Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 31, 2023

Ethan and Ehlana:

This will be a short update because we’re writing it now instead of later tonight when we plan on being busy with a co-ed sofa sleepover!  Our school day hasn’t really been academic at all because we spent a lot of the morning helping with the haunted house set-up; and then the afternoon party and our turns in the haunted house kept us busy and entertained through until we were set free for the day.  This might be our last year of trick-or-treating – unless we help out with younger cousins in the near-future, but we’re as-excited about having Naomi and Aiden stay with us overnight as with the treat-collecting fun.

We’ll have the rest of our Halloween story for you tomorrow night, but we need to get back to living our adventures now; so we’re out of here!

Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 30, 2023

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

We have a lot to cover with this update, but I’m grinning while writing this; and Ehlana will forgive me for starting with the top gossip story at school today!  Naomi had a lot of fun with the story too, since she loves the precedent that Ehlana and Aiden set last night; and it is a bonus that everyone expected that we would be the couple to have the first ‘solo’ co-ed sleepover!  This part of our update is out of order, but to cut to the good part; Ehlana went home with Aiden after his birthday dinner at the Inn; they were going to end his special day with a movie and cuddle time; and they fell asleep!  Hannah thought they were adorable; took pictures; put a blanket over them; and let Mom know that Ehlana would stay the night instead of coming home.  Yes, I knew that by then, since our twin bond is very strong, but I didn’t spoil the surprise for Mom and Dad; and Mom really did have a handful of ‘that’s my girl’ moments last night and this morning.  We’ve had fun with that Aunt-Leanne-like reaction and the jokes that have gone along with it; and the sleepover fun continued this morning when Naomi and I needed to meet up with Ehlana and Aiden so that we could get a change of clothes to Ehlana before school!

Let’s back up now and cover the rest of our weekend news – starting with Saturday afternoon.  We had our band warm-up at Aiden’s house; packed up our gear and had it ready to load up by the time that Aiden’s parents got home from the bakery; and they brought Pizzeria pizza because they didn’t want to cook.  Hailey and Leah were with us for that meal; so we didn’t have room for everyone in the minivan; and got alternate parental support for the ride over to Witch Falls Road.  We would have walked if not for the rain, but we had enough to deal with just trying to stay as dry as possible while hauling our gear to the stage.

Nothing could be done for most of the haunted walk activities, but a pavilion was set up for the stage; so we were able to stay dry while setting up and then later when we played our set.  Naomi and the Haunted Harmonies was a hit and we’re better with Sophia and Aaron.  While we also loved seeing some of our favorite people in the audience and dancing to our music; we’ll also pretend to find it weird that our parents and some favorite aunts and uncles were among the dancers – and our most-vocal supporters!  We also played with the school band for their turn at the musical entertainment; we were very busy with that and the tear-down of our gear after each set.  The rain definitely put a damper on the fun, but we still enjoyed the game booths, treats, and our turn at the Haunted Halloween Walk.  The crowds were a bit lighter than normal because of the weather, but that will mostly just allow all of the volunteers to wrap up their work earlier than usual.

We needed to get back to Aiden’s house in time to babysit Hailey, Leah, and Beth-Ann.  Aaron’s sister got added to our little gang to save her from being at the Carringtons’ house instead.  We were happy to save all three girls from Zack and Eli, and we weren’t drafted for babysitting there because of Aiden’s birthday.  That worked for us, we watched Halloween movies while Aiden’s parents were at the pub with the usual gang of their friends – including Mom and Dad.  Our parents were due for a turn with a kid-free night; and no details will be recorded about that in our journals!  We stayed up too-late; had a blast; and enjoyed our co-ed nap time.

Aiden and Ehlana slept through Tai Chi this morning; we kept the fun going during breakfast; and some of the highlights for Aiden included gifts; his favorite breakfast foods; and a vid-chat with Cassie and Michael.  There was more birthday fun to go along with our time at church and Sunday school; Mom and Dad had six tweens for lunch; and then the afternoon party we’ve already mentioned kept us busy through until we got ready for the late buffet at the Inn.  Miranda and Stephanie put Aiden’s party in the combined smaller dining rooms; we enjoyed that meal and the rest of the usual birthday cake, song, and gifts with Aiden’s family and our friends.  Ehlana’s unplanned co-ed sofa sleepover has already been covered, but the rest of my Sunday evening was quieter with some work in the office with Mom and Dad; bath time; and then a comparatively-early bedtime for Silkie and me.

That brings us back up to today, and you already know the top highlight.  Tai Chi with Mom and Dad was indoors at our house; we had a good day at school thanks to the bonus entertainment related to Ehlana and Aiden; and then Ehlana and I played at the lab or archives after school.  We came home in time for dinner with Mom and Dad; Mom did a Magi lesson with us tonight; and we only did a bit of charity and family business work before coming upstairs.  We’re definitely ready to get some sleep now, and we want to be ready for all of the Halloween fun tomorrow night; so the last thing we have for tonight is a Cassie and Michael update.  They were in Belem again today, but after keeping busy with work all day; they also hit the road to the south.  They’ll be driving for hours every day this week while making their way to Rio de Janeiro; and they have business meetings and site visits booked every day along the way.  We’ll have more on that as we get the updates; and look forward to seeing how much they get done on this leg or their trip.

That is all for tonight and we are ready to move on and into dreamland soon; so we’re out of here!

Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 29, 2023

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 12^th Birthday, Aiden!

We’re home from church, but our best friends will be here for lunch and then we’re hosting an unofficial afternoon party for Aiden; so we don’t have time for more than this placeholder update; so we’ll save up for a double report tomorrow night.  Feel free to read on whenever you’re doing that in our future; and we’ll get back to helping Aiden to have a best-ever-birthday-so-far!

Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 28, 2023

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

***RESTRICTED UPDATE***

Cassie and Michael have left Javier Thorne – and Macapa.  They shouldn’t be in any imminent danger, but they also have no idea how long it will be before Javier’s family finds out what happened to him – though they won’t know the details or the truth about Cassie and Michael.  We can report that they learned a lot from Javier, and while that included details about his family and Thorne Corp; he also had a fair bit of information about other Dark Magi families – including families that we didn’t yet know about.  Mom also now has access to the company systems that will be undetectable; and we’re hoping that we’ll be able to use that access to counter some of the worst they do through their businesses to people in most South American countries and beyond.

While the details of this confrontation will be available elsewhere in the archives; we are interested in some specifics related to the use of Magi talents that Cassie and Michael used last night and this morning.  Draining Javier’s power isn’t new for us, but this case does have us considering ways to make sure that we don’t risk any lives in the future.  How to do that might take some time to figure out, since there are a lot of factors that go into that process that might not even be measurable – like strength of will and whether we can even learn to sense the exact point that an opponent would run out of power in time to make sure that we don’t allow them to go beyond losing power to losing physical life force.

Moving along, Javier was quite put out with Cassie when he found out that she could easily read his thoughts – especially when he thinks in Portuguese, but as Cassie noted to us – and to him; she doesn’t actually need to know the ‘thought-language’ to understand thoughts.  We want to explore that and find out whether that is true for all Magi of the Light; though that might take some time because we’ll need to have Magi of various talents test that out in places where they can test the theory on people that speak languages that they don’t know.  Finally, our third-favorite use of Magi talent is the way that Cassie wiped Javier’s memory of everything that happened to him while they were there.  They couldn’t mask the loss of memory too – though we do wonder whether we could implant fake memories.  That seems pointless because there isn’t likely any purpose to that other than to possibly mess up having other Dark Magi figure out the ‘when’ for these battles.  Going back to the memory-wipe, we do want to work on that too.  Cassie is sure that Javier has no memory of anything from shortly-before they arrived until shortly-after they left his estate.  He’ll have immediately known that his Magi powers are gone as soon as he ‘woke’ from that blank in his life; and we’re sure that must have been a shock to him since he doesn’t know how it happened to him.  That also means that he won’t remember the advice that Cassie and Michael had for him, but while that sounds weird; there probably isn’t any way to pick and choose memories for our opponents to keep that might help them to deal with his loss.

That’s enough for this part of our report.  We’ll collectively likely need months to go through everything that Cassie and Michael have learned this weekend, and while there are still a lot of Thorne family members to deal with in the future; this has still been a very important step toward defeating them!  Cassie and Michael will do their best to stay away from any Dark Magi for the rest of this trip; so that should be their only confrontation through until they get home again in time for Thanksgiving.

***END OF RESTRICTED UPDATE***

This is another early update.  It was below-freezing this morning, so Tai Chi was indoors; and we had a hot breakfast before getting started on fall clean-up chores at a bunch of houses – including Cassie and Michael’s house.  Mom and Dad let us wrap up at one o’clock; we split up with our friends to get cleaned up and ready for the rest of our day; and now we’re about to head over to Aiden’s house.  We’ll be there for dinner and then a co-ed sofa sleepover ahead of Aiden’s birthday tomorrow; so we’ll be too-busy for any computing later.  We’re going to have a band warm-up at Aiden’s once we all get there; and then we’ll be busy this evening with the Haunted Halloween Walk – including our set for Naomi and the Haunted Harmonies and then we’ll be playing with the school band too.  Those details can wait for our next report; so let’s back up and cover the rest of our news from Friday.

The school Halloween dance was the entertainment highlight of our evening.  Naomi and the Haunted Harmonies was a hit again this year; we were better with Sophia and Aaron; and we had parental help with our gear after we were done playing so that we could stay at the dance and have fun through until close to the end of the dance.  While we didn’t watch any of the football game because we were busy in the gym and setting up our gear and then helping out with the dance set-up, but it was a happy night for our team and fans – even though the win did not make a difference in the standings; and we are not in the playoffs this year.

Naomi, Aiden, Sophia, and Aaron came home with us after the dance; we got ready for our co-ed sleepover; put together snacks and drinks; and then we settled in to watch Halloween movies and stay up to late.  Naomi and I took a turn with the ‘nesting’ sleepover, but we were comfortable; and there was only time for a nap anyway by the time we went to sleep.  That’s all we have for today, and we need to get to Aiden’s house soon for the band warm-up; so we’re out of here!

Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 27, 2023

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

***RESTRICTED UPDATE***

We only have basic news from Cassie and Michael as they are currently with Javier Thorne at his mansion in the Macapa area, but we can report that they have already defeated him!  That happened so quickly that Cassie was momentarily worried that Javier had died, but while he was drained to the point of unconsciousness; he is alive and still having a nap as we write this.  It is not a bad thing for our side to find out that Javier was a ‘normal’ Magi and on the weak side of the scale.  We’ll need to take a look at this, though; since we’ll want Cassie and Michael to be ready for these situations in the future while still preparing for the worst with each Dark Magi they face.

That’s all we have for now.  Cassie and Michael are going to stay and talk with Javier tonight and probably tomorrow morning too, but we’ll save those stories for tomorrow night – or maybe on Sunday.

***END OF RESTRICTED UPDATE***

It is Friday afternoon; we’re finished school for the week; and this update is early because we’re going to be busy for the rest of the day with our friends.  The fun will include the school dance and a co-ed sofa sleepover; and we need to keep this short because our friends will be here soon for a band warm-up and dinner before we need to haul our gear over to the school.  It is cooler today and will be getting colder through the weekend.  The weather isn’t looking great for most of the weekend, but it will only be cold for the football game tonight; so the players and fans will be okay for that.  Our team, by the way, will not make the playoffs again this year whether we win or lose tonight, but we won’t be at the game and will be busy with our band set-up in the gym instead.

There really isn’t much else to add to this report.  We’ve had a good day so far; it is going to get a lot better from now through the entire weekend and beyond to the end of the month; so we’ll get back to the fun and living those adventures starting right now! ;^)

Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!