Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 6th Anniversary, Chris and Sadie Rice!
We haven’t been involved in the anniversary adventures today, but Violet, Dillon, and their kids headed up to Woodvale early this morning; and are spending the weekend there. Ethan and I want to include a pregnancy update for Sadie too while they are in our thoughts today. She’s around five months along now; due in early October; and is doing well – if not very excited about experiencing most of her third trimester during the hottest months of summer. Chris and her family and friends are going to take care of her, though, so there will be parts of the rest of the year that could be great too – especially the amazing new baby parts of the story!
Let’s cover the baseball news next. The co-ed game last night was fun, but not of the winning kind for our team as the Witch Falls Wild lost convincingly to Sheldon’s Stampede by a score of ten-to-four. I’ll add that we lost the cheer squad battle on the sidelines too and report that the Sheldon clan is working on their cheer squad game – though that might be affected by the latest, younger additions to their team and growing fan base! Our family teams had better luck today. Brianna and Faith are on the same team again this year and Brianna is apparently going to be their primary pitcher – or should be if the game today was any indication. The Sapphire Scions only managed one run against Brianna and her Real Estate Rebels while Brianna and Faith led the way to earning seven runs for the win. For the record, no, Brianna is not using any Magi abilities to boost her game play, but she has inherited some serious math and physics skills along with the athletic abilities to play the game. Parts of that are true for all Magi, but here in our time, Brianna is one of the few Magi in our generation that can successfully juggle that kind of attention with playing great but not impossibly-well. I’ll add that this isn’t the same as Mom’s perfect record at the pub for billiards – and she did win a match last night – because Mom never goes out of her way to get that kind of attention and prefers to be brilliant and amazing from the sidelines. Leah, Hailey, and their Med Center Mist team won too – eleven-to-four over the Witch Falls Fog. That game was closer for the first few innings, but the top news for them was likely the rain not because they got wet, but because it came while the Mist was at bat and the Fog gave up four runs because of wet gear related errors. Mother Nature does not prefer mist over fog, but that didn’t get in the way of the jokes around the ball diamond that we only heard about because we weren’t there for that part of the game.
That does bring us up to closer to now, but our Saturday news isn’t that exciting because we’ve mostly worked on chores and have wrapped them up now because we’re into more rain now that will be with us through until the wee hours of Sunday morning. Ethan and I had a very busy morning from Tai Chi by the river and post-camping babysitting and breakfast through all of the usual weekend chores. The tents and gear needed to be packed up too so we did that around all of the rest of the breakfast work and eventually returning next-gen kids to their parents or others. Naomi and Aiden worked with us at all of our homes and two cottages; and we really only took one break to catch the end of Brianna and Faith’s game; the start of Leah and Hailey’s game; and to have a mini-subs and sides picnic lunch at the park with the family and friends that were there with us. We added in a quick cool-down swim before getting back to work, but it was the lawn mowing, gardening, and the rest that kept us busy – even when we got rained on a bit during that afternoon shower.
The only other story we still need to cover for this update is our babysitting and camping and end-of-exams celebration fun after that co-ed game. While many of our favorite parents went to the pub for Martin’s birthday party, we had a gang of kids and teens with us; we opted for outdoor movies that we started as soon as we had everything set up with snacks, drinks, and bed-ready next-gen kids. The first movie was toddler-rated and animated; the intermission included time to get those kids into sleeping bags and at least pretending to be sleeping; and then the second movie was an action-thriller that the guys picked and was pretty good for the cinematics if not for the plot and dialogue. The girls had not expected the guys to agree to a chick flick, but it might be nice to have them occasionally choose something that doesn’t include fights, blowing stuff up, or aliens! We stayed up too late – including the teen chat time by the river after the movies; there weren’t any co-ed naps that we’ll admit to for any friends; and we were segregated last night too thanks to the junior tent buddies we were babysitting.
Our plans for the rest of today include hosting Naomi and Aiden and spending time with Mom and Dad ahead of Dad’s trip to Crystal Springs next week. We need to go and help Mom with making dinner soon, so we’ll save all of that news for our next report; and wrap this up with a quick world news update.
There hasn’t been much actual news so far today, so maybe there actually is some diplomacy happening in the background for the Iran war, but we aren’t holding our breath; since both sides still seem to be far apart for demands to even solidify a ceasefire. If anything, each side is demanding more than ever before; so we don’t see how those issues will be resolved without some serious compromises and intermediaries stepping up to offer trust-building assistance. While Iran and the United States haven’t continued their exchanges of missiles and drones; Israel is continuing attacks in Lebanon and the Palestinians are still being decimated in their ever-shrinking outdoor prison.
While nothing has changed yet on the ground in the Middle East; what is happening in Ukraine continues to get uglier. Russian forces are pushing hard on at least a half-dozen significant places along the front lines; things are getting really bad for the Ukrainian troops being surrounded and cut off from supplies and reinforcements. While those horrors continue in Ukraine, European leaders continue to beat drums of war against Russia, and we can only watch on in disgust; since even thinking about starting another world war after all of the times that Europe has been destroyed in past centuries going back thousands of years is insane – especially when attempting to start that war from a position of weakness. Maybe we’ll get into that line of thought in a near-future update, but it is time for us to go now; so that’s all for this report.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
