Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 1st Birthday, Natalia Ayres!
Congratulations, J.J. Johnson and Taylor White – You’re Married!
Let’s begin by thanking Naomi for writing the last two updates for us – though she did have ulterior motives for doing that while with Ethan on Thursday night and didn’t actually give me any choice on Friday afternoon. Her perspective isn’t really all that much different from mine, but the break from my focus on more-serious topics is worth showing in our journals now and then.
Our adventures since that last report have included some amazing experiences – some of them all-new to us. The top news is that our team won the game over Pinehurst and completed the undefeated regular season. Ethan led the way with four of our eight touchdowns; Aiden and Aaron each had two of the other four touchdowns; and our defense improved quite a bit from a week ago – though Pinehurst still scored two touchdowns and two field goals. The ‘first’ for us was after the game when we went to the Pinehurst high school Halloween dance. Yes, we’ve had other school students attend dances at our school – or at the fall festival; but being on the other side of that was different with extra entertainment thanks to the fact that our team won the game. The Pinehurst students only had a bit of scary fun at our expense, but there wasn’t anything malicious about that; and we went along with the jokes and faux-threats that were all related to Hollywood horror movie themes where unsuspecting teens came to bad endings.
There was a time limit for staying at the dance – including for the teens that needed to get rides home. In my case, Mom and Dad went out with some of the other parents to a Pinehurst tavern while waiting for their kids; and then I got to drive home – though that was not as a designated driver; since Dad did not have any adult drinks. We still got home ahead of the team bus; so Naomi, Sophia, and I had the lounge set up for our co-ed sofa sleepover by the time our boys caught up with us. Mom and Dad only joined us for a bedtime visit; we stayed up way too late with a Halloween movie, teen chat, and co-ed cuddling; and only had time for a very short nap before we got up again today as normal for Tai Chi by the river.
Fatigue healing was needed – including for Mom and Dad; so we did that as a group before heading outside for that workout. We had a hot breakfast; and then cleaned up and got started on the fall clean-up chores day. That’s what we’ve been doing since then to now with one break for a snack lunch; and now we’re getting cleaned up and ready for the Halloween trick-or-treating. We worked at five homes and two cottages; a lot of the work was done on lawn tractors with various attachments; and we should mention that while we’re doing the work for Cassie and Michael at their house; they have added some lawn equipment tech that makes our overall work easier – including a double mulcher-bagger vacuum attachment for their lawn tractor that adds to our abilities for getting leaves cleaned up and bagged with minimal raking required. Naomi and Aiden worked with us while Sophia and Aaron worked with their families; attending his cousin’s wedding ceremony; and they will be doing their own thing for the rest of the day too.
Aiden and I are going to be handing out treats at Cassie and Michael’s house tonight; Ethan and Naomi will do the same here; and then we’ll be babysitting a gang of kids here while most of our favorite parents go out to the Halloween party at the pub that will start around the same time that the trick-or-treating ends. We’ll be keeping most of those kids overnight; and we do not need to comment on any kid-free nights that some of those parents will be getting while we’re watching over their little angels! We’ll choose that over the Halloween gaming night Zack is hosting for the tween guys; and Leah is hosting a girls’ night at her house that isn’t only to ‘save’ Brianna from being at home with Zack and the other guys. Those stories can wait, but we need to move along; since we will be having a Pizzeria pizza dinner soon before the kids will be hitting the streets en-masse in search of the treats that will keep them in sugar overload heaven through to Thanksgiving.
Before we move on to the travel update for Cassie and Michael and the world news of the past few days; I want to include a few local details that didn’t get covered by Naomi. Since she didn’t mention game night at the Inn, you know that we didn’t go while at Aiden’s party instead, but that was also true for most of the teens that do go there regularly; and that helped Brianna and Faith as they moved up the ranks and won the junior title for the week! Brianna was very happy about that; and enjoyed teasing Naomi and Ethan about whether it was worth the trade-off to miss out on the championship opportunity. Naomi assured her that it was definitely worth it; and suggested that Brianna might be able to relate sometime within the next few years! I also want to mention that while Aiden and I were very happy by Friday morning and there really were jokes about him being messed up ahead of the game; Naomi and Ethan had more fun with their alone time on Thursday night and we don’t need to detail why. She did mention that Aiden and I got to have the better breakfast, but while the assumption by our friends would normally be that we had bakery treats; the real reason is that we cooked up that special breakfast – and then needed to deal with the bigger clean-up too.
Cassie and Michael are in Kenya now as we’re writing this; they really did blast through Uganda with a lot of work stops and hours of driving time that kept them going from before dawn to late each night. They haven’t really allowed much time for sightseeing, but do plan on a bit of extra fun while in Kenya. The daily sun-rain cycles continue, and while it is still warmer there than here; it is a bit cooler than it was when they started the trip on the west coast of Africa. They’re about half-way through this trip now; so we hope that they will try to get a bit of rest over the next few days before they’ll get back to the non-stop, heavy work schedule.
On the world news front, maybe we should think of current events as being Halloween-worthy nonsense; since our political leaders seem to be stuck in a groundhog day scenario where they just repeat every day and try to fumble their way toward breaking the repeat-loop and find a way past the wars and other challenges that are only getting worse with every bad decision. In Ukraine, peace has been on and off every day depending on who you listen to on either side; and the death and destruction continues with the most-serious damage continuing to be on Ukrainian infrastructure. Russian refineries and other targets are still getting hit too, but while that is serious; it is also minor compared to what is happening to Ukraine. The same is true in the Middle East – though most of the talk is about an imminent resumption of the ‘hot’ war with Iran and the threats being issued on both sides while no serious peace talks are happening at all. Doing that attack on Iran will only make things worse; and this terrible ‘loop’ will continue. That could also still happen before the midterm elections; and there is more speculation about that since President Trump canceled a major appearance for an election rally in one of the swing States that has pundits speculating that the attack on Iran is imminent. If that happens; we’ll predict that it won’t be helpful to the Republican candidates – especially if that leads to major civilian casualties and a major retaliation from Iran.
Ethan and I really need to get going to have that pizza dinner with Mom, Dad, and the little gang they’re hosting; so that’s all for this report. Let’s hope that our insane leaders do not try for any Halloween ‘tricks’ with our military forces; though we certainly won’t be surprised by any even-lower depths of despicable from our President. We won’t have any serious trick risks here at home tonight, but we do hope to have fun with all of the kids and teens that we’ll share the fun with either while handing out treats or taking care of the next-gen kids after that. We’ll have all of those stories for you sometime tomorrow night; so stay tuned for that while we get started on living the scary-fun adventures.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
