Ethan and Ehlana:
Happy 12th Birthday, Joshua Reynolds!
You know that co-ed parties have gone ‘mainstream’ when Joshua and Miles join the club! That’s the good news, and Joshua has had a good day; so the tween drama that went along with his party didn’t cause any major issues. That’s only true because the most-offended girls played nice instead of letting their mad out to play; and Ehlana and Naomi and Sophia had a lot to do with helping our friends to keep the peace. I’d like to report the same for Aiden and me, but we were not successful with keeping Miles in particular from taking his usual kind of fun too-far tonight.
Birthday fun was a big part of our school day too, with the entertainment beginning soon after we got there, continuing on-and-off through to a special birthday lunch for Joshua; and continuing into the afternoon through until we were set free for the day. Ehlana and I stopped in at home to change and get ready for Joshua’s party; we collected Naomi and Aiden along the way; and then we headed over to Joshua’s house for the party.
We’re going to take a little side trip here because we don’t usually spend much time of the family connections among our friends, but in this case Aiden has a couple of closer ties to Joshua; and they’re a pretty good example for a not-that-obvious link when from the perspective of kids around the same age that have those family ties but aren’t also really close friends. Aiden and Joshua are cousins – the next-level down from their parents. Aiden’s Mom and Joshua’s Dad are first cousins, and they are much-closer because Scott works at the bakery with Nathan – and Hannah; so they have that business connection too. Add in that Hailey and Joshua’s younger brother, Lee, are in the same grade too and also not close friends; and you get our point. The one comment we will add here, though, is that Joshua and Lee are very different personalities; so it is possible that we would have been better friends if Joshua was the brother with the more-reserved personality – just as Lee isn’t one of Zack and Eli’s best buddies for the opposite reason.
Moving along, because of the bakery and family links, we know Joshua’s family pretty well; and that’s why we helped out with some of the work before and after dinner. That didn’t keep us from having fun – it made our evening better; and we avoided some of the tween drama while busy elsewhere. The pre-dinner social hour was loud and involved a lot of video gaming and showing off for the girls in ways that weren’t always successful. Dinner and the usual birthday fun around the meal was often entertaining for the wrong reasons; and we should probably just not go there and leave details for posterity. As mentioned, we missed some of the drama while helping with the clean-up; off-set those problems a bit with a minor, unplugged handful of songs that our friends – and some of the adults in the house – got up to dance for while we entertained our friends; and then the movie choice was a ‘miss’ with the girls – especially when the gaming didn’t stop; and some of the guys rotated in and out of the living room while taking turns in the gaming competition. We’ll also skip mentioning the girls that were most-upset tonight, but anyone reading this in our future that personally knew Miles and Joshua as tweens can take educated guesses – though there were more than two annoyed girls tonight.
It is a school night, so that party wrapped up by eleven for everyone except the guys staying for the night with Joshua. Aiden and I were not part of that group; and we were past-ready to go home by then. Ehlana and I walked Naomi and Aiden home; we had a bedtime chat with Mom and Dad that included getting the game night at the Inn recap in exchange for our birthday party report; and then we came upstairs for a late bath or Jacuzzi break. It is getting late now as we wrap up our bedtime twin chat and computing, but we needed some time to wind down and discuss the tween drama and party events. We’ve done that and are ready to crash and nap now; so we will!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
