Ehlana and Ethan:
It’s the last day of the year, but instead of reflecting on 2020 or even writing about our adventures since our last report; we’re just going to wish everyone a Happy New Year; enjoy the ongoing holiday fun with our family and friends; and possibly do some or all of that sometime in the New Year!
This is Ehlana and Ethan Proctor; live from the hidden home of the Magi of the Light – and May the Magi Force be with you!
Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 3rd Anniversary, Josiah and Christina!
We’ll have all of the news for today in the next update, but we’re writing this very early while doing chores now; and expect to be too-busy once our holiday weekend guests begin to arrive today – all of them coming early so that they’ll be here for all of New Year’s Eve day and the parties tomorrow night.
Stay tuned while we get back to work and then move on to all of the fun we’ll be having for the rest of the day – or just flip a digital page in our future if you can’t wait to find out what happens next! ;^)
We have to wait – and go live the adventures first; so that’s all we have; and we’re going to do that starting right now.
This is Ehlana and Ethan Proctor; live from the hidden home of the Magi of the Light – and May the Magi Force be with you!
Ehlana and Ethan:
It has been a cold, wet day around here; so we spent a lot of our day at the lab; followed that up with some play time with our best friends starting around mid-afternoon; and wrapped up our day with a quiet evening at home with Mom and Dad while Cassie, Michael, and May were out visiting family and friends. That’s really all we have for here at home today; so we’ll move on to a quick commentary on some of the biggest news stories of the last week or so.
First up, while Covid-19 cases being reported are down; we know that’s entirely due to the holidays and lack of reporting – not an actual decline. With the New Year just days away, though, if the counts reset to zero then; most people won’t ever hear about the backward revisions that are sure to come over the next few weeks or months. Even with that, we’ll still top twenty-million confirmed cases in our country; and possibly hit three-hundred-and-fifty thousand deaths for the year. Global total cases are over eighty-million; and worldwide deaths from coronavirus will top one-point-eight million. We’re not going to comment on vaccine issues, but only because it is too-soon to offer any informed opinion. Just as with the early days of the pandemic, the data and news about the various vaccines is sketchy at best; and generally-unreliable on both sides of the fight over wide-spread use of the vaccines.
Moving along, our government finally passed a new stimulus package that we really shouldn’t write about, since we have a problem with spending more than nine-hundred billion dollars when most of that goes to the already-rich while the most-in-need will only get enough to at-best pay for a week of very-modest living expenses. If anyone wanted to be honest, it wouldn’t matter how much was given to each person when most of that money would be spent on rent, mortgages, and other necessities – all money that eventually ends up with the richest people anyway. That might sound hypocritical coming from us when our family business is so extensive, but we don’t think that’s true; and our government and most of the wealthiest people in the world could follow our lead and do everything they can to help everyone who is being hurt the most by the pandemic – and all of the actions being forced on them by their leaders. For instance, instead of sending money; why not just forgive all rent, mortgage, and utilities payments until we’re past the pandemic and life begins to get back to normal again? What if every major retailer offers free groceries every week? We’ve heard that the richest people in the world have added hundreds of billions of dollars to their fortunes this year – and think that it would be okay for them to give all of that away; since they’d still be as-rich as they were a year ago while still doing the right thing.
We probably shouldn’t really get into a rant tonight; so let’s just wrap this up by mentioning that most of the ongoing tensions around the world are continuing or getting worse. Our hope for that to change with a new President isn’t very high, but we’d love to be proved wrong next year; and will leave it at that. Winter generally leads to a slowdown in mass protests – at least in the northern hemisphere, and that’s more-true over the holidays, but the ongoing problems around the world aren’t being solved; so we can’t expect any long-term improvement until we do begin to get some of those changes for the better.
Let’s all hope that begins to happen before life goes from bad to worse for too many people!
Okay, that’s all for tonight. We wish that this update could end on a happier note, but while our life here at home continues to be awesome; that doesn’t keep us from being aware that there is a lot of awful happening in the world too. This will be our final bad news report of the year; since we are going to focus on the joy, love, and happiness through the rest of our Christmas break.
This is Ehlana and Ethan Proctor; live from the hidden home of the Magi of the Light – and May the Magi Force be with you!
Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 9th Birthday, Seth Green!
Seth had a boys-only party this afternoon, so while Ethan and Aiden were there; Naomi and I had a play afternoon with Cassie and May – though Cassie left early to join Michael while he was hanging out with his parents and family. We all had fun whether partying or playing – especially compared to the less-fun morning chores that included getting ready for our incoming holiday weekend guests; and we’ve had a quiet evening without anything newsworthy to write about now that we’re done with the Christmas band practices and taking a break from our studies. Mom and Dad still had work to do in the office, though, so we’ve had a quiet night in the lounge; and now we’re going to head for bed early because we can – and want to rest up for the holiday fun that will kick up a few notches again by Wednesday and Thursday.
Stay tuned for that while we go and get some sleep!
This is Ehlana and Ethan Proctor; live from the hidden home of the Magi of the Light – and May the Magi Force be with you!
Ehlana and Ethan:
The end of our Christmas holiday weekend will sound like a fun let-down, but we’ve had such an awesome time; wrapping up the first-half of our Christmas break with chores and a quiet night seems like a fair trade for all of the fun.
Our play afternoon yesterday was great; so was the family dinner; and then we loved to co-ed sleepover that we eventually ended the day with after more boys’ or girls’ games and entertainment in the early evening. The church service this morning was teen-led and heart-warming, but the social distancing and mask-wearing kept us from sharing as much love with our neighbors as we would have liked. While we didn’t have any weekend guests – other than May – at our house, we were still in on helping out this afternoon with getting kids ready to travel and vehicles packed. Most of the Johnson and Seager visitors wanted to get on the road early; and we all really miss the buffets at the Inn again. We were with Naomi for about half of that time – though we were next door at the Carringtons a lot too, but once that work was done; we split up because our parents had chores for us at our own homes.
That kept us busy until dinnertime; we had a leftovers meal; and it has been a quiet night here since then because Dad had work to do in the office; and the rest of us were ready to wind down. Cassie and Michael have been hanging out with Sierra tonight too – and Stephanie and Jake, but they were back in time for Cassie to take her turn in the Jacuzzi – which she’s doing while we’re in Ethan’s room and writing this update and having our bedtime twin chat. There isn’t anything newsworthy to add for this report, so we’ll wrap it up; and then one of us will get some sleep while the other will stay awake a bit longer for a bonus girl chat whenever Cassie is done in the tub.
We’ll add a news-around-the-world update tomorrow night, but don’t want to go there tonight; so we won’t and stay happy instead! ;^)
This is Ehlana and Ethan Proctor; live from the hidden home of the Magi of the Light – and May the Magi Force be with you!