Ethan and Ehlana:
Happy 1st Birthday, Rochelle Ryan!
We didn’t have any involvement in one of our youngest Johnson clan cousin’s special day beyond the family gift that was sent to her, and our adventures haven’t been birthday-level fun, but we have had another good day; and we continued to enjoy the warmer weather that allowed for comfortable outdoor play time with our friends both during and after school. That’s also why today has been a near-repeat to yesterday, and since we don’t really have anything newsworthy to write about from our own fun; let’s add in another cousins’ update – for the Johnson clan.
Since it is Rochelle’s birthday, let’s begin this update with the McEwan ‘kids’. Tory, Michelle, Christina, and their husbands are each busy, comparatively-new parents; and they’re all members of the pandemic-babies club too! Tory and Kyle Denninger are busiest with toddler, Gregory, and baby, Sophie, but while Tory is still taking time off from work, they do own their own business; so helping out from home is also an option – especially when Kyle shares caring for their kids as much as possible. Michelle and Neil have returned to a more-normal life – including with their teaching jobs; and they have lots of help with taking care of Rochelle whenever they’re busy with work. Christina and Josiah are having real adventures with their amazing little Magi Master, and while we haven’t written a lot about Mariah, Mom is still spending extra time with them and doing all of the training for Mariah that her parents can’t do for her. Christina isn’t working full-time yet, but while our favorite local doctors have picked up some of the emergency slack for prescriptions; Christina is also handling as many orders as she can with as few hours at the pharmacy as possible; and has her staff handling keeping the store open the rest of the time for over-the-counter and non-pharma sales. Josiah is working shorter hours too, but that isn’t really a big deal for this time of year with his optometry office. Finally, for the McEwan cousins, Jonathan and Savannah are happy, busy, and popular as they settle into their new home and jobs, and while they don’t have any kids yet; we’ve heard that joining the club with Jonathan’s sisters is something that they are considering sooner instead of later. We’ll keep you posted whenever their status changes! ;^)
For the Johnson clan, Rob and Trish are nearest to our McEwan cousins for their kids – or will be soon; since Trish is due any day now with their third! Four-year-old Tristan and his one-and-a-half-year-old brother, James, are keeping their parents busy; and apparently have mixed feelings about the impending arrival of their little sister. I probably can’t relate; since I love both of my sisters a lot! Rob and Trish are awesome, happy parents, and while work is needed to pay the bills; their lives revolve around their kids, nieces and nephews, and a lot of friends with young kids – a network that sounds a lot like life here at home for us.
Sticking with the kid-age trend, Nadine and Malcolm Sinclair continue the Johnson clan trend for pandemic babies with sixteen-month-old son, Colin. We know the least about their lives of any of the Johnson clan cousins, but they always seem happy when we see them; and they are getting closer to their cousins now that they’ve joined the parents’ club. Nadine’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Melanie, are up next; and they are two of the members of the next-level parents’ group in the family. It’s funny to think of that difference between cousins, but Kara and Eddie are older than us, and since Kara will be fifteen in a couple of months; her relationship to her youngest cousins is a lot like Violet’s was to us when we were born. Eddie will be thirteen later this month; and we’ll suggest that our summer holidays with them could be interesting in scary teen ways this year! As for Scott and Melanie, their lives really are different than their younger cousins now that their teens need minimal supervision – or don’t want the help; and that allows for more ‘adult’ time with their friends. They still have lots of family-and-friends’ time too, but it doesn’t sound the same as it is with teen parents here at home. That might be partly due to interest in post-pandemic adventures now that more entertainment options are again available, but we don’t really have enough information on that to offer any analysis.
Finally, for the Johnson clan, we have Kevin and Elaine with daughters, Nicole and Robyn. We split the age difference between the sisters with Nicole at twelve and Robyn turning nine next month, so while we don’t know them quite as well as our hometown cousins or Proctor cousins; we get along with them pretty well. Scott and Elaine are among the Johnson clan parents that we don’t really know very well on a personal level because they tend to spend more time with the other parents when visiting us, but they are also great parents; and they keep busy and active with everything from work and parenting to being active members of clubs and community groups that are geared both toward adults and kids.
We should at least mention the out-of-town grandparents for the Johnson clan too. Edward and Karen, Peter and Lydia, and Victoria and Michael McEwan range in age from early-sixties to late-fifties, so while they are members of our collective grandparents’ club; they haven’t joined the other grandparents in retirement – though none of them plan on waiting as long as their own parents did to make that next-level transition. They do all work, but also really love to spend time with all of their grandchildren; so their kids usually have easy access to babysitting services; and we love knowing that the three generations of their family are as close as is true for most of our hometown families.
While we’re on this topic, there is one thing that we want to mention and add – about Magi and non-Magi within one of the founding families. There is still a lot – if not most – that we don’t know about why there is such a difference with Magi and latent, non-Magi kids within each family, but the Johnson clan is a pretty good case study – and their information is part of the always-growing research that continues on the subject. Having a Magi Master linked to the family adds another dimension to that, but while we won’t get into specifics; it is very interesting to have combinations of Magi, latent, and non-Magi parents collectively having such different ‘results’ with their kids. Sure, it is no surprise that two strong Magi parents have Magi kids, but there are obviously a lot of factors that lead to having Magi or latent kids for the other parents – especially when it comes to the kids that end up in the very-low latent range. That’s something that we – the Magi – didn’t even know about before Cassie started to figure it out, and we’ve only been looking into it for the decade or so since then; so we’ll wrap this bit of the commentary up by offering some hope that as we learn more; we’ll find ways to improve the odds for having more Magi babies.
Okay, that’s definitely more than enough for tonight. We still want to include updates for Cassie’s and Michael’s hometown and college friends, but we’ll see about when we can work that into our nightly schedules; since our schedule will be booked up for most of the rest of the week and weekend. We’ll have more on that as we go, but that is all for now; and we are going to move on to nap time starting right now!
Until next time, this little blast from your near or distant past is written for you with love from Ethan and Ehlana Proctor – twin junior Magi Masters of the Light!
