Ethan and Ehlana:
We are getting ready to host our friends for the afternoon and evening; and we’re all opting to stay indoors because the weather dropped more than sixty degrees from the high on Saturday to this morning – and it didn’t warm up very much between then and now. Ehlana and I had fun last night with our friends at Seth’s party and then our respective co-ed sleepovers. There isn’t really any news to offer – though we did get caught up on the latest with our friends from their holiday adventures-so-far; and Seth had a lot of fun too. It was fairly-late by the time we got home with Naomi or Aiden; and I have no intention of writing about the rest of our respective nights – even if Ehlana would be happy to share those stories with all of our future Magi readers!
Instead of going there; let’s cover the top family stories for our day-so-far. The Everetts headed out today for a trip to the west coast to spend most of the week with Uncle Mark’s family. We didn’t see them off this morning – and we didn’t see Grandma and Grandpa before they headed south again. They were all very glad to leave the sudden cold – though it is going to warm up above freezing again by tomorrow. While some of our favorite people were traveling, Ehlana and I had our separate Tai Chi workouts and breakfasts; and then we met up at the lab for a play-work morning while Aiden helped out at the bakery and Naomi was busy with her father and brother. We had fun; got a fair bit of work done; and then we came home for lunch with Mom.
That brings us up to now. As mentioned, we’re getting ready to host our friends for the rest of the day; and they’ll begin arriving soon so we need to wrap this up. We aren’t planning on anything major for entertainment today, but we’ll have those stories for you with our next report.
Before we move on, one of the world news reports we want to mention is another round of ‘near-peace’ claims for Ukraine that seem unlikely – unless Ukraine is closer to total collapse than is being admitted. That is possible, but wouldn’t be good for Ukraine, their army, or people. We hope that isn’t the case, but that would still be a better outcome than having an escalation in the conflict thanks to western backers of Ukraine doubling down and choosing to officially join the fight. Yes, we would love to see peace and an end to the conflict, but recycling the same claims over and over again for more than a year now makes it tough to even try to feel any hope for the diplomatic process. There is not news for Venezuela yet, but tensions remain high; and that can’t continue indefinitely. On the other side of the world, there are reports of yet another round of military exercises around Taiwan by the Chinese navy and armed forces, but while that gets headlines in the west; it isn’t anything new; and happens at least once or twice a year. We are not minimizing the importance of those exercises – we just have a different opinion of what they mean as a political power play by China. Taiwan, to be blunt, is led by idiots; since without China’s economic support; their economy would implode. China knows this reality, though, and if they truly wanted to take over the island; they could make that happen simply by turning off the economic spigots. Yes, that would affect China too, but they have the capacity to absorb the hits – or just take over the production and build everything Taiwan makes internally.
We’ve gone on too-long and really need to stop now; so that’s all for this update.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
