Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - September 25, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy 20^th Anniversary, Nathan and Hannah Draper – my future parent-in-laws! ;^)

Ethan and I need to get to the Inn to help with the set-up for the anniversary party, and this update is early because Aiden’s parents will be going away on a vacation; and Aiden will be with us while they are away.  We haven’t decided whether Naomi will be with us every night too, but we’ll keep you posted on that.  The dinner party at the Inn will be in the two smaller dining rooms; we need to help with decorating now; and the rest of our story for today can wait for our next update.

We have had a good day-so-far from Tai Chi by the river through our academic adventures to now; the fun level is going to be much-higher now; and we are really looking forward to the quality family-and-friends’ time.  Stay tuned or flip the digital page to read all about those adventures; and we’ll move on to living those stories right now.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - September 24, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

The damp and cool weather continued today, and while we didn’t mention it yesterday, we should mention at least once that our football team players do not really enjoy rainy workouts while Naomi is glad that her cheer squad captain has their practices indoors and dry when needed.  That was true for today with their lunchtime workout; and most kids and teens stayed indoors while at school – except for the kids that normally go home for their lunch breaks.

Ethan and I were indoors for pretty much everything except for the walks between home, school, and the lab.  Tai Chi was indoors; our academic adventures and band practice were all inside the school; and our evening play-working with our books or beakers at the lab where we plugged away at our favorite projects.  Dinner with Mom and Dad was a highlight of our day for entertainment for the teens in the house; and we don’t need to write about what was more-fun for our parents while they were kid-free for a few hours this evening.

You should not need a hint to guess that they did not spend the entire time working in the office! ;^)

Moving on from that semi-scary thought for the kids writing this update; Ethan and I got home a bit later than we should and I take the blame for that because I needed extra ‘real’ time to finish my experiment.  The good news is that I made some significant progress with my cancer research; and I am really, finally getting close to a cure.  That will be amazing and I am sure that I’ll get there, but for anyone reading this in our near-term future; keep in mind that finding my cures doesn’t lead to an immediate end to that disease.  Our cold cure products are continuing to grow rapidly; yet we’re still a decade or more from being able to produce the quantities needed to make enough to treat billions of people.  That is different from my cancer research, since basically everyone in the world has to deal with catching colds every year while a much-smaller percentage of the population gets cancer, but then what I’m working on will also be a more-intensive treatment that will require more resources for each patient.  We don’t need to get into the weeds on what that will eventually mean for those people; and my point is simply that this will be another cure that will take decades to have a world-wide impact.

I’ll keep you posted on my research progress, but since I’ve written about that; let’s add in an update for Ethan’s work.  His digital organization of our archives is really important for our Magi future – particularly when it comes to easily accessing information for training our fellow Magi, but he also needs to deal with protecting the physical books and documents – saving them where possible; and creating copies where that isn’t possible for various reasons.  He is currently spending at least some of his time every visit to his archives working on saving some of our oldest books and scrolls.  Yes, we have Grandpa Grant and Grandma Eleanor and others working on those projects too, but that will also be a never-ending job as there will always be a need to maintain our physical archives – even with the tech that has gone into protecting them.  Finally, I’ll also mention that our archives have many levels of protection – including being able to survive issues like power outages and natural disasters.  No, we don’t have any foreknowledge of anything happening around here anytime soon on a disaster scale, but we do get storms now and then; and the archives were built to survive for centuries or longer!

Okay, that’s enough for this report.  Our week is going to get busier from here; we need to rest up while we can; and then get back to living the adventures with our family and friends!

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - September 23, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

It is feeling like fall today with a high that only reached the mid-sixties and included showers off-and-on for most of the day.  Our academic adventures were all indoors, but Tai Chi was by the river and we had a hot breakfast with Mom and Dad before Ethan headed to school for his weight training workout.  The rain didn’t affect our after-school plans for the play-work at the lab or archives because we were going to do that anyway; and we got a lot done before heading home for a late dinner with Mom and Dad.  Ethan and I were on clean-up duty after that meal; we didn’t have any friends over tonight; and Mom only let us work in the office for an hour – including some time-phased work that still allowed us to get through everything on out charity to-do work for the day.

Since coming up to the third floor, Ethan and I have been winding down with the usual twin chat and computer checks, but we don’t want to comment on any news tonight because we’re choosing to wrap up our day with happy thoughts!  That’ll be a certainty for Ethan, since Naomi makes sure that he’s happy all of the time – even when we don’t spend a lot of time with her; and she’ll likely do a vid-chat with him soon since we didn’t get together tonight.  Aiden and I don’t do that as often, but then we are all connected through the links we share; so we usually are sharing happy thoughts most of the time anyway! ;^)

That’s all we have for today, so if our day hasn’t sounded exciting to our future readers; we’ll re-charge now and try to be more-interesting tomorrow!

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - September 22, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Happy Day-Late 25^th Birthday, Lucas Norton!

We actually were a day late with our in-person best wishes for Cassie’s brother-in-law, but we did take care of that this morning while at church; and we’ve heard that he had a happy day – though Lucas was also busy with farm harvest work and had to fit a bit of fun in around the farm and Pizzeria work.

Ethan and I might have had more fun last night with our friends, but Lucas and Rebecca did eventually get a kid-free night once she was finished at the Pizzeria, and we didn’t want details; so we could be wrong about that.  We did enjoy our dinner, video gaming, music, and movies with our friends; and the final movie was with the four best friends that stayed with us after the rest of our friends moved on to their own homes for the rest of the night.  Staying up too-late again for a second night in a row left us a bit tired this morning, but some Magi-powered healing helped out with that for all six teens in the house; and we were happy to help our friends with that ahead of Tai Chi by the river with Mom and Dad.  It was a bit damp and cooler this morning, but we went outside anyway; and then had a hot breakfast before eventually heading to church.  The service and Sunday school were awesome; Ethan and I were on our own for lunch with Mom and Dad; and then we headed for the lab or archives for the afternoon; since we’ve continued to get showers and a cooler day that had us choosing the indoor work-play.  We had fun with our books or beakers; got a fair bit done; and then we were home in time to help Mom with making dinner.  For the record, we’re cutting back on buffets at the Inn during the break between holidays; and we really shouldn’t enjoy all of that awesome food as often as we did for most of the summer.

Moving along, we enjoyed that meal with Mom and Dad; took care of the clean-up; and then we spent a couple of hours in the office doing a Magi lesson with Mom and some charity work.  Mom didn’t want us to work late, so even our time phasing was comparatively-short.  Bath or Jacuzzi time followed the work; and now we’re dealing with the usual bedtime computing and twin chat.

While commenting on world news always feels tough to us when so many stories are awful; let’s go ahead and mention a few of them tonight if for no other reason than to include current events issues in our journals.  The fighting in the Middle East is escalating; and Israeli leaders seem to be doing all they can to instigate a wider war as they continue to bomb and attack people in multiple countries with no apparent care for the consequences for anyone.  The Ukraine-Russia conflict is horrifying too, and we really don’t understand why the Ukrainian leaders can continue to force their army to not only fight but also follow insane strategies that are only helping them to lose the war more-quickly as their forces are being decimated.  They may be losing more than two thousand troops a day – either killed or injured; and they are well on the way to losing an entire generation of young men – a reality that will affect their country for decades to come if they still have a country left at all by the time there is an end to the conflict.

Since this is our year for learning about politics and our trip to Washington; let’s also mention the ongoing theatre that is our Presidential politics.  They suck!  Yes, that is not a helpful analysis while also being true, but since we also know that politics really have become nothing more than theatre meant to distract the masses from what is really important; and very little or nothing will change regardless of the candidate that becomes our next leader.  That’s cynical of us, but true; so we’ll continue to do what we can to help with our family business and charities while working around the annoyances that go along with most governments in the world.

That’s enough for tonight.  We need to catch up on our sleep to be ready for the last full-week of September; so we’re going to call it a night and head off to dreamland starting right now.

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

Ehlana's and Ethan's Journals - September 21, 2024

 

Ehlana and Ethan:

Our trip to Hillcrest did not end with a victory for our team, and while that wasn’t unexpected; the trip home wasn’t as much fun after watching our team lose a tough battle.  The forty-five to thirty-five score showed that both teams had some defense issues, and our team wasn’t out of the game at all, but Hillcrest did keep a lead for most of the game and we didn’t do better than a tie by the end of the first quarter.  Naomi still had fun with the cheerleading and Aaron earned some points on the field, but he’s hoping for better; and our team has more confidence this season and they are beginning to believe that they can compete and win against the other teams.  With two winds and two losses so far, maybe that confidence is a bit premature, but they are a better team this year; and we think that they will have a good season – possibly the best since Michael and Tim graduated from high school.

The extra drive time made for a late return to town; Sophia had three of us to help with getting ready for Aaron and Naomi to join us for the rest of the night once they were done at the school with returning their gear; and then Ryan picked up pizza for all of us to enjoy before he left us on our own for a late movie, teen chat, and cuddle time.  We had a lot of fun with our friends – even with the football loss; we stayed up too-late; and then we enjoyed the short co-ed nap time with our favorite cuddle buddies.

We didn’t have Mom and Dad with us for Tai Chi by the river; breakfast was hot and needed to get ready for a damp chores day; and then we got to work as a group on the yard work at all of the houses and cottages on our to-do list.  We’ve worked all day to now, and while we’ve had as much fun as possible with and around the work; there aren’t any stories interesting enough to write about for the lawn mowing, gardening, or the rest of our chores.  Ethan and I have gotten cleaned up; we’re getting the lounge ready to host a teen night; and we’ll keep at least two of those teens for a co-ed sleepover.  Mom needs us to help with making dinner for the gang that will be with us for the meal – along with some of their friends; so that’s all we have for today.  It might seem as though we’re busy with too much work lately, but now is the time for doing that before we get into the upcoming fall and Halloween adventures.  As always, we’ll keep you posted on all of those stories, so while you wait for them or read on in our future; we’ll get back to living those adventures with our family and friends.

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