Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - July 17, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 5^th Birthday, Jacob Jennings!

We probably wouldn’t have helped with Jacob’s special day if we’d been home today, but he is a cousin to Ryan and Emma; and gets lumped in with the rest of our next-gen cousins and friends.  Violet and Dillon are definitely helping out with the kids’ party; and they are getting great weather for that – though there is rain in the forecast for later tonight and tomorrow.

That’s true for us here in Ottawa too, but the weather has been good so far today; and we’ve even managed to enjoy some outdoor time between meetings and site visits.  Most of the political work Cassie and Michael had today was related to government regulatory controls ranging from business to environment to charity partnerships; and the site visits were for business partnerships.  We’ve finished up the work for today, and we’re at the hotel getting ready for a play and sightseeing night.

Instead of writing more about our own adventures, we should mention that Mom and Dad are surviving at home without their kids; and we’ll pretend that they aren’t having way too much fun that we aren’t being told about and don’t want to know either!  Our cousins are having fun without us too – though they are also about to wrap up the hometown vacation time with Johnson clan cousins this weekend.  I get regular updates from Brianna and Faith; and they are also fairly-happy to have Zack spend a lot of extra time at Eli’s house while Naomi is with us and the Seager home is sister-free.  Let’s also add that Mandy is in high demand; Brianna and Faith are sharing her with Mom, Dad, Leah, and Hailey; and she is getting so spoiled that Cassie isn’t sure that Mandy will want to come home when we get back again!  Okay, that last part is just a joke, but facts are not required to have that kind of fun.

We need to get going for our play time soon; so let’s cover some of the world news stories.  The Iran war gets top billing today thanks to ‘our’ overnight attacks on Iranian bridges, power plants, and communications systems.  Iran has started escalated retaliations against power and desalination plants in other Gulf countries; and we are expecting worse through the weekend because that is being promised by leaders on both sides.  Politics are in the headlines for the Ukraine war thanks to a government shuffle including new military leaders and a new Prime Minister.  None of those changes are for the better for Ukraine or the world; the Ukrainian President is still in charge; and the war will continue.

We don’t want to cover the daily distraction stories, but will mention that every week brings a new low for our strategic petroleum reserves, and while there has been some slowing of the drawdown; that is another factor for prices that will rise as supply contracts again.  There was also a story out there today about ‘our’ leaders suggesting that Canada needs to be sanctioned because of the smoke from those wildfires we mentioned that are affecting parts of the United States now.  That is insane, since it would make more sense to offer fire fighting aide instead of sending economic threats.  Everything else can either be saved for another day or isn’t worth reporting here at all; so that’s all we have for today.  Stay tuned; since we are really hoping for another awesome weekend here in Canada!

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - July 16, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 15^th Birthday, Jennifer Byrd!

While we’re missing out on her birthday adventures, Jennifer’s best friends and family are making sure that her day is special; and she’s most-excited about joining the beginner-drivers’ club.  Okay, she’s having fun with all of the play time too, but we don’t actually have those details yet; and will include those stories soon if we hear anything interesting about that from home.

We are no longer in Montreal as we’re writing this, but our late-evening drive time to our next stop, Ottawa, will only take a couple of hours; and we’re about half-way there already.  The work we helped Cassie and Michael with today – and for the rest of yesterday after our update – kept us busy most of the time with cameo sightseeing and some comedy festival fun, but we wrapped up the work with a casual charity dinner and then we spent the evening enjoying more comedy festival and sightseeing fun before hitting the highway for Ottawa at around eleven o’clock.

We’re going to be in Ottawa – the Capital of Canada – through to Sunday evening; and the work schedule includes some government-related meetings that will also give us the chance to check out the differences between their center of national power with Capitol Hill and Washington.  We’ll have more on that over the next few reports, but as we head into Ontario, one story has gained our attention for the Province that seems very strange to us.  They are dealing with wildfires in the far northwest of the province, but the stories that are so interesting to us tonight are about air quality problems in southern Ontario caused by the smoke from those fires drifting into the region so-heavily that it is creating a heavy haze and fog with strong wood fire smell.  Parts of Michigan are affected too, and what amazes us is that that smoke and hazard is able to be such a problem hundreds of miles away from the actual fires.  We might actually experience at least a bit of that effect over the next few days, but conditions are supposed to improve by the time we get into the areas that have been most-affected over the past couple of days.

Elsewhere in the world, Russia has launched new, massive missile and drone attacks focusing on Ukrainian ports including Odessa; drone production facilities; and ongoing hits on energy infrastructure.  Ukraine continues drone attacks on Russia, but the most-disturbing story we saw today was purportedly from a Ukrainian spy ‘mastermind’ behind the bombing attack in Morocco against a Ukrainian oligarch and his family that critically-injured the man, his wife, and their teenage son.  We didn’t write about that story previously, but seeing a report of the bombing planner bragging about international terrorism tactics is sickening; and our leaders should be horrified for supporting Ukraine when that also means supporting civilian bombings and intentional targeting of civilians in Russia and elsewhere in the world.

Infrastructure is in the news for the Iran war, with the Iranian leaders promising retaliation in kind against the other Gulf States for American and Israeli attacks on infrastructure in Iran and Lebanon.  The attacks on both sides continue tonight; the threats continue; and peace is still off with no negotiations happening or planned.  We continue to believe that our leaders are on the wrong side of this war, and we have one example to offer to support our assertion.  Yesterday, our central command reported targeting an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf that was en-route to an Iranian port and disabling it in international waters; and then they reported missile strikes on Iran four or five hours later that they claimed were launched to keep Iran from illegally targeting civilian ships in the Strait of Hormuz or Gulf!  The idiocy of that hypocrisy is amazing, since if part two of that sequence of events is valid; then other countries should have every right to attack us to stop us from doing the same – and for all of the ships we’ve pirated both in the Middle East region and previously elsewhere in the world.

That’s enough for tonight.  Ethan is enjoying more cuddle time with Naomi while my cuddle time with Aiden is too one-sided; so I am out of here and back to the real time and quality co-ed share time with my boyfriend! ;^)

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - July 15, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 22^nd Birthday, Lindsay Faulkner!

Happy 3^rd Anniversary, Martin and Kimberly Rice!

We did a short vid-chat with our cousins and gifts were sent, but that was our only involvement in those celebrations; and we left it up to family and friends to take care of making today special for Lindsay, Martin, and Kimberly.

Our day started before dawn again for the drive to Montreal; and we again got right to work with a multi-tasked breakfast once in the city.  While Cassie and Michael had a lot of work to do today; we are also happy to be in town during the world-famous, Just for Laughs comedy festival.  The Montreal Comedy festival runs for the entire month of July too; so there are a lot of comedy entertainment opportunities and brings millions of comedy fans to Montreal.  That, by the way, would have been a problem for us for accommodations if Cassie and Michael hadn’t booked early for our stay in the city.  We’ll have more on that part of our story over the next couple of days, but will mention that the teens in our group will not be able to attend any of the club events for those festivals, but there are outdoor, free events that we will be able to check out during some of our breaks between the work.  We haven’t done that yet today, but do plan on doing that a few times between now and when we move on again late tomorrow night.

We’re currently writing this while taking a work break to get checked into our rooms.  This will be a short stop and we need to get going soon; so let’s speed this up a bit.  After that breakfast-work meeting, we had a morning site visit to a logistics warehouse; a finance meeting in a downtown tower; a charity lunch; and then another site visit to an inner-city clinic and health and social services center.  The need for those services is different in countries like Canada because they have a social safety net that we don’t have in the United States, but there are still many needs that either aren’t covered or take too long to get through basic government services; and expertise is also needed to help low-income people navigate the hurdles and paperwork often required to access those medical and social services.  That was my favorite stop of the day thanks to the clinic side of that facility, but we all had fun with the tour; talking with the staff and clients; and learning a lot about a social services system that is very different from ours but also one that has unique challenges related to scarcity and regulated costs.  This hotel stop was next on our schedule, but we still have another meal meeting to get to soon and more work and fun to enjoy this evening; so we need to get going soon.

On the world news front, the Iran war rages on again, and we did not like seeing reports of attacks on Iranian food infrastructure like grain silos and flour and bread storage and production facilities.  That is a new kind of war crimes that only targets the poorest civilians, since the elites and military will always have food first; and we hate seeing our leaders making those choices.  President Trump is again threatening to destroy Iran’s power plants and energy infrastructure; that would be yet another terrible mistake; and ‘we’ obviously haven’t learned from horrors our country committed in the past along those lines – like the major hydroelectric dam in North Korea that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people downriver from that dam when it was destroyed.  There are very good reasons why these acts are supposed to be war crimes now, but if the top world military powers can’t be held accountable; then those international laws are meaningless.

We need to stop there, so we’ll save the Ukraine war updates for tomorrow; and we really need to offer other news from around the world too – even if those stories don’t get much media attention.  Stay tuned for that – and our next personal news update; and we’ll get out there and live the adventures we’ll write about tomorrow starting right now.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - July 14, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Trois-Rivieres is probably a beautiful place, and we might get to see that for ourselves sometime before we leave tomorrow morning, but we’ve been dealing with rain and thunderstorms for most of our visit here so far today; so we haven’t actually seen much of it yet!  Okay, we have seen what we could through the rain during our sprints between meetings and there was some indoor sightseeing too, but we have seen a fair bit of rain too; and focused on staying as dry as possible between the meetings and site visits.  Cassie and Michael’s work here has focused on natural resources industry and environmental management; and we loved helping them out with what we could – especially at the two site visits.  We’re currently checking into the cottage we have booked for the night; so we don’t have a lot of time for this update before we need to get to a charity dinner.  We have an evening meeting too; so we will be busy for the rest of the day.  There really isn’t anything else to add for our day-so-far – though I should at least mention that we were up very early for the drive here; and we had working breakfast and lunch meals to go along with the rest of the work.  We’re going to repeat that travel plan tomorrow for the drive from Trois-Rivieres to Montreal; and then we’ll be staying there for two days.

For our world news update, the Iran war rolls on with more rhetoric on both sides that does not include any talk of peace as the missiles and drones continue to fly.  The fighting in Ukraine – and the missile and drone attacks – continue to rage on; and it is very hard to even watch the death and destruction from a distance for a war that is so pointless.  Commodity prices aren’t reflecting all of those stresses to the extent they should, but the economic stresses continue to build; and we know that those problems will continue to compound as long as our world leaders choose war and power grabs over what is truly best for most of the people in the world.

We’re going to stop there for the news, but before we get back to the work and fun; we are missing a beautiful, sunny day at home; our cousins and friends are enjoying a play day unless also working summer jobs; and we’ll miss out on the Tuesday ball practices and Pizzeria pizza picnic dinner at the park.  We can also mention that the major camping nights wrapped up yesterday, but there are smaller camps happening at other homes – or indoor sleepovers – for the remaining visiting Johnson clan cousins.  It does feel strange missing out on that this year, but then Jayden wasn’t going to be doing that this year even if we’d been home; and he’s the last of the Proctor-Rice clan cousins to do that – at least until the next-gen cousins arrive and get old-enough to renew the tradition!  Yes, Kaitlyn is in Witch Falls, but she’s one of us now; so she isn’t a visiting cousin anymore.  Okay, that’s enough and we really do need to go now; so we are out of here and back to the real world.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - July 13, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Canada is officially a bilingual country, but French is the primary language in Quebec; so Cassie and Michael did most of their business today in French with Cassie handling all needed translations and interpretations.  We – the teens in our group – had fun with the language barriers; and Ethan and I even helped out a bit thanks to knowing the language and overhearing some comments at one business meeting and passing that info on to Cassie.  While we’ve fit in a bit of sightseeing today, there was more work to do; so we spent most of our time in meetings and site visits and multi-tasked meals while most of the play time was done through a series of cameo moments.  This is not an in-transit update because we’re staying a second night in Quebec City and will get up early for the drive to Trois-Rivieres.  We’re actually still doing some work now – though that is laundry chores and not very exciting.  The guys have started making jokes about traveling like the fictional Jack Reacher character from the books, movies, and series and just buying new clothes every few days and tossing the old ones out.  They might like that part of the story, but I’ll guess that they wouldn’t like the idea of walking across Canada and hitchhiking or taking buses from place to place.  They would definitely be up for the crime fighting, but as I write that; now I’m hoping that we aren’t about to be jinxed! ;^)

We do need to get this work done and then get some sleep so we can be up early for that drive time before dawn; so let’s wrap this up with the world news report.  The Iran war is definitely back on – according to President Trump; he is also claiming that the United States is going to take over control of the Strait of Hormuz; and Iran is fighting back just as they’ve always promised.  None of that is good news, but also completely expected; since we didn’t think that our own leaders were actually serious about a true peace deal that would be anything short of a complete surrender from Iran.  That isn’t going to happen; so the Middle East will continue to go up in flames while the rest of the world suffers the economic fallout.  In Ukraine, the war is going to escalate again soon if the rhetoric is any indication on both sides.  While the frontlines continue to collapse and the Ukrainian forces are decimated; their leaders focus on media ‘wins’ and drone strikes meant to produce sound bytes for points while Russia’s attacks are meant to lead to victory as they methodically demolish the country for as long as needed until they achieve their goals.  Just for a reminder, those goals are safety for the ethnic Russians that are mostly in eastern Ukraine; no NATO in whatever ends up being left of Ukraine; and security for their own country and people.  That is very different from what Europe wants; since their goals are to destroy Russia and take control of their vast natural resources – aka neo-colonialism.

That’s enough for tonight.  We’ve had a good day; our work and play adventures are amazing and we are so glad to do this with Cassie, Michael, and our four best friends; and we’ll have more stories for you again sometime tomorrow.  Stay tuned for that while we get back to the laundry chores and hanging out with our friends – or just flip the digital page and read what we’ll write about next once we’ve lived the adventures.

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