Ehlana and Ethan:
Now that we’re actually back at school for our Grade Eight year; let’s start by reporting that Uncle Nick is our teacher this year – along with the usual specialty teachers for music, Spanish, and phys-ed. Naomi is happy to have Mary Draper for her home room teacher; and she’ll be a favorite with all of her teachers – as always. We had an awesome day at school that Ethan might even remember after Naomi’s hugs and kisses that went along with his reaction to the outfit she chose for her first day of high school. Yes, Aiden was happy with how I looked today too, but then that’s true every day; and I rarely kiss him senseless!
Moving along, while we’ve enjoyed getting back to school where we’ll see most of our friends every week day; we are also starting to plan out our schedules too. Thanks to Naomi’s cheer squad practices, Ethan and I can play-work at the lab or archives while Aiden opted to help out at the bakery while the rest of us were busy. I should book some time at the bakery with Aiden and his family too, but maybe that will need to be a weekend thing; since we are going to be busier this fall than ever before; and I want to make my lab work more of a priority than I have in past school years. Ethan and I could only spend a couple of hours with our beakers or books, but we still got a fair bit done; and then we needed to get home for dinner with Mom, Dad, Cassie, Michael, and our grandparents. That meal was great; we took care of the clean-up with help from Michael; and then we moved into the living room for a future plans meeting.
There is an archive for our meetings; so we’ll only cover some favorite moments in our journal. First up for that, we love the update and plans over the coming year for building retirement homes and cottages. Grandma and Grandpa only have a few neighbors so far, but there will be a dozen or more by hear-end; and double that next year. The cottages are getting a lot of attention, but Mom and Dad remain the exception for home town buyers. Aunt Leanne has seen a lot of interest from summer campers and vacationers; and there has been interest from extended family and friends of locals – including from the Johnson clan. Aunt Leanne isn’t worried about the challenges that come with having seniors move to the retirement community when most of the vacated homes also work as starter or rental homes; and our family business has already bought some of those homes to help out with the transition.
Cassie and Michael had an extensive update for us from their summer trip; and their fall trip has been finalized for a tour of North African countries that they will be doing from east to west. There are serious problems in many African countries, but that is also where there is a lot of need for help; and we know that Cassie and Michael will take care of themselves. We discussed their travel plans for next year too, and while it really is going to take years for them to get to every country in the world; they are going to make progress with more multi-country trips. For next year, that is going to include visits to Mexico and Central America; a trip to central Africa, and a tour of some Asian countries. We discussed the need for an extended visit to India similar to their China visit, but that will likely be booked for twenty-twenty-six. We’ll keep you posted on their adventures; and wish that we could go along for some of them because they are getting to do amazing work! Sure, Ethan might want to spend all of his time in libraries and I’d be happy visiting the best labs in the world, but we could have fun visiting project sites and doing some quality sightseeing too!
While the start of the school year has already happened for most colleges, we discussed ongoing plans for current collegians and new plans are in place for the next groups of high school grads – including Naomi and Aaron. In their cases, they already know what they want to do when they grow up, so that isn’t a big deal, but being able to offer options to the rest of our local students is awesome – especially when it comes to making sure that every teen can go to college if they choose to do that and only need some financial support that we now provide through BMR labs and scholarships.
There are boring topics that need to be covered at our meetings for things like infrastructure, but we won’t get into the dirty details – especially when it comes to things like sewage treatment! We’re also taking a look at mid-term needs for more retail capacity, but will do more research; since there are so many factors involved in assessing those needs due to things like online shopping – even for a rural town where there are extra delivery costs. We’ll be leaving most of that for others to deal with – including local store owners; and will only keep you posted on any major changes or additions to our shopping options.
Our meeting wrapped up at ten-thirty; Ethan and I helped with the clean-up after our guests headed for their own homes; and we’ve been busy with our usual bedtime computing and twin chat fun. While we discussed highlights from the meeting, we also caught up with world news; and even did our own Hathorne Industries check. Let’s skip commentary on top news stories that are usually bad anyway; and we’ll only offer a few comments about the Hathornes. Gwyneth is currently at Princeton for her first year as a doctoral student, and while she was home for the Labor Day party at the Hathorne estate; that was a quick, round-trip visit because she’s also been busy at Princeton with the usual campus events and getting ready to be one of the top T.A.’s at the college. While she is going to be busy with school, we can also report that Philippe and Pamela have been assigned to other projects with senior managers – including Kellie and Gawain; and they will be traveling fairly-often in the Americas and Europe. We’ll hope for the best for them, but while we’re sure they are getting everything they want right now; Cassie’s former college classmates are also likely to eventually learn that the costs for those successes will be very high.
That isn’t a very happy note to wrap up on, but it is time for us to call it a night and get some sleep now; so that’s all for this update. Once we’re back to full power, we’ll get back to our back-to-school adventures; and we’ll have all of those stories for you sometime after we’ve finished living them!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
