Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - April 3, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 46^th Birthday, Owen Emerson!

Happy 12^th Birthday, Gerald York!

Good Friday is always one of those holidays that feel strange because of the solemnity of the occasion, but that is more-true when birthday celebrations are mixed in too.  Since we were doing a sleepover with our best friends last night; we joined Naomi for a short vid-chat with her cousin at breakfast and we sent Gerald a joint gift that he assured us he liked a lot, but that was just a blip of fun in our day between Tai Chi and the Good Friday service at the church.  We wished Owen the best for his birthday this morning too while at church, but we are not going to be at his birthday dinner.  Mom, Dad, Cassie, and Michael will all be doing that, but we’re doing some babysitting with cousins and next-gen kids instead; and that is going to be a lower-key meal and party at Rowen and Tim’s house.

As for our day-so-far – including the rest of our Thursday; we had fun at Susan’s party and dinner; the fun highlights included Pizzeria pizza and bakery cakes; video gaming for the guys; and a movie that wrapped up the party with some quality co-ed cuddle time.  Ethan and I brought our four best friends home with us after leaving Susan’s house; we watched another movie and stayed up too late; and then we got around to the co-ed nap time.  As mentioned, we started today with Tai Chi that was indoors because it was still raining off-and-on; breakfast and that birthday vid-chat was mixed in with getting ready for church and taking care of the work on both sides of the meal; and then the service at the church was as-solemn as always.  The Good Friday services are also among the shortest of the year and ends with a recessional for the entire congregation; and we do not have any serious social time.  While our friends moved on with their own families from the church, Ethan and I went home with Mom and Dad; we had a quiet lunch after dealing with some chores; and then we went to the lab or archives for the afternoon to work there because the rain rolled on and we chose the work over indoor play time or other entertainment options.

That brings us up to now.  We’re home and getting ready to host that babysitting with Naomi and Aiden.  Sophia and Aaron are busy elsewhere – though some babysitting might be involved for them with her next-gen family.  As for us, we have incoming friends and next-gen kids arriving soon; and Mom and Dad will be heading out to Owen’s birthday dinner soon too.  Ethan and I will be in charge of feeding the gang of kids here, but they took care of us too; and there are frozen Pizzeria pizzas and other finger food sides for us to cook up for our cousins and friends.  We’ll share all of those stories with you tomorrow, but since we are going to be busy for the rest of the night; and won’t be doing any computing for the rest of the day.

Taking another day off from a world news report would be nice, but we did still take time to keep up with the latest news from around the world; so we should at least mention a few highlights.  Choosing which of those stories to cover is another issue; so let’s begin with reports that more ships are being allowed through the Strait of Hormuz.  It appears that deals are being made and upheld to allow that to happen, but there are costs; and the total traffic is still far-below normal or what is needed to begin a return to the traffic needed to keep up with global trade needs.  While that is good news for the countries involved; that is just one flicker of light in an otherwise dark scene in the Middle East region.  There are new reports of infrastructure strikes on both sides that include bridges, energy and water infrastructure, and other civilian targets that should not be legitimate targets in any war.  Yes, we collectively have a long history of that kind of destruction, but we’re supposed to be better than that now as we evolve as humans; so we find it disgusting and horrific to see our leaders ordering those attacks and then bragging about their war crimes.  There are also reports of American and Israeli jets and drones being shot down by Iran including F-35’s and F-15’s and Reaper drones, but most of those reports are being denied on our side; so it may be a while before we find out the truth for any of those stories.  It will eventually be tough for our military to hide those kinds of losses for long – especially if the crews of those jets are killed or injured or captured.  We did note one report of a ‘reward’ being offered in Iran for any American or Israeli pilots brought to the authorities alive.  While we wait on more for those reports, we did not like the latest claims from our President about opening the Strait of Hormuz by force, defeating Iran, and then taking total control of their oil resources so that ‘we’ could earn a fortune through our war efforts.  The depravity and narcissism required to say those things and seem to believe to have a right to do that is staggering; and we expect that most of the rest of the world is likely cheering for the Iranian people – though quietly; since they don’t want to end up on the wrong end of ‘our’ missiles and bombs too.

Ethan and I need to get going now, so let’s stop there; and we’ll try to offer a fuller report tomorrow night.  We won’t be doing any sleepovers tomorrow night when the Easter bunny will be on the way and then we’ll have the sunrise service on Sunday too; so we should be able to do that – and maybe we’ll get an Easter miracle and the wars will end and universal peace will break out!  Don’t laugh – unless as you’re reading this in our future you know that actually happened! ;^)

On that silly note; we’re out of here and back to living some of those adventures we’ll write about tomorrow night.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - April 2, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 15^th Birthday, Susan Connor!

Happy 6^th Birthday, Cassidy Connor!

Happy 26^th Birthday, Jeremy Fletcher!

We’re starting our holiday weekend with getting ready for Susan’s birthday party, and then we’re going to host a co-ed sleepover with our four best friends after the party; so this is a quick, early update.  Ethan and I haven’t been involved in Cassidy’s or Jeremy’s birthdays, but we know that Cassie and Michael did a vid-chat with Jeremy this morning; and they are going to take Sierra to Cassidy’s party.  Susan’s had some help with her birthday fun so far while we were all at school including a special lunch and bakery treats; and now we’re going to do our best to help her out with the party fun and work too.  No, we are not giving her Jayden for a gift, but we did get teased about that; and had fun with that too – even though Susan knows that Jayden will not be joining his sisters and falling in love with a hometown teen!

Let’s leave the rest of our story for the next report.  Our school day was good, but now we’re ready to have fun for the rest of the day; so the rest of our news can wait for tomorrow.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - April 1, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Rain day!

Okay, that doesn’t sound exciting at all, but then we can’t say that our adventures have been newsworthy.  Tai Chi was indoors; we had a hot breakfast; and then our academic adventures were fun but uneventful as we head toward the holiday weekend.  Ethan and I play-worked at the lab or archives after school and into the evening; we had Pizzeria pizza for dinner while at the lab; and had fun with our books or beakers until we took advantage of a short break in the rain to head home.  We did a visit with Mom and Dad in the office that included a Magi lesson; and now we’re wrapping up our day with the usual computing and twin chat time.  We’re getting tired and it has been a long day; so let’s get to the world news report and then we’ll call it a night.

The news that everyone was not really waiting for was President Trump’s address to the nation tonight.  The speculation kept reporters and pundits entertained from the time the announcement was made; and stories ranged from America dropping out of NATO to either an end to the Iran war or an escalation to a ground offensive.  Well, the actual address was nothing more than a load of lies about Iran and the justifications for attacking them along with vague ‘promises’ of more war to come if Iran doesn’t basically surrender.  President Trump also tried to gaslight the rest of the world and suggested that they could open the Strait of Hormuz and keep it open now that Iran is supposedly destroyed – or buy their oil from our country.  Our leaders apparently can’t do math; since we don’t actually have an extra twenty million barrels per day of oil to sell into the world market to replace the lost production in the Gulf region.  We especially found the President’s history lessons about war ridiculous; and he only proved that he really doesn’t understand what he is talking about.  That wasn’t because of the time frames he mentioned for the various wars – it was all of the claims about American war supremacy.  Just for fun; let’s recap a few of the examples.

The United States did not win World War Two – Russia and their allies beat Germany, and while common belief is that the nukes dropped on Japan led to the surrender; historians know that Japan was actually more-terrified of Russia as they were preparing to invade their islands and do to Japan what they did to the Easter European countries that were absorbed by the Soviet Union after that war.  Moving along, the Korean War was next on the President’s list, but he apparently doesn’t know that the war isn’t technically over yet – North and South Korea are still technically still going on because a peace treaty has never been worked out to actually end it.  Even mentioning the Vietnam War was dumb; since we definitely lost that war and left South Vietnam to deal with the fallout when we gave up and left.  Afghanistan was notably not mentioned, since we obviously lost that war too; and it was hypocritical for Iraq to get mentioned after President Trump has spent more than a decade declaring that former Presidents should never have started that war in the first place while now claiming it a ‘success’ for our military.  How is that working out for us now as half of the Iraqi militias are now happily joining in to fight against us in support of Iran?

Okay, that’s enough of the history lies recap – though it is also funny that our President actually seems to believe that he will achieve his so-called goals in under two months now even as he spoke of those other wars in terms of years while not at all mentioning the cost of those wars in terms of lives lost and destroyed or all of the destruction on both sides of those conflicts.  The threats of worse to come in the next few weeks was likely real-enough, but then that will just make everything that has happened so far that much worse.

We’re going to stop there, but stay tuned for our next report; since we are going to write about war costs and have a little rant about that too as our leaders are talking about approving an additional tw0-hundred billion dollars of debt to pay for this war and all of the losses that will need to be replaced over the next few years or more.  Ethan and I need to get some sleep now, though, so that’s all for this report.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - March 31, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 14^th Birthday, Brandon Green!

Our last day of March has been very busy, and while we offered Brandon best wishes and a little birthday gift and card; we left it up to his family and friends to handle making his special day a good one.  Weather-wise, we’ve had a mixed bag with some rain, thunderstorms, and breaks in the weather that were still warm with a high this afternoon that still hit the low-eighties.  That didn’t matter that much to us because we needed to be indoors most of the time for school, band practice, and our final teen praise team practice ahead of the Easter sunrise service.

There wasn’t any special news from our academic adventures – though there was one test and we turned in a project ahead of the deadline on Thursday.  The school band practice was good; we had a break for dinner with Mom and Dad and a bit of studying; and then we moved on to the church for the teen praise team practice.  That was a full rehearsal for the sunrise service, so we had all of the teens involved for the music, skits, and everything else; we where there for more than two hours; and then we came home to a work and Magi lesson session in the office with Mom and Dad.  Time phasing allowed us to get about three hours of work done; and now we’re wrapping up our day and the month with the bedtime computing and twin chat fun.

While we’d like to take another night off from world news, we should report that the Iran war idiocy continues; and the politicians are continuing the nonsense on all fronts.  Today, our own leaders managed to do everything from claim victory to insult western allies for refusing to join the war effort and ‘save themselves’ from the economic harm that we’ve instigated by attacking Iran.  President Trump is also declaring that the Gulf nations will be required to pay ‘our’ costs for the war; claims that ‘we’ are going to take over the Iranian oil and gas fields and infrastructure; and they will all allow that to happen because he will force them to do it.  Ethan and I are sure that this war will not end that way, but then we are still most-worried about having Israeli or American leaders will get desperate and escalate to nuclear war.  If that happens, it will not matter if they use tactical nukes or larger ordinance.

That’s too-dark for any night, but before we wrap this up we want to cover some economic issues that continue to escalate around the world.  While market prices are heavily skewed by attempts to control them, actual economics on the ground are starting to happen.  Jet fuel prices are in the news as actual shortages show up in different countries, and price isn’t really the issue – it is having jet fuel available at any price in some countries.  That might not seem like a big deal, but beyond rising costs for all of those military operations in the Middle East; the rest of the world has more to worry about as we head toward summer and travel seasons that will definitely be affected if prices rise to the point that commercial flying for things like vacations become unaffordable.  Add in extra costs for freight flights; and that will damage industries from online retail to hotels and tourism.  Other stories include shortages for fertilizer that will cause problems for crops through the rest of the year; since that could affect crop yields through the summer and fall and then cause food shortages for a year or more.  There are other raw products that will soon cause issues for production of everything from computer chips to plastic garbage bags, but energy shortages are also starting to require some countries to ration various fuels and natural gas.  That will eventually require the need for some high energy use manufacturing to slow down or stop production either due to shortages or because costs rise so high that they can’t make money on their products or stay competitive.  Our point here is that even if the war stopped tomorrow – and not as an April Fool’s Day joke; it will take months or more than a year just to recover from the damage already being done.  That isn’t new news for our journals, but it deserves repeating; since every day that the war continues; the worse the damage will be to the world economy.

Ethan and I are ready to get some sleep; so that’s all for this update and we’ll be back with our next report next month.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - March 30, 2026

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 31^st Birthday, Jake Stone!

Cassie and Michael helped out with his special day – including taking their kids for a sleepover tonight, but we weren’t involved in the dinner or party at the Inn and pub; and left it up to Jake’s family and friends to help him out with an awesome day.  Mother Nature obviously loves him too; since she gave him a sunny day with an afternoon high that hit eighty-eight!

While Jake may have been the main recipient of that gift; the rest of us were happy to enjoy the sun and warm weather too.  We got to have extra time outdoors at school; biked and played with our friends after school; dinner was for four and grilled after we got home; and then it was time for another work evening in the office that included a Magi lesson and work on family business and charity projects.  Ethan and I had fun with all of that; followed up the time-phased work with bath or Jacuzzi time; and now we’re winding down fast with the usual computer checks and twin chat.

We’ve decided not to get into another major war report tonight.  The horrors continue on all fronts; peace is nowhere in sight; and escalations and threats continue to roll on with no signs of better choices on the horizon.  I’m seriously tempted to start a rant anyway, but there is sure to be more bad news to write about tomorrow – and every day until the war ends; so Ethan wins and we are going to head off to sleep now and stay happier after another really good day here in our blessedly-peaceful little corner of the world.

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