Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 1, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 3^rd Anniversary, Marc and Gretchen Johnson!

Cassie and Michael have been involved in the anniversary fun for their friends, but we were out of the loop; and only sent along our best wishes.  We do want to report that there are changes in the celebrations for Cassie’s friends now that many of them are joining the club with the rest of the next-gen parents; and that includes the couple of honor; since their first child, Geordie, is now around three months old.  Let’s also mention that Sally Parker is pregnant and due in May; so she and Joshua are excited and happy too.

Our day hasn’t been that exciting, but we did have fun from Tai Chi by the river through our academic adventures to the football and cheer squad practices that kept us busy until dinnertime.  Ehlana and I hosted our four best friends for that meal and our study evening.  Mom did a group Magi lesson with us and we had a music practice for both the school band and our band so that we’ll be ready for the dances we’ll be playing at over the next month; and we’re keeping Naomi and Aiden for the night so they’ll be here in the morning for Mom and Dad’s special birthday breakfast for their anniversary.  We’ll have more on that with our next report, and we’re writing this while Naomi and Aiden are taking turns grabbing a shower or Jacuzzi time.  For the record, that wasn’t offered in order; and at least one of us doesn’t want to think about Aiden choosing a soak in Ehlana’s Jacuzzi anytime ever! ;^)

We do want to have this wrapped up before our favorite cuddle buddies rejoin us; so let’s get to the world news report.  First up is the federal government shutdown after our senate couldn’t come to an agreement on a spending bill.  We’d be happy to see that shutdown continue indefinitely, but know that it won’t; and the disagreements are just more theatre as they fight over peanuts while they all agree on continuing with multi-trillion-dollar deficits every year with no care at all for how that will damage our collective future.  This political nonsense won’t put even a pause into funding the favorite wars and the Palestinian genocide, but maybe we should avoid the cynicism tonight and not go there.  There was a serious earthquake in the Philippines that has caused a lot of damage and there have been dozens of fatalities and hundreds of injuries or more and while we didn’t do any charity work tonight; Mom and Cassie directed some aid where needed already and will keep up on anything we can do to help through our businesses and charities.

Aiden has joined us, so that’s enough for tonight.  Stay tuned for our next updates; since the fun level is going to turn up a few notches by morning and continue through to after the fall festival and beyond!  For now; we’re going to enjoy some quality co-ed cuddle time and our sleepover and are out of here right now!

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - September 30, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 38^th Birthday, Uncle Nick!

Our last day of September has been non-stop action from Tai Chi by the river and breakfast with Mom and Dad through to now as we’re quickly winding down and ready to crash and nap.  The top birthday celebration for our family didn’t just include a dinner party – we helped to make sure that Uncle Nick had a happy day at school too.  That was true for his kids and the rest of his hometown nieces and nephews; and we know that his friends – including the teachers – kept him entertained at work too.

Ehlana and I had to fit in his birthday dinner with all of our practices; so we didn’t even get to be there for all of the fun after getting to the party a bit late and needed to leave before the clean-up was finished.  While we missed out on some fun at the Ayres’ home, we still enjoyed our practices – including the lunchtime cheer squad practice for our favorite girls.  Ehlana had fun with the school band practice after school; I had a great workout with the football team; and we both loved the teen praise team practice.  Having all of that on the go left us with our homework to do after we were done at the church; so Aaron hosted that study session and it took us until eleven o’clock to get everything done and get home for the night – including taking Silkie for a walk while seeing Naomi and Aiden to their homes.

Our day wasn’t done then – we used a time phase to do some charity work and a Magi lesson with Mom.  We really needed to get that work done tonight instead of leaving it for another day, but that has also meant extra hours to our day and we really are getting tired now.

September is officially over now as we’re writing this report, though, so let’s make the world news update a quick one and then we’ll move on to get some sleep.

The top political story of the day was probably the military leaders meeting for our armed forces that included a speech from President Trump.  To be blunt, we didn’t like anything we’ve heard today – starting with the name change to the Department of War.  It is insane for our leaders to threaten nuclear war in a back-handed way while pretending that they would only use them as a last resort.  Claims of military superiority are also meaningless when it comes to nukes; since everyone in the world would lose if that actually happened.  Let’s not even comment on the nonsense that filled up the President’s speech, since nobody cares about half of that idiocy – though maybe that isn’t true for the quality paper companies and calligraphers that might appreciate his mention of quality paper and personal claims of amazing penmanship!  If anyone was left with any doubts about our President’s level of narcissism, listening to that entire speech would encourage certainty; since he spent most of the time talking about his personal perfection from that penmanship thing to being the greatest peace-maker in history.  Maybe that’s true; since what we see happening around the world is a coming together of all of the countries that want to move away from any ties with our country as they find out that the risks of trade and diplomacy with us are not worth the decreasing benefits.  We could go on about this for a long time, but to shorten our rant, we do not believe that there will be world peace through global military build-up – and our country is leading the way for doing that with trillion-dollar military budgets that countries like Russia and China are responding to with their own military expansions.

Finally, we can’t resist commenting on all of the wars that President Trump claims to have ended – not to offer our opinions on those claims; but to offer our own counter-list of not-so-peaceful actions he’s ordered.  While his actual involvement in any of his peace claims can be argued, there is no doubt that he has used our military to bomb Yemen and Iran; our navy has blown up boats that they claim were carrying drugs from Venezuela with no proof; he’s supplied tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons of all kinds to Israel, Ukraine, and others – often with actual help for using those weapons; and we haven’t even gotten started on the endless sanctions and tariffs that are used for economic warfare against any countries that don’t simply do what we tell them to do.

We’d better stop there; since we really could rant on the never-ending insanity coming from our leaders.  We’ll move on and get some sleep now; since we really want to be at full-power for all of the adventures still ahead of us for the rest of the week.

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