Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - May 31, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

We’re going to be wrapping up the month of May with a play night with our friends; so this is just going to be a micro-update.  Tai Chi by the river and breakfast made for a good start to our day; we kept busy at school with a last round of exam prep work; and now we’re going to hang out with our friends and eventually keep Naomi, Aiden, Sophia, and Aaron for a sleepover.  It is raining, so we’re going to be indoors unless we get a break in the showers, but we aren’t planning on any studying tonight – though we will be doing that tomorrow and on Sunday too.  That doesn’t sound very exciting, but this is still going to be a very busy weekend; so we’re good with taking the break tonight for some fun.

The rest of our news for today can wait for our next report and we really do want to move on to the play time with our friends; so we’re out of here!

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - May 30, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 4^th Anniversary, Rebecca and Lucas!

Ethan and I didn’t get to join in on any party fun today, but Mom, Dad, Cassie, and Michael were among the dinner party guests at the Inn; and Luke is spending the night with Cassie and Michael too while his baby sister still needed to be at home with their Mom for reasons that I won’t get into that would just have Ethan blushing despite his awesome intellect and understanding of newborn-related issues.

Okay, he’s blushing now anyway, but we really don’t need to offer commentary on nursing babies! ;^)

While one of our favorite couples has been having a happy day; we’ve mostly just been busy with another exams study day.  Sophia hosted our study session today; we pretty much had the same group as yesterday; and the only differences beyond location were that Sophia’s Mom went with a Pizzeria pizza order for dinner; we worked on different subjects; and Ryan was also there with some friends as they studied for exams too.  We could have had a lot of fun with the older teens if we could have offered our tutoring support, but that would just get us into trouble; so we stuck with helping our friends instead.  The boys should collectively get a gift for Sophia’s parents, though, since the amount of food they devoured was astonishing – and that is saying a lot considering what we know from all of our previous experiences with seeing large gangs of kids and teens being fed!  There were advantages to having older teen guys in the house, since even Miles and Joshua toned down their ‘game’ to avoid reputation risks that might come with acting too immature; so it was only the food quantities that were scary for the girls in the house.

Moving along, we all met up at Sophia’s house by four-thirty; dinner was multi-tasked with the studying; and we worked until parents stopped by to collect kids after game night – though a few of our friends needed to leave earlier when getting rides out to family farms or elsewhere.  Mom and Dad picked us up on their way home from the Inn, and since it was raining by then; we hurried home and didn’t add in walking Naomi and Aiden home too.  They ended up getting a ride with her parents, though, so they didn’t get soaked or even as damp as we did by the time we were in our house.  Mom and Dad gave us the anniversary dinner and game night update and Mom did a Magi lesson with us while Dad took care of just a bit of work in the office, but we didn’t do any family business work tonight.  Ethan and I split up for bath or Jacuzzi time that we kept fairly-short; and we’ve been busy with our bedtime computing and twin chat since then.

While we always keep up with news from around the world, we haven’t written about any of those stories in our journals for a while; so let’s go there – while I’ll also try not to get into a major rant.  To be blunt, world leaders are still choosing war and conflict over peace; and we are seriously getting sick of the horrors that they are committing or allowing to happen – especially in Israel and Ukraine.  Instead of de-escalating and negotiation, the situation in Gaza is getting worse every day and the battles in Ukraine are only leading to more death and destruction while the only talk is about escalating and expanding that conflict.  You don’t need to be junior Magi Masters to understand how pointless all of these conflicts are, but explaining that to people that only care about power and wealth seems to be equally-pointless.  Trying to blow up eastern Europe and the Middle East doesn’t seem to be enough for some of those narcissistic monsters, though, since tensions are rising elsewhere in the world with China and the Asia-Pacific region only being one of those places.  Starting yet another war there would be even more insane than what is already going on, but why should anyone use logic and common sense when it is so much easier to try and get people to hate instead of love our worldwide neighbors.

My attempts to not start ranting are failing miserably; so I’ll stop now before I really get rolling.  That will not keep me from pointing out that we are all blessed with amazing resources on this little planet of ours; there really is more than enough to go around; and it really is insane for anyone to believe that they should be able to do whatever they want at whatever cost to become one of the crazy few to own and control those resources.  Newsflash for those people who will never read our journals – you really can’t take it with you; and eternity is not going to be fun for those people that don’t choose love and the side of the Light!

I really need to stop now.  We still have one day of school and then a weekend that is going to include a fair bit of studying; we want to be rested and ready for that; and need to crash and nap soon to get there from here.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - May 29, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

We’ve had another busy day and that has mostly revolved around academics and studying for our exams; so we don’t really have much news to offer with this report.  Reviewing and prepping for those exams kept us busy at school; and then we’ve studied with our friends since then through until nine-thirty when we stopped in-part because some of the parents stopped by after co-ed ball practices to collect their kids along the way home.  Ethan and I hosted the session with help from Mom and Dad for the dinner part of our study fun, but they also went to the park to help out with next-gen kids while we were busy studying anyway.  In addition to having more than half of our classmates working with us tonight, Naomi and Aaron had six of their friends to work with from their Grade Eight class; so they ended up taking over the sunroom for a lot of their studying while our Grade Seven study buddies worked in the dining room.  You won’t be surprised to find out that our friends wanted to study the most-challenging subjects for them, but we only worked on math and science today.  We’ll need to help them out with history, geography, and the other subjects that require more memorization, but we can’t also given any of them better memories; so there are limits to how much we can help them.

No, that did not give me any new research ideas for creating a way to make everyone brilliant or enhance anything else – though it really would be awesome if that was possible!

Moving along, we don’t really have much else to report.  Mom did a Magi lesson with us after our friends left; we only did a bit of family business charity work; and now we’re quickly winding down toward nap time.  While we haven’t really had a newsworthy day, we have loved the time with our friends – especially the friends that we don’t get to hang out with as-often outside of school or church.  We should definitely try to do better with that, but most of those friends are also farm kids and they have responsibilities at home that won’t change anytime soon; and we’ll all have more work to do as we hit our teen years.

Instead of getting into that or anything else, Ethan and I are going to call it a night; that’s all we have; and we’ll be off to dreamland soon.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - May 28, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

We’ve had another warm, sunny day; and that worked for us for all of the outdoor activity that included morning Tai Chi by the river; the outdoor study and play times we had at school; and our ball practices and pizza picnic dinner at the park.  Ethan and I also helped with some of the next-gen kids while at the park and before our own practices; and we studied with our friends both before and after those baseball workouts.  Our collective parents only let us stay together with our friends until ten o’clock, but we still managed to get a fair bit of work done and we’re ahead of schedule for our exam prep work.  Bath or Jacuzzi time was needed after our friends headed out for their own homes; and now we’re winding down toward nap time with our usual twin chat and computer checks.

That’s also pretty much all we have for this report.  I don’t really want to wrap up with any bad news commentary and Ethan never has a problem with a short update; so that’s all for tonight – you’re welcome! ;^)

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - May 27, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 7^th Anniversary, Violet and Dillon!

Happy 23^rd Birthday, Reid Spencer!

It seems strange to be starting this update with best wishes when it is also Memorial Day, but then we still celebrated with Violet and Dillon and Reid still had birthday fun today too – including while we were all at the park for the Memorial Day picnic.  Before we get to the rest of the news from today; let’s cover the basics from the rest of our Sunday.

We went to the last buffet dinner sitting of the day at the Inn so that the store owners in our group could join us; that meal was awesome; and then we eventually spent the rest of the evening and night with Cassie, Michael, and the gang of teens and tweens they hosted.  We played some video games; watched a movie; and had a long chat to go along with the co-ed cuddling and too-many snacks and drinks.  We also stayed up too-late; and then the co-ed sofa sleepover was pretty good for those of us that weren’t in guest bedrooms in pairs or on our own for the teens that didn’t opt for any co-ed napping.

Tai Chi by the river made for a fun start to today, but we also needed to keep busy after that while having breakfast and getting ready for the day.  Ethan, Naomi, Aiden, Sophia, Aaron, and I all needed to get to the parade start pint to meet up with the school band for the parade, so we did more work before breakfast and less of the clean-up, but then we were busy again as we warmed up with the band and waited for the parade to start.  Ethan and I haven’t mentioned the band very much lately, but then we really haven’t had much on the go with it since the Valentine’s Day luncheon for the seniors; and we really haven’t even had much in the way of practices either – though there will be a couple of them next month ahead of the Fourth of July parade.  We’re still the junior members of the band too; so it isn’t exactly a challenge to learn our parts for the music – especially when it came to this parade when we only needed to learn a couple of songs.  Ethan and Naomi might get to play their trumpets for the service at the cemetery when they are seniors, but that honor usually goes to the graduating class each year; and that was true today.  It was different to be in the parade this year, and while it was a solemn morning for everyone as it should be; we’ll also admit that we enjoyed the nice weather – especially when our only previous experiences for parades were much, much colder last December!  The parade and service at the park were special; we loved the family stories after the service that included some Draper family stories for me and Seager-Ayres stories for Ethan as we split up to share those moments with Aiden’s and Naomi’s families respectively.

The picnic at the park was up next after we helped out with the usual work needed to get food contributions to the park along with day camp gear.  The picnic lunch was awesome; there were more games and activities available this year including some charity game booths, canoe rentals, and bike rides on the trails – whether with rented bikes or our own.  For our family, Violet and Dillon got bonus attention and some gifts for their special day; and we helped out with most of the next-gen kids for parts of the afternoon.  We can’t cover every detail from this afternoon; so let’s just note that we had a blast with our family and friends; and all of the fun we had happens because of the people we love and get to share those adventures with!

Thanks to the awesome weather, the party in the park went on late into the afternoon; and we didn’t head out until an hour or two later than normal; since our weekend guests weren’t in any hurry to head for their homes.  That did eventually need to happen, though, and we helped with the non-stop work after that as we helped to get our gear to various homes; help our guests to pack and load vehicles; and then we had a long round of goodbyes that also happened at a handful of homes.  It was actually heading toward seven o’clock by the time we had a late, leftovers dinner with Mom and Dad – and without any guests.  Mom opted for a time phase and other Magi power use when we helped her out with the clean-up while Dad was busy in the office; and that’s how we managed to get all of the work and laundry done by nine-thirty.  Bath or Jacuzzi time followed; and now we are quickly winding down toward nap time because we’re exhausted and really need to catch up on our sleep.  We’ll need that down time as we will need to start in on prepping for final exams starting tomorrow, but we’ll be busy with more than our studies as we wind down to the end of May.  Let’s not get into what is coming up on our near-future schedule tonight or anything else; since we really do need to get some quality rest after such a busy weekend.  Stay tuned; since we really do expect that the fun level is going to stay high as we start counting down to the end of our school year and start of our first ‘teen’ summer!

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