael after
that with his family for a while, so they missed out on our family lunch at the
Carringtons’ home, but then they brought some guests along for the afternoon
trail ride or corral adventure that was our big entertainment plan for the two
and a half hours or so after lunch – including the drive time to and from the
ranch.
We had a blast on the trail ride; and then
we had another ice cream snack break at home before doing a bit of work because
by then we’d decided to have a fairly-major camping night with our cousins and
some friends to go along with the barbeque dinner and campfire. Extra tents were needed, so we set them up;
went for a swim to cool off after that; and now I’m getting cleaned up; packing
the bag I’ll need in my tent; and then we’ll be getting back to the fun in the
back yard while we wait for dinner. The
rest of the news for today will have to wait for the next update – though I’ll
leave it to Ehlana to add some family news that she’s more-excited about than I
am.
For now, I’m going to move on and get back
to the family and friends fun.
Ethan – out!
***
Ehlana:
I’m really happy about winning our game
today, and Abby will love having the trophy at her store for the next year, but
our top family news of the day is about babies – two of them!
No, it isn’t a twin story – and only the
Magi Masters in the family found out about this; though we’ve passed the news
on to Uncle Adam so that he can talk with his cousins before they head
home. Trish is now expecting her second
child with Rob; and Tory is going to have her first with Kyle – both babies due
to join our family next May. I am
more-excited about that than Ethan is, but we both know that starting their own
families is going to be a big part of life for our older cousins and friends
for the next ten or fifteen years; and a lot of those kids are going to be
important to our collective future.
I’m not going to get into that; so let’s
move on.
We got to have some quality chat time with
Cassie and Michael this morning while having breakfast; so let’s go over some
of the news from their first two weeks of school. I’ve already mentioned the first new friends
that Cassie made during her third-year classes, Talia and Matt, but they’ve
added two more girls to their study group – Kate and Rosinda. Kate is only taking Chinese with Cassie and
isn’t in the same program; so she’s a part-time member of their study group
while looking to be a future teacher in China or elsewhere in Asia. Rosinda is in the same program; and her
languages are Arabic and Russian. Cassie
thinks that there might not be any additions this year – mostly because the
other third-year students already have well-established groups of friends and study
groups. She does have at least one
person in each class to work with on their assignments and for group projects
when needed; and that’s going to make for a nice mix of friends without having
the study group get too-big to work out for everyone.
That really is different for Cassie; since
her now-second-year friends – and husband – haven’t had any changes to their
study group friends so far this semester.
The new friends are adding to the fun, though; and Cassie is already
having some bonus fun with early efforts for some matchmaking. First up for that is an apparently-strong
attraction between summer school friend Chloe Clare and Vic Miklov; and they may
or may not be getting together for a first date this weekend. If not, I’ll predict that Cassie will help
them out with that by next weekend – even if that’s just as part of their next
group outing to the Rec Center to watch football and play. Cassie and Michael really are having a lot of
fun with their start to school this year, and they’re brilliantly-happy. Co-habitation likely has a lot to do with
that extra happy, but we won’t write about that in this journal either; so I’ll
just be happy for them.
I guess that’s enough for today, and I need
to move on now too; so the rest of the news of the day will have to wait for
the next report since we’re going to keep the family and friends fun going
until late tonight – and all weekend too if we can manage to do that for our
big summer wrap-up adventures!
This is Ehlana Proctor; coming to you live
from what is now my past!
