Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - September 30, 2022

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 35^th Birthday, Uncle Nick!

This is an early update because we’re going to be busy helping to celebrate Uncle Nick’s special day; and the rest of the news for the party and rest of our night can wait for tomorrow.

It was cool again this morning for Tai Chi by the river; it has warmed up into the mid-seventies now; and we had a pretty good day at school that included helping out with some birthday fun for our uncle.  Now we’re going to head over to Naomi’s house because her parents are hosting the birthday dinner and party for her uncle – with some back yard support from the Carringtons and Everetts for access to the river.  We’ll either be helping with the younger kids or the dinner prep work, but we’ll let you know how that goes for us with our next report.  For now, we really need to get going again – including hauling supplies there from our house; so we’re out of here!

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - September 29, 2022

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 22^nd Birthday, Michael!

As usual, while they’re away at school, our involvement in Michael’s special day only included sending a gift and having a breakfast video chat with him – and with Cassie, Rowen, and Tim.  It’s a school day for them too; so the only celebrations that might happen also won’t be anything we’ll write about here! ;^)

Moving along and going back a day to cover the news from Wednesday; our top story is still the second recording session.  We’re far from experts, but experience helped us to get more done last night.  We recorded four songs; and that’ll be it for our Halloween digital EP that will be ready for the fall festival.  One video might be ready too, but that’s still a ‘maybe’ for the festival; and will be ready for sure by mid-October.  The songs we recorded last night were ‘I Put a Spell on You’ from Hocus Pocus; Fifth Harmony’s ‘I’m in Love with a Monster’; ‘Fright Song’ from Monster High; and ‘Fearless’ from Girl vs. Monster.  We had a blast with all of the music fun; had extra spectators thanks to word getting around about our first recording session; and continued to impress our recording engineers.

That’s actually all we really need to mention from yesterday; since the rest of the day was uneventful by comparison – including our school adventures and after-school play time at the lab.  As for today, the school and lab fun was a near-repeat to yesterday; dinner with Mom and Dad was an easy-meal; and then game night at the Inn was the only real difference – though we had a lot of fun with that too!  Since getting home, Mom did a Magi lesson with us; we came upstairs for bath or Jacuzzi time; and now we’re winding down toward nap time with our usual bedtime twin chat and computing.

Heading into the last day of September, we’re obviously looking forward to all of the usual fun we’ll have in October, and since Mom and Dad’s anniversary will be one of the first fun events this weekend; we should probably wrap this up and get some sleep so that we’ll be ready for those adventures – and the fall clean-up work that will continue on Saturday too.

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - September 28, 2022

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 10^th Birthday, Valerie Malloy!

We’ve had an awesome day, but we’re also exhausted; so let’s make this a placeholder update; and we’ll do a double report tomorrow.

For a teaser – our adventure highlights of the day all came from our second recording session at the studio in the Galleria; and we’ll have a digital EP and possibly one video available in time for the fall festival – for Halloween for sure!

We’ll go nap now; and you can flip a digital page in our future to read all about that – and whatever we do tomorrow too!

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - September 27, 2022

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 17^th Birthday, Jaimie Proctor!

We talked with Jaimie this morning and sent a gift, but that was the extent of our birthday fun with her – and for the day.  We’ll offer more news if we get anything interesting for Jaimie’s special day; and likely have nothing else so far because she didn’t know about any surprises.

As for our day, it was around forty again this morning, so Tai Chi by the river was chilly; we had a hot breakfast to warm up from that workout; and then our school day was better as the day went along and the temperature climbed into the mid-seventies.  The warm-up didn’t convince us to play outdoors instead of at the lab or archives after school; we had fun with that; and then got home in time for dinner with Mom and Dad.  Naomi and Aiden came over for our band practice; Mom did a Magi lesson with all of us too; and that added up to the best parts of our day.

Naomi and Aiden had company for the walk to their homes; we took Silkie along; and then came home again with plans to work in the office for a while.  Mom only let us do that for an hour; she sent us upstairs after that; and now we’re winding down toward nap time.

That’s pretty much all we have for here at home; so the only thing we have left to mention is Hurricane Ian and the upcoming hit that is expected for Florida.  Mom is keeping an eye on it and is ready to direct help to wherever it will be needed.  We aren’t being fair with picking that storm to comment on in our journal; and maybe that’s the real reason for doing it – the fact that we haven’t written about other storms or natural disasters that have been happening and affecting other countries – like the hurricane that hit the east coast of Canada last weekend or the super-typhoon that pounded Japan and other countries.  There aren’t any excuses for why we don’t do that – it’s simply that we don’t want to focus on all of the bad happening in the world; and that’s what we’d be doing if we wrote about every disaster and war and more every night.

That isn’t where we want to take our thoughts on the way to dreamland, so that’s all for this report; and we’re out of here!

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - September 26, 2022

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Our top news of the day is our first studio recording session for Naomi and the Haunted Harmonies!  We only did a warm-up after school along with our homework; Naomi and Aiden stayed for dinner; and then we headed over to the Galleria and studio by six-thirty so that we could get our gear set up in the green screen studio.  Mom and Dad helped us out with that; Ian Ayres and Alexandria Reynolds showed us how to get everything plugged in and do a sound check; and then we played and had a blast for the next two hours.

Before we get into those details, let’s take a moment to mention more about Ian and Alexandria.  They are brother and sister – older siblings of Cassie and Michael’s friend, Lily; and they co-manage the Witch Falls Multimedia studio.  They are part of the group of owners that include members of their families too, but the studio was probably the most-expensive start-up in the Galleria; so it isn’t a surprise that it also needed multiple investors.  Tonight was the first time that we’ve spent a few hours with either of them; and we really liked them a lot and appreciated their talents for the tech side of music.

The music part of our adventures tonight was amazing – for everyone watching and listening from the control room!  We completed the recordings for three songs tonight.  Our version of Little Mix’s Black Magic was up first; Ian had us lay down the instrumentals first and then the vocals, but then we followed that up with a full-band recording for the video; and that’s when Ian found out that we could perform the song together so-well that putting together individual tracks wasn’t really any better.  After that, we did two recordings of our second song – ‘Remember Me This Way’ from the Casper movie; and the final song we got through tonight was our own Halloween medley that included lyrics that we wrote to make the songs hometown-personal.  Our medley came in at about six minutes, and we found out that focusing on recording for that long without distractions or making unwanted noises while also making smooth transitions between the different song clips is a real challenge.  We did three rounds of recording that medley; and then we were already past-time for our session; and needed to pack up and head for our homes.

Mom and Dad helped us with getting our gear home again; we took Silkie for a walk while seeing Naomi and Aiden to their homes; and then we’ve wrapped up our evening with a Magi lesson, some family business work, and bath or Jacuzzi time that we needed because the studio work was also fairly-warm.  It’s getting late, so we need to get some sleep too, but before we do that; let’s cover the rest of the news since our last report.

The anniversary buffet dinner at the Inn for Aiden’s parents was a blast last night; and then our sleepover with Naomi and Aiden included a band practice, movie-and-cuddle time, and the co-ed sofa sleepover.  Tai Chi by the river was cold because the temperature was only around forty degrees.  It warmed up to around seventy by this afternoon, but we really don’t want to see lows that close to freezing when the harvests are so important to all of the farmers right now.  Bad things can happen to crops at any time during the season, but most farmers will tell you that it hurts more to lose an entire season of work and expenses right at the end before the crops can be harvested.

We had fun at school, and the usual Monday gossip was part of that, but the only thing that Ehlana wants mentioned is that we’re already getting teen and tween drama related to the fall festival and dating.  For our friends, that’s a bigger deal for Naomi’s classmates than for ours, but we could have a new pairing or two in our class too as our friends are on the verge of crossing over!  Yes, I’ve already invited Naomi to go to the festival with me; Aiden and Ehlana will be together too; and we still think that it’s silly that Aiden and I get razzed about dating – though it is also obvious that the end to that problem is in sight.

That’s enough for tonight.  We have had an awesome day, and needed this time to wind down from the studio fun and excitement; that has tired us out; and now we’re ready to crash and nap for the rest of the night – so we will!

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