Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 12, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 12^th Birthday, Zack!

Before we get going on the rest of our report, we want to mention that Zack has been in fine form all weekend and has had a bit too much of his pranks and practical jokes kind of fun that he has been growing out of over the past year or two; and that has been occasionally annoying for us.  He has also led extra fun related to his twelfth birthday on the twelfth – though we’re not sure why he thinks that is a milestone when that happens for everyone sometime between the first and thirty-first birthdays with the exceptions for the February twenty-ninth babies!  Ehlana thinks that we should have messed with Zack with that exception, but even when he is at his most-annoying; I expect that our cousin could figure out the impossible math that proves that exception! ;^)

As for our news, we had a blast with Naomi and the Haunted Harmonies during our set at the festival dance last night; and we would like to mention that Sophia and Aaron were especially-amazing on their violins including with a minutes-long fiddling duel that amazed everyone at the festival within range of hearing them play!  We offered a mix of dance tunes and ballads; played both of our latest, non-Christmas recordings; and even sold quite a few digital songs and albums thanks to Spinners and the booth that they had set up for the festival.  We loved all of the dancing and fun we had during the rest of the dance after we’d packed up our gear and loaded it into Dad’s truck – though we still had to do the unloading work later.  That didn’t keep us from staying at the dance until around eleven o’clock and then doing one more round of thrill rides before leaving the festival; and that’s why it was past-midnight before four of us got back to Cassie and Michael’s house after dropping off our instruments to three homes.  Sophia and Aaron were invited to stay with us again too, but opted to do their own thing that we know was still a co-ed sleepover that they didn’t want best friends around to share!  That is different for Ehlana and me with our favorite cuddle buddies, but we don’t need to write about that tonight; and we had fun too with the bedtime chat that Cassie and Michael did with us and then the co-ed nap time that followed soon after that.

Our top news for today is that Mom and Dad are home from Arizona; and they were home in time to share most of Zack’s afternoon birthday adventures at the festival.  They missed out on our morning Tai Chi by the river and breakfast for six, but then we rushed that a bit; since four of us needed to be at the park early to help with the set-up for the church service.  We’re still junior members of the teen praise team, so most of our musical contributions are still in the background, but we did still lead for one of the praise songs; and we are very good at contributing the strongest harmonies and playing instruments when we take turns to do that too.  The service was awesome with a great turnout on a sunny morning that quickly warmed up into the seventies by the end of the service.  Pastor John had a fun, harvest-themed message; and then his congregation was set free to enjoy the final day of the festival.

We needed to help with packing up the gear that needed to go back to the church; we helped with that delivery too; and then we had lunch at the park and did a last tour of the display pavilions and checked out the booths selling everything from produce to crafts and art before our first round of thrill rides of the day.  Mom and Dad reunited with us in the midway; joined in on the fun; and we spent about half of that time near Zack, Eli, and the rest of their buddies because that is what some of our favorite parents and Cassie and Michael were doing too.  There was a time limit for that fun because Aunt Leanne had booked Zack’s birthday dinner for the early buffet at the Inn so that it didn’t get in the way of the usual full-house they have at the Inn for the late buffet on festival weekends that is mostly for the workers and volunteers as a thank-you for their efforts.  We could have gone to that buffet too thanks to our gig at the dance, but we were good with attending Zack’s birthday dinner and then spending the rest of the evening with Mom and Dad.

Miranda and Stephanie put Zack’s party in the river-view small dining room; and we had a major gang of family and friends with us for the amazing buffet meal.  The highlights included gifts for Zack and the rest of the usual birthday-themed fun, but we also stayed on the sidelines and helped with the next-gen kids – including Jake and Stephanie’s kids; since they were unofficially with Cassie and Michael for that meal.  There was a time limit because of the late buffet, and Aunt Leanne kept Zack on-time despite some of his last few attempts at the wrong kinds of humor, so we managed to get all of that fun fit into an hour and a half; and then we headed for our homes.  Cassie and Michael kept their niece and nephews with them when they all came home with us; Mom and Dad had story time for us with news from their adventures in Arizona; and then Cassie and Michael took the kids to Jake and Stephanie’s home to get them ready for bed and take care of them until their parents could get home from the Inn.

Our day wasn’t done then – Dad had some work he needed to do to get ready for his Monday appointments, so Mom did a Magi lesson with us and we did some time-phased family business and charity work.  We eventually headed upstairs for bath or Jacuzzi time; and now we’re winding down fast toward nap time with the usual twin chat and bedtime computing.  While we could take another break from doing a world news report; we’re going to ignore that temptation and include at least a minimal weekend update.

Let’s begin this world news report with the latest round of European plans to steal frozen Russian assets and give those hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine.  We can’t begin to over-state how dumb this idea is, but they’ll likely do it eventually; and then find out that the rest of the world sill no-longer trust holding foreign exchange funds anywhere in Europe anymore once this precedent is set by those leaders.  The stupid continues with ongoing talks about allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russia when everyone knows that they can’t do that without basically everything being done by the United States or NATO forces; and we’ve previously mentioned that doing this would risk a major escalation or even a nuclear war.  The fighting and destruction is already horrendous; and nobody should want to have that kind of destruction and death expand beyond the Ukraine borders.

We aren’t sure whether anything on the ground is getting better for the Palestinians as the latest deal and peace plan is supposed to be happening; since there are conflicting reports that include continuing Israeli attacks on groups of Palestinians and we aren’t seeing any improvement for desperately-needed food, water, and all essential supplies.  There is still tough talk about Iran too; so that ‘war’ that President Trump ended might not really be over at all.  New to the conflict scene, there are reports of border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan – something that we find surprising after all of the help that Pakistan gave to Bin Laden and the Taliban while the United States was at war with them and occupying Afghanistan.  There is no information yet on what the clashes were about; so we’ll keep you posted and hope that we aren’t seeing the start of yet another war.  Finally, there continues to be a lot of talk about regime change and a war with Venezuela; that is yet another terrible idea; and we’ll hope that it doesn’t happen when we’re talking about a country that is larger and more-populated than Afghanistan; and we all know how that war ended for us!  Do we really want to spend trillions more to accomplish nothing in Venezuela too?  We’ll hope for better here too; and expect our leaders to do the wrong thing yet again.

Fortunately for our future readers, we’ve had enough of this mini-rant; so that’s all for this report.  Our fall festival weekend has been amazing, and while the coming week will be quieter by comparison; we expect the fall and Halloween fun to continue; so stay tuned to read all about our ongoing adventures – and we’ll also have daily updates for Cassie and Michael as they head out on their fall trip to the South Pacific!  That really is all for tonight and we need to get some sleep soon; so we’re out of here and off to dreamland.

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 11, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 3^rd Birthday, Hannah Sinclair!

We’ve actually spent some time with Hannah today because her parents and brother brought her here to have her party at the festival with a couple of friends and other Johnson clan family; and they are staying the night at one of the family cottages.  Before we get to the rest of the news for today-so-far; let’s cover the rest of our story from Friday.

First up, we won the football game over Hillcrest, and that was good news, but our defense was more than a bit deficient – or both offenses were just that good since the score was seventy to fifty-four!  Ehlana wants me to include that I earned four of our ten touchdowns and Aiden and Aaron had two each, and we did all play well, but the real difference for the game last night was that Hillcrest settled for four field goals to go with six touchdowns and basically ran out of time as we traded scoring drives all night.  It was also a long game thanks to all of those scoring drives and time between possession changes; so the fans really got their entertainment value too.  That is true for the cheer squad sidelines and half-time fun; our favorite cheerleaders earned a lot of attention for their routines and amazing tricks; and their Halloween-themed half-time routine was a big hit too.

Thanks to the long game and time needed to pack up and load the bus and other vehicles, it was past-eleven before we hit the road for home and after one o’clock before we met up with the girls at Aiden’s house.  We still had a snack and some co-ed cuddle and chat time while listening to music videos, but then we crashed and napped for the few hours we had left before needing to get started again this morning.

As noted yesterday, Cassie and Michael hosted a gang of next-gen kids while we were busy anyway, but they added in some help from Brianna and Faith; so they had quite a gang outside for Tai Chi by the river that we joined them for before splitting up for separate breakfasts.  We also fed Hailey and Leah; and then we got busy with some yard chores – just the basics instead of another full fall clean-up.  We stayed together and worked at multiple homes, but still managed to get done, cleaned up and over to the park before noon and we have been playing since then.  Sophia and Aaron didn’t stay with us all of the time this afternoon because they needed to spend time with their own families and other friends, but we crossed paths a few times in the midway and went on a couple of rides together too.  The group we were with around lunchtime opted to snack and still go on rides, so we mostly shared fries and other treats while in lines or walking between rides and still managed to devour a fair bit of food.  We only watched part of one stage show this afternoon and only played a few games while spending most of our time with the thrill rides.  That worked for us because now we’re at home grabbing our band gear and getting changed for playing our set at the dance and then staying for the rest of the dance with our dates.  We have driver support and Dad’s truck for our gear with Aiden up first for the pick-ups to get his drum set.  By the time we get to the park; we’ll be able to set up on the main stage; grab some dinner; and then get started on our set that’ll be for the first hour and change of the dance.  We’ll let you know how that goes for us with the next report, but that does pretty much bring us up to now and we do need to get guitars and Ehlana’s keyboard and gear outside and ready to load up soon; so let’s wrap this up.

The weather has been awesome for the festival with lots of sun and a high in the mid-seventies – and it is forecast to be even-warmer tomorrow!  We’ll enjoy everything when that does happen for us compared to colder, wetter festival weekends, but we should also mention that there are record numbers of visitors so far this weekend too.  We should also report that Zack is having a self-declared weekend birthday party, and in addition to hanging out with his friends all day; he’s hosting a major sleepover and probable all-night gaming session at his house tonight instead of for his actual birthday tomorrow.  We haven’t heard for sure, but will predict that Brianna will stay anywhere else tonight!

On the world news front, our President is escalating tariffs again with plans to impose one-hundred percent tariffs on China starting November First – a certain path to economic chaos for the world – and for our country; since China is not going to destroy the relationship it has with Russia to sell more to consumers in our country.  To be blunt, our leaders and advisors are apparently arithmetically-challenged; since they don’t seem capable of understanding that comparatively-inexpensive, abundant energy from Russia is necessary for China’s manufacturing juggernaut and economy, and as their partnership grows and they develop new deals with other countries; they won’t need our consumers at all within another decade or two!  Let’s also mention that the fighting in Ukraine is escalating yet again – especially with the air attacks on both sides, and we really don’t want to think about what winter will be like for a lot of Ukrainians if they have limited capacity to heat homes or even keep the lights on now that Russian military is focusing on destroying energy and rail infrastructure.  The peace talks for Israel and Gaza have continued so far, and we will hope for better, but expect the worst from Israeli leaders; since the language for the ‘new’ peace plan doesn’t actually seem to lead to anything permanent or hopeful for the Palestinians and is really just an admission of surrender for Hamas and a return to an even-worse open air prison for the surviving Palestinians to what they had before the war started – and that had already been atrocious!

Ehlana and I really need to get happy and ready to share our music with our family, friends, and everyone else at the festival tonight; so that’s all for this report.

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 10, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Day One of the fall festival has been amazing!  We had some overnight rain, but that was cleared out before morning Tai Chi that was by the river and with extra exercise buddies; we had a hot breakfast and helped with the work on both sides of that meal; and then we headed to school for long-enough to do the usual home room stuff and then head to the park and festival.  Ehlana and I were ‘officially’ on dates today; stayed together most of the time – along with Sophia and Aaron; and had a blast whether checking out the pavilions filled with everything from art to all of the various contest entries to the shows and games to the midway thrill rides.  As always, we should thank BMR Labs and the other businesses that make it possible to have better thrill rides that would normally be affordable for a small town festival, and while we do eventually get our fill of those extreme rides; that didn’t happen today – and won’t; since we’re writing this update while stopping in at our home for the week to pack overnight bags before we head to the school ahead of our trip to Hillcrest and another away game.  Ehlana and Naomi will be going with Sophia and her Mom today, and they will be more-comfortable than I will be on the bus, but we also all still have the one-and-a-half hour trip each way; so we won’t get home until sometime around when the festival will end for the day anyway and don’t expect to have a chance to go back there until tomorrow morning – or afternoon; since we do need to get some chores done before we can get back to the festival fun.

We need to get going soon, but before we do that, we should include a quick update from the rest of our Thursday.  Emma’s birthday dinner was an adventure and fun, but short for us too; since we pretty much ate; had a bit of play time with Emma; and then headed to the Inn for game night – along with most of the party guests except for a few of Emma’s friends and some parents and grandparents.  Naomi and I won the junior gaming title for the week and that was a bonus to go with all of the fun we had with our family and friends; and then we went home with Cassie and Michael – and with Sophia and Aaron.  We still had studying to do because we didn’t want to leave it until later this weekend and then we had a long chat and visit with Cassie and Michael before eventually getting around to our co-ed sleepover time.  Let’s also mention that Cassie and Michael helped out with a group of next-gen kids at the festival today through volunteering at KidZone.  They are also keeping some of those kids overnight tonight to help their parents and while we’re going to be busy with football anyway.  Aiden is going to host our group of six tonight after the game, but that is mostly because we’ll be late getting home and will pretty much just be ready to go to sleep by the time we do get home.  We’ll share those highlights with you in our next report, but that is all we have for our own news of the day.

We don’t have time for a major world news update, but want to mention that a ceasefire in Gaza may happen – though we’ll see whether that lasts for long; and there is supposed to be a hostage and prisoner release and exchange happening by early next week.  That will be good news if it happens, but then a lot more needs to be done from keeping the remaining Palestinians in Gaza from starving to death and beyond that to offering them a true future that is more than ‘allowing’ them to survive.

It really is time for us to go, and we don’t want to get into a rant about anything on such a good day; so that’s it for today and we are out of here and back to the festival weekend and football adventures.

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 9, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

Happy 3^rd Birthday, Emma Jacobs!

Our cousin’s special day has been going on without us so far today, but we are about to change that as we head over to her house for the birthday dinner that we’ll be a bit late for thanks to our football and cheer squad practices.  We’ve still managed to have a good day-so-far without any major birthday adventures.  Tai Chi and breakfast with Cassie and Michael were great; our academic play time was good and not at all newsworthy; and then our last practices ahead of our football game tomorrow night were challenging and productive.  Yes, I mean that for Ehlana’s practice too; since her squad is taking their sidelines ‘game’ up a notch or two with all-new tricks.

We’re only ‘home’ at Cassie and Michael’s house now to change and get ready for the rest of the day, and in addition to Emma’s birthday dinner; we’ll be busy for the rest of the night with game night at the Inn and a co-ed sleepover with our four best friends as they stay with us ahead of the school day at the fall festival.  It is already past-time for us to be at that party, though, and Cassie and Michael are already there; so that’s all for this update.  Stay tuned; since we are definitely going to have fun over the next three days!

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

Ethan's and Ehlana's Journals - October 8, 2025

 

Ethan and Ehlana:

We only have one more school day to go as we wind down toward nap time tonight; so we’re looking ahead to the fall festival more than anything else.  Our day has been fairly-uneventful even while we’ve had fun from the Tai Chi by the river and breakfast with Cassie and Michael start through to now.  The academic adventures were good and not newsworthy; and we had fun with our football or cheer squad practices that kept us busy until dinnertime.  Naomi hosted that meal and our evening study session for our usual group of six.  We had a last band practice ahead of the dance on Saturday along with the studying and we enjoyed some quiet teen time too, but then Ehlana and I went back to Cassie and Michael’s after walking Aiden home along the way; and then we did some more work with them before splitting up and heading for our rooms.

I’m with Ehlana for our usual computer checks and twin chat, but we’re keeping it short tonight because we don’t expect to get a lot of sleep over the rest of the week or weekend.  We write about the current conflicts and related stories on a regular basis, but tonight we are going to comment on economic issues.  A headline-grabbing story from today was about gold topping four-thousand dollars an ounce – a doubling from just a couple of years ago; and something that is notable in comparison to all major world currencies.  We aren’t offering investment advice to near or distant-future readers of our journals, but we do want to compare that change in valuation to other economic issues that are getting attention – like spiking debt levels and debt management costs on everyone that is a huge drag on the potential for global prosperity.  Ehlana and I have written about the actual costs of war and militaries in general, and that is equally-true for debt expenses that mostly go to enrich the debt holders with little downstream advantages to the general population of the world.  That isn’t and can’t be a blanket statement, but we aren’t going to get into a commentary on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ debt.

We are stating that most of our world leaders are making serious mistakes running extreme budget deficits that continually add to economic chaos, and for one example, our country is basically borrowing the money needed to service our federal debt and the military budget – around two trillion dollars.  Most of those expenses are unproductive and gets wasted; and will continue because the bankers and military industrial complex will not give up on getting their share of those trillions of dollars.  There have been lots of stories floating around recently about ending the drug war by following the money and stopping that instead of the drugs; yet that same strategy might do far more good if applied to these problems – including ending the wars and other conflicts!

Well, we still ended up merging those stories, but we’ve also had enough for tonight; so that’s all for this update.

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