Happy Birthday Xander!!!

Xander is 6 years old today!  So far he has enjoyed his first week of Kindergarten and Zach and I are taking a treat to his class in a little bit so that he can celebrate with his class.  I can't believe that six years ago today I gave birth to my first child and he was a happy and healthy little boy.  Kids really do grow up way too fast.

Brand new baby

Waiting for the bus

DAY 24 — WHATEVER TICKLES YOUR FANCY

I painted my living room a burnt orange color - also known as Pumpkin Bar.  It took me 4 days and 4 gallons of paint.  I love it!

DAY 23 — A YOUTUBE VIDEO

It's an oldie but a goodie.  Candy Mountain, Charlie!!!!

DAY 22 — A WEBSITE

I don't frequent a lot of websites but the ones I do visit, I visit a lot.  I know the meme is for A website but here are several sites that I couldn't live without.

Pathfinder SRD - This website has everything in the player handbook & the bestiary.  It also has a bunch of the 3.5 modules that have been updated to the 3.75 rule set.  This site comes in very handy when we are playing D&D because it's much faster to just point & click for my info, even though I have the PHB.  I think the website is even more valuable for DM's because you have all the information in one place, rather than having to flip through 2 or 3 books to find it.

The Realm of Covetedness - This is Rachel's blog & it's how I get my Rachel fix when I can't visit her, which is most of the time.  She needs to blog more...and maybe post some nudes.

Facebook - a good majority of my free time is spent on Facebook, when I am not taking care of  my kids or playing D&D.  I like being able to see what my family and acquaintances are up to & letting them know what I'm doing without having to contact them all individually.  It really takes the socialization out of socializing and I'm ok with that.  I can choose what I want to respond to and what I want to ignore - PERFECT!  It also has a lot of stupid games that are quite easy to become addicted to, like Bejeweled Blitz and FrontierVille.  Which, if you're on Facebook and you use FrontierVille, hit me up 'cause I need some neighbors.

Robot Unicorn Attack - Rachel's daughter had this link posted on her Facebook a few weeks ago and I friggin' LOVE it.  Not only do you get to play a Robot Unicorn that has special rainbow sparkle powers but there is also an Erasure song playing throughout the game.  That's a WIN in my book any day of the week!

Blip.fm - This is a cool site that lets you create your own "radio station" and you can share what you are listening to via Facebook & Twitter updates.  You can also subscribe to other "DJs" and it's a great way to discover new music.  This is my DJ page.

City Of The Spider Queen - Game #1

Lulabelle has been unable to visit Candlekeep for some time now.  While I find the peace & quite of the tower enjoyable and most conducive to pursuing my studies, I find that I have missed her stories.  I was just thinking about Lulabelle & her companion, Abraxus, this evening when I received this note.  Most likely, it is a hoax perpetrated by one of my colleagues here at the tower.  However, in the instance that Lulabelle really did send this note, I have included it in my manuscript and I will confirm the story when she next visits me.  I have made no changes to the original letter & my comments are in italics.

Deer Mizter Wizurd...is that yur name?  I wunder whut yur name really is.... (My name is Garold Lightbody).  I'm sory that I havnt saw you in a while.  I have been buzy 'venturing with Abraxsus.  We got a house in Daggerfalls and I planted alot of pirty flowers that come up in whatever color that I wnat the to be.  I have a lot of pink flowers because pink is my favorite color but I put some blue ones and green ones and white ones in there 'coz I think Abraxus would like thiem that color.  I want to paint the house to match my flowers but Abaxus said no cause we have to go save a dragon from some virsions.  (I think that Lulabelle means that they have to same the virgins from being eaten by the dragon).

Andy (Randal Morn) asked us to go find the other dragon cause it's eating the townspeole (towns people) and he sent his distant cosin with us, although he was in the same room as his cosin so he cna't be that distant....his name is Sanvonam...no wait...it's Vasnoman....or maybe it was Navosam...anyway you prolly already know him coz he prolly owes you moeny too. (I can't say that I know this...err...distant cousin of Randal Morn).  I think Andy (Randal Morn) sent him with us coz he wanted him to be et by the dragon so he must be a virsion, although there was this lady who siad that Nomenclature (Navosam?) was the daddy of her behbeh and the priest cast a spell on him but he wasn't the daddy and the preist told her to find someone who had money to be the baby's dad.

Oh! and thers this place called the Kaotic Tower (Chaotic Tower?) that esploeds all the time and then it fixes itself and it goes from fire to ice to lighting and it doesw it all day long...like clock wurk...Vasdeferenz (Navosam?) said that he'd been in the tower before while is esploded but Abraxus won't let me go in it.  He's no fun sometimez....although he did ask me to scout a head when we went to the dragon's cave.  I didnt' see just heads, though.  There were lots of guys in black robes with white skullz & an elf lady was chained up and a white dragon and a skeleton man!  and I did real good and counted them all and went back & told Abraxus about it.

The skeleton man...Abraxus called him a Lick (Lich?)...that remind me...Abraxus told me that the other dragon was going to freeze me & lick me like a fiary flavored possicle...but it never did...anyway the Lick was trying to get the other dragon to drink a potion to live forever (possibly a group from the Cult of the Dragon?) but the darogn was ignorming him and it looked like it was hurt real bad cause it's wing was broken and it looked like someone was trying to eat it's face off.  Or her face off.  Her name was...Ixnod...and she was a white dragon.  She threw the elf lady down in a big whole but abraxus saved her and then I made friends with the dragon and she ate the Lick but I don't think he tasted like a fairy flavored possicle.

I talked to Ixnod and she was gonna help us get Big Jerk Face....that's Drunkandrows (Dracandros?) cause it's his fault that she was hurt cause BIG JERK FACE was controlling another dragon and the other dragon hurt ixnod and cursed her and she couldn't heal.  But then Abraxus started talking smack talk to Ixnod and made her made and she killed herself.  I'm not sure why.

Oh...and where was Nambola (Navosam?) this hole time?  Just strolling around the cave like a big dummy! I had to make him betr but I couldn['t wish for him to stop selling people because the elf lady said it's not right to change peo[ple ...I'm not sure what she meant because Samaowhen (Navosam?) could really use an attitude adjustment!  Or a good personal financial adviser.

So then we went back & told Andy that the dragon was dead and he told us taht somebody had seen dark elves coming out of some crypts and he told us to go talk to his contact and her name was Ivy and she was a drow but she wasn't the one that was coming out of the crypts and she liekd cats and she liked Abraxus and she was digging in the dirt without any clothes on cause she liked to feel the sun on her skin and she asked us what we know about drow and I don't know much but they like spiders and they are icky but sometimes cuddly.

Ok.  I'm tired now.

Bye.

DAY 21 — A RECIPE

I've never actually made this but Rob was talking about making it so I thought I'd look up the recipe. I think I'm going to make it for the MOMS Club Fall Party in October. It looks so DISGUSTING!!!

KITTY LITTER CAKE

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package German chocolate cake mix
• 1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix
• 2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
• 1 (12 ounce) package vanilla sandwich cookies
• 3 drops green food coloring
• 1 (12 ounce) package tootsie rolls

DIRECTIONS:

1. Prepare cake mixes and bake according to package directions (any size pan).
2. Prepare pudding according to package directions and chill until ready to assemble.
3. Crumble sandwich cookies in small batches in a food processor, scraping often. Set aside all but 1/4 cup. To the 1/4 cup add a few drops of green food coloring and mix.
4. When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble them into a large bowl. Toss with 1/2 of the remaining cookie crumbs, and the chilled pudding. You probably won't need all of the pudding, you want the cake to be just moist, not soggy.
5. Line kitty litter box with the kitty litter liner. Put cake mixture into box.
6. Put half of the unwrapped tootsie rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat until softened. Shape the ends so that they are no longer blunt, and curve the tootsie rolls slightly. Bury tootsie rolls randomly in the cake and sprinkle with half of the remaining cookie crumbs. Sprinkle a small amount of the green colored cookie crumbs lightly over the top.
7. Heat 3 or 4 of the tootsie rolls in the microwave until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle lightly with some of the green cookie crumbs. Heat the remaining tootsie rolls until pliable and shape as before. Spread all but one randomly over top of cake mixture. Sprinkle with any remaining cookie crumbs. Hang the remaining tootsie roll over side of litter box and sprinkle with a few green cookie crumbs. Serve with the pooper scooper for a gross Halloween dessert.

DAY 20 — A HOBBY OF YOURS

This one is easy!  Of course, my all time favorite hobby is (drum roll please!) D&D!!!  D&D, also known as Dungeons & Dragons (or Dorks & Dice), is a great way for me to combine my love of fantasy with my great imagination without the hassle of actually having to write a story.  It's also a fun time that I get to spend with my friends, being silly - or sometimes serious, but mostly silly in my case.

There are a lot of misconceptions about D&D and a lot of stereotypes that don't apply to our group.  For instance, we don't really believe that we're Elf Knights Crusading for the One True King and Slaying Demons In The Name Of The Righteous Path.  We are not a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) group and we don't dress up or run around waving swords at one another.  Also, we are not devil worshipers or members of a satanic cult.  Well, our characters might be but I, Katie, am not a satanist in real life.  And while any mundane who sat in on one of our D&D sessions would immediately be overwhelmed by the sound of clattering dice & the amount of jargon we use, my group really is not that geeky.

And for those mundies who don't know what D&D is or how it's played basically we pick a class, i.e. wizard, fighter, thief, or cleric; we pick a race, i.e. elf, dwarf, gnome, or human; and we roll up our stats, i.e. strength, dexterity, wisdom, or charisma.  Some groups roll up their stats differently - we either roll 4d6 and discard the lowest die, adding the 3 highest together or we roll 2d6 and add 6 to the final result.  By the way, a d6 is a 6-sided die, a d20 is a die with 20 sides.  Depending on what race you are, there is a table in the player's handbook that will tell you what to add to your stats - these are called modifiers.  There are also tables that tell you what bonuses to add to your saves, attack & damage rolls, & how many skill points per level you get based on what class you are.

There are several versions of D&D, such as the Pathfinder 3.75 rule set  & 4.0.  My group uses the Pathfinder rules, while 4.0 is considered the "official" D&D rule set.  And even though two different groups might be using the same rule set, the game will be completely different between the 2 groups because of something called house rules.  Sometimes there will be a rule in the book that isn't clarified or it's just plain stupid so the DM (the Dungeon Master) will modify the rule to work for his group the way he thinks it should.  And sometimes groups will make up their own rules and not even use the current versions or use a mish mash of previous editions.

The DM is responsible for telling the story and for running the NPC's (non-player characters) and sometimes the PC's (player characters) mess everything up by not going in the direction that the DM had envisioned.  Some DM's are able to work with what the PC's give them and they will change the direction of their story and other DM's will get pissed off and kill everyone, also known as a TPK (total party kill).  Of course, most of the time the PC's are responsible for the TPK by acting stupidly or just not rolling well.

The game is really a lot more in depth & my quick description really does it no justice but it's fun and I love it.  I have been playing with the same D&D group for about 10 years now and the great thing about being in the same group for that long is that you grow comfortable with the other people.  When I first started playing D&D with these guys, I was so nervous and embarrassed that I would hardly say anything!  I still get kind of nervous whenever my character is put in any sort of "leadership" position because I don't want to be responsible for other PC deaths but for the most part, I'm a lot more confident in my role playing abilities. 

Kindergarten Blues

Xander started Kindergarten today.  I took him to school so that I could take some pictures but being the crappy photographer that I am, they turned out blurry.  He's in a half-day Kindergarten class and he's going in the morning.  There are 27 kids in his class because no one signed up for the PM session.  The school principle called all of the parents and asked us to consider sending some of our kids to the PM class at a different elementary school - which is about 20 minutes away from my house.  We all told him no.  The teacher was hired about 4 days before school started.  I'm nervous about the quality of his education this year but the teacher said that if all 27 kids show up on the first day then the school will hire an assistant for her.  That's still a lot of kids in one class.

I asked Xander if he was excited about starting Kindergarten and he said that he was.  He does know one of the kids in his class because the little boy was in his Pre-K class last year.  Xander was fine with me taking  pictures until we got into the classroom and then he was done with it.  He let me take a picture of him with his teacher after I promised that it was the last one.  And contrary to what everyone said, I did not cry when I dropped him off at school because I'm actually glad that he's starting school.  I think that the boys and I definitely need some structure and it's hard to provide that in the summer when we don't have any obligations.

Xander & Ms. Holbert

DAY 19 — A TALENT OF YOURS

I don't know that I really have a talent for anything in particular.  I like to do a lot of things but I don't know that I do any of them well because I tend to loose interest in things easily.  I guess if there is one thing that I am "talented" at, it's probably my knack for saying stupid shit at the just the right time.  It mostly happens when I'm playing D&D.

Here are a few examples:

Rob - I want to roll to say something hateful in Dark Speech. rolls the D20 & gets a 1 (which is an automatic failure)
Me - You just said, "Bunnies playing in the snow!"

Me - So what is it that your character does for a living?
Al - He's a practitioner of the Necromantic Arts.
Me - Is that anything like painting?

Randy - You must be vigilant!  They may assault us!
Me - Why would they throw salt at us?

DAY 18 — WHATEVER TICKLES YOUR FANCY

Wow.  I'm actually posting this one on the correct day.  I guess I will talk about my weekend & other stuff.  We had a birthday party for the boys on the 14th of August - one of the hottest days of the year.  My dad's new wife has a big-ass bouncy house and she brought it over for the boys and all of the other kids to play in.  They also had their brand new swing set that my mom had bought them for their birthday (Aaron got it finished that morning).  We also set up a little swimming pool for the kids to jump in and I think that they all had a good time.

I made the boys a cake but it fell apart when I was getting it out of the pan.  I had made the cake the night before and it stuck to the bottom of the dish and ended up in pieces on the counter so I had to go to Marsh to buy a new cake.  I was afraid that they would say that I have to pre-order the cake but they had one that was perfect for the boys & they even wrote "Happy Birthday Zach & Xander" on it and I only had to wait for a few minutes for them to do it.

CAKE FAIL!!!

The bakery cake

My mother-in-law offered to watch the boys that evening so that Aaron & I could go out.  We went to an Italian place in Pendleton called Daddio's for dinner.  I ordered the lasagna and it tasted like the Stouffer's boxed lasagna that costs $3.99 for 2 lbs. and Aaron said that his fettucini alfredo was overcooked but that the chicken in it was good.  Then we drove to Anderson and bought a matress for the top bunk of Xander's bed (since the nephews were spending the night we thought it might be useful to finally put a matress up there) and then we went to the mall where I found some Lillith Saintcrow books for $1 a piece.  We also went to The Dollar Tree, where I ooohed & aaahhhhed over all of the Halloween decorations that they have out & to The Danger Room, Anderson's only game store, where I drooled all over the D&D books & the Magic cards.

We also drove around Anderson to try to find a place that would do piercings.  I was going to get the cartiledge of my right ear repierced at the mall but apparently the little piercing booths haven't been piercing cartiledge with a gun for several years now and you have to go to a tattoo/piercing shop to do it.  So then I decided to get my nose repierced but we couldn't find a place to do it.  The one shop that I walked into only did tattoos but my neighbor knows of a shop that does it for $20 so I'm going there tomorrow to get my nose redone.

We had to go to Troy, Ohio on Sunday for our nephews' birthday party and it was at some place called Jumpy's.  The kids had a great time but we were only there for 2 hours and the girls that were running the place were very prompt about kicking us out right at 1:30 PM.  We decided to stop at K-Mart on the way to my mother-in[-law's to see if they had any Ohio St. jerseys for the boys & ended up doing all of their school shopping.  We headed to my mother-in-law's for a few hours and had dinner with her and then we came home.  I begged them to have the nephew's birthday party on a seperate weekend next year because this was just too much for one weekend.

It was a good thing that we did their school shopping on Sunday because I ended up babysitting for about an hour today.  I also cleaned the walls in the living room & took down all of the pictures and tapped off the edges so that I can start to paint.  I finally settled on Pumpkin Bar and it's a dark orangish-reddish color.  It's going to be very pretty by the time I get it all done and I can't wait to finish painting the living room.  It'll be like having fall in my living room all year round.

Xander starts Kindergarten tomorrow so we took him out for ice cream tonight and got his clothes ready for school in the morning.  He says that he's very excited to start school but we'll see what he says when I get him up at 7 AM.

Speaking of getting up early, I better go to bed so that I'm not too cranky, either.