Ethan and Ehlana:
Happy 13th Birthday, Valerie Malloy!
Mom and Dad had a vid-chat with Valerie and her family and some friends this morning, but other than a cameo moment where we wished her the best for her birthday; we were a bit too busy to get in on even that bit of celebration while helping with getting our fellow campers fed and ready for church and our tents and gear packed up. We didn’t have plans to go to Valerie’s party either because she chose something smaller with a handful of friends except for dinner; and we might not be cool-enough to hang out with her sophisticated city friends! Okay, we’re only joking about that, but we did get teased about it today; and facts are not required with our family and friends for that sort of thing!
We should move on to the camping report from last night. Dinner was a pot-luck adventure with lots of parents and adults supporting Mom and Dad, and while we helped with the work before and after we ate; many of the side dishes and desserts were pre-made and only needed to be hauled from kitchen to back yard buffet tables. Chores days might be as-scary as post-football pizza parties; and we can report that Zack, Eli, and some of our collective friends are able to devour amazing quantities of food and drinks when really, really hungry. That gets funny for our younger cousins compared to their food games from younger years, but we will give them credit for not taking those games too-far anymore. The campfire was the entertainment highlight, and while we had a blast with our musical contributions with our four best friends; we also loved the ‘set’ that Cassie and Michael offered that also put most of the next-gen kids to sleep so their parents could take them home to bed by a bit after ten o’clock. We put the fire out at eleven; stayed up much later with the teens and tweens for chat time by the river and around the tents; and only had two late-night swimmers because the rest of us wanted to stay warm and dry as it cooled off into the low-sixties. We did eventually get some sleep; and that included co-ed nap time for just three couples – officially. We will pretend that we know nothing about any tent swaps that might have happened after we climbed into our tents! ;^)
It had cooled into the fifties by the time we got up for Tai Chi in the pre-dawn light of morning; Mom and Dad did not join us for that workout; and we’ll do some more pretending and offer no comments on why they missed out on that little blast of quiet fun with their favorite kids and teens. We’ve already mentioned how busy we were around breakfast and the camp clean-up, but we also decided last night to have a family-and-friends’ biking adventure to Quarry Lake this afternoon; so some of us prepped for that too – particularly with packing a picnic lunch. We eventually got to church on time, the service and Sunday school were great; and we were home in time to finish getting ready for our afternoon adventures and hit the trails by eleven-thirty.
There was some parent and grandparent support for driving the supplies and some younger kids out to Quarry Lake, but we also had a good mix of parents, teens, and kids on the bike ride; and we really love the trails that we now have to ride safely instead of being on the roads. That’s more-true at harvest time when there is more road traffic – though that isn’t as-serious on a Sunday afternoon. The biking to and from our favorite campground was great, but then it was even better to play there for a few hours when we know that getting a hot, sunny day won’t last much longer before we really get into the fall weather. It topped out at eighty-eight this afternoon, so we even spent close to an hour swimming in the lakes and playing on the water slides when we wanted to cool down from other favorite activities like the rock walls and zip lines. We hit the trail for home by four o’clock because some of us had plans for the late buffet dinner at the Inn – though most of the drivers and younger kids headed home ahead of us after either tiring out those kids or being tired out by all of the fun.
Ehlana and I had a snack dinner with Mom and Dad and then we headed to the lab or archives for the evening. Mom and Dad needed to work in the office after taking the afternoon off too, and we got our work done as-normal thanks to a fair bit of time phasing. That’s made for a very long day for us, but Ehlana and I still got home by eleven o’clock and pretty much moved straight on to bath or Jacuzzi time after just a quick visit with Mom and Dad. They’d had enough of working by then too; and we are again pretending that we don’t know how they are wrapping up their day and weekend. As for us, once we were cleaned up and ready for bed; we got together for the usual twin chat and computing; we’re winding down fast; and will keep the world news report quick – even while tempted to offer another rant about the never-ending idiocies of our world leaders.
Keeping our update short is tough when there is so much going on around the world, but since we cover the usual conflicts a lot; let’s start with a story about one of the supposedly-democratic countries of Eastern Europe. Moldova’s elections this weekend were far from democratic as they prevented most or all of the ethnic Russians in their country from voting at all – particularly the people in the Transnistria region that borders Ukraine and wants and has close ties with Russia. This isn’t an isolated incident, and western countries cannot continue to claim to be democracies when they continually create and support puppet governments that act against the best interests of their citizens. Moldova is a small example of what is happening in many western countries – or in other places around the world that western leaders are trying to control, but what is happening there will come here eventually. Yes, there are suspect actions happening during our elections too, but we aren’t to the stage yet where citizens will be excluded from voting to make sure that the ‘correct’ leaders are chosen.
The United Nations general assembly meetings were a political horror show from our perspective. It is getting to the point now that we wonder whether there is any purpose for the United Nations at all when even when they are talking; they talk past each other instead of trying actual diplomacy. They certainly don’t try to do anything overt and concrete to resolve any of the major conflicts, and are more-likely to make things worse by either inaction or ignorant meddling. Their annual budget of three-point-seven billion dollars isn’t that much compared to government spending in most countries around the world, but is still a total waste if they don’t actually do anything anymore.
There are cases of diplomatic progress happening, but that isn’t from ‘our’ side – it is coming from the growing number of countries that are looking to work together to counter all of the economic and political and military pressures being applied on them by western countries. That is not good news for our country. We’re writing about that news again, but it is an issue that is growing and becoming more-complicated with every new tariff that our country imposes on both our friends and enemies. For example from this past week, we’ve announced new tariffs on ‘heavy’ trucks, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, upholstered furniture, and more. These are all meant to protect our domestic industries, but that will lead to scarcity and higher prices in the future; and will certainly lead to a trade backlash and retaliations. We already see stories out there about boycotts against our exports from countries like India and China; so anything our leaders do to try and stop imports might backfire if that just ends up as a trade-off for a decline in exports.
That’s enough for tonight. We need to sleep now after a really good weekend, and while we have a couple of days left in September; we’re looking forward to all of the fall and Halloween fun we’ll be having starting this coming week. Stay tuned; since we are sure that October is going to be amazing!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
