Ethan and Ehlana:
Happy 44th Birthday, Aunt Leanne!
Our favorite Aunt is not worried about her age being reported anywhere, but then she does look a lot younger – a fact that we’ll mention applies to a lot of both the men and women in our little corner of the world. Ehlana gets teased regularly about finding a way to keep all of our favorite adults looking young for decades or centuries for one of her projects at the lab, but as Magi; we have the capacity for making that happen for ourselves – and no, we are not making jokes about color-change charms to combat grey hairs!
As for our adventures of the day, we met up with the Carringtons for a birthday Tai Chi workout by the river, but didn’t join in for the birthday breakfast and left that fun up to our uncle and cousins to do with Aunt Leanne. Ehlana and I had a good and uneventful day at school; and then our respective practices went well and we’re ready for the game tomorrow night – even if we get the showers that are in the forecast to start sometime during the game. Aunt Leanne’s birthday dinner was up next on our to-do list, and we barely made it to their house as everyone was sitting down to eat. The meal was great – especially the special cake desserts; we helped with the clean-up; and then we were a bit late for the start of game night at the Inn. That didn’t keep us from having fun and doing well too – though this week it was Ehlana and Aiden bringing the junior title home for their families while Naomi and I only managed third-place.
Aunt Leanne’s party wasn’t over then, which is why we were drafted for some next-gen babysitting while some of our favorite adults went out to the pub for a few hours. Naomi and I went to Violet and Dillon’s house to watch their kids; Sophia and Aaron helped with her Bassett and Stone cousins; and Ehlana and Aiden took care of a little gang at Christina and Josiah’s place. We all had fun; Ehlana beat me home by fifteen minutes – and not because my goodnight with Naomi took longer; and now we’re winding down fast toward nap time while trading babysitting stories and doing our usual computer checks.
Cassie and Michael are still working their way through their Friday as we’re writing this update, and they’ve had warmer weather than here at home again, but they are also getting a bit of rain as they head into the evening hours there; and they have a wet weekend in their forecast. Yes, we know that rain happens on tropical islands too, but it still feels weird to imagine a mid-October day here that might be nicer than a day in Fiji! Their work is the reason for the trip, though, and they can do most of their work indoors even if their project site visits and travel between appointments might be a bit on the damp side for the last days of their time in Fiji.
Moving on to the world news; we are mostly going to take a break from the daily bad news stories. We are also sick and tired of the daily drumbeating to escalate the Ukraine war with long-range missile strikes into Russia that would risk a major expansion of the war or even a nuclear response from Russia. That story isn’t going away with President Zelensky here for meetings with President Trump, but then that is far from the only idiotic idea coming from our world leaders! We’ll point out again tonight that what Russia wants is for Ukraine to commit to being a neutral country – just as Austria did after World War Two with the deal they made with Russia to end the post-war occupation. Russia also wants protection of rights for all Russian-Ukrainians that have been stripped away from them over the past decade and change; and they want the neo-Nazis removed from power in the government and military. It is obvious that the current Ukrainian leaders don’t want that and probably couldn’t force any of those changes anyway; so the war will continue until one side wins – and we expect that will be Russia. Before we move on from Ukraine; we should mention that the Ukrainian government has ordered a military takeover of the port city, Odessa, and that is yet another action that proves that their country is far from a democracy anymore.
This is already more than we wanted to write about, but we can’t resist writing about President Trump’s claims that he is personally responsible for putting an end to the BRICS+ economic block. That claim should be laughable to anyone, since the current eleven BRICS+ countries represent nearly half of the world population; and there are many countries that would like to join and get in on that economic partnership! We understand why our leaders are afraid of that shift in economic power, but then our actions with tariffs, sanctions, and flat-out stealing assets from other countries has a lot to do why the rest of the world is choosing a different path and moving away from trade with the ‘western’ countries.
We really need to stop there. It is late; we’ve had a long day; and need to get back to full-power by morning for our last school day of the week and the football game. While we get started on that nap; we hope that your ‘now’ is awesome too – whether that is in our near or distant future!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
