Tonight was open house at the girls' school. The campus full of families and kids excited to show off all the neat projects they've been working on.
Walking across the blacktop thinking there's nowhere to go if someone started shooting. Walking into the girls' classrooms thinking there's nowhere to hide if someone stood at the windows.
Looking around the room and noticing that the teacher has the blinds drawn and a poster blocking the door's window--almost certainly a security measure to protect her students. Her students. My daughter. Our world.
Looking at the artwork on the walls and recognizing that a classroom just like this one is still covered in blood from the bodies of the children murdered there two days ago.
An open house to celebrate their school year.
A unspoken vigil for the victims that didn't get to finish theirs.
I'm so tired of the number of children that don't get to come home from school.
I'm so tired of the suffering of the parents who will never see their kids grow up.
I'm so tired of police officers who hide and wait while children are massacred.
I'm so tired of people insisting that if we just had more guns this wouldn't happen.
I'm so tired of politicians using any excuse to do nothing to stop this from happening.
I'm so tired of cowards who love their guns more than children.
I'm so tired of hearing that the 2nd Amendment is sacred.
I'm so tired of this country's completely broken relationship with firearms.
I'm so tired of this bullshit.
--
Heather is in 4th grade this year. The thought of her in a classroom being shot while we are outside screaming at police to do something is too much. I'm just so tired.
At the end of March we started playing the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set which contains 5 pre-generated characters, a slimmed-down rule book, and the adventure "The Lost Mine of Phandelver." Heather is playing as Zulak, a human fighter. Jess and Corinne are playing Riswynn, a dwarf cleric. And our friends are Zorien, another human fighter; Ara, an elf wizard; and Reedawn, a halfling rogue. I'm the Dungeon Master.
To make the experience more engaging and fun I used Hero Forge to design and purchase custom miniatures which match each character's detail. Each miniature has the character name, real name, and the year on the bottom and they'll keep them as souvenirs when we're done. I hadn't purchased anything from Hero Forge before and wasn't sure what to expect. I ordered the "standard" quality miniatures and I'm really pleased with them. If this is the "standard" quality, the high-quality/high-resolution versions must be really impressive.
Left to right: Ara, Riswynn, Zorien, Reedawn, Zulak
Each miniature was $20. Which is a little pricey if you were trying to make an army, but is quite reasonable for a one-off special character at this quality level and customizability (and they are crazily customizable). The Hero Forge UI for customizing the characters is an impressive feat by itself and that you can then have that custom character 3-D printed and shipped to you is really cool.
I probably won't paint them--maybe I'll get around to the one's for Heather and Corinne--but I suggested perhaps we could have a painting party during which each person could choose 2 or 3 parts of the character to paint and provide some pop. I don't know if that will happen or not though.
I'm quite pleased with them and now I can happily and heartily recommend Hero Forge for custom miniatures.
After returning from our impromptu trip to Utah we poured our remaining energy into getting ready for Christmas morning.
As evening fell we drank hot chocolate, ate cheese fondue, read stories, the girls danced while Jess sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas," they opened their presents for each other, and then we ushered them off to bed.
Family mugs from last Christmas.
After several hours of wrapping presents and rearranging furniture the house was ready for Christmas morning and Jess and I were ready to catch a few hours of sleep in the meantime.
Kitties get their own stocking.
Christmas morning the girls, amazingly, were not up until ~6:45. And then the party began. I set up a video call with Mom and Mollie so they could join our festivities since Mom's house was rather quiet that morning.
The girls are tall enough to take our family picture standing up!
The cats are very concerned about what's happening.
Corinne was dismayed to find that the cats had popped her ball while we were gone. Santa procured a replacement with less than 24 hours to go.
Narwhal Earrings!
Fight Evil. Read Books.
A coloring book _with_ information about birds!
And the following several days have been filled with recuperating, game playing, house cleaning, book reading, and wishing that vacation would last a little longer.
After talking to Mom on Sat. Dec. 18 I floated the idea to Jess about us packing up the van and driving to Utah to visit with Erin and Dad for a few days while Erin's kids were with their father for the first part of winter break. Our friend Sarah agreed to take care of the kitties and we engaged a crash program for packing up. The girls had already gone to bed so we got up when they did at 6am the next morning and told them of our sudden plans. They were very excited, until they realized they would miss an art class and a gymnastics class, then they were upset, but we got through it.
So we ate breakfast, got dressed, and finished piling our stuff and ourselves into the van and pulled out of the driveway at about 8:00. We got around the corner and down the street when the tire-pressure monitoring alert came on. So I stopped and measured the tire pressure and found all four tires were about 8 PSI low. So, back to the house to run the air compressor and fill them up. THEN we were pulling out of the driveway again at about 8:30.
We drove and we drove and we drove. The girls watched Christmas specials on DVD in the back. Jess and I listened to podcasts in the front. And we drove some more. I-80 across the Sierra-Nevadas was clear as it hadn't had a storm in a couple of weeks, but one was coming and we knew we'd need to take the Las Vegas route to get home later in the week.
We drove through a McDonald's in Sparks, NV to grab some lunch and eat on the go. We stopped for a fresh tank of gas in Winnemucca, NV and, ugh, more McDonald's for dinner in Wendover (in which your choices are McDonald's or Burger King). Then we drove some more and arrived at Erin's house at ~8:30pm after 11 hours of traveling.
SURPRISE!
We hadn't told anyone we were coming, so we really wanted to arrive before it got late.
So we arrived Sunday night and stayed for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
The girls got to play in some leftover snow:
And we enjoyed a sunset:
We cooked some food, played some games, and helped out with tasks around the house.
We also made a trip down to Mapleton to visit with Christopher-and-Jenny's family for a few hours:
And on Thursday we loaded back up into the van and headed home. Donner Pass on I-80 was expected to get something like 30 inches of snow that day and night so we headed south through Las Vegas. A lunch at Culver's in St. George, a whole lot of rain, dinner from Panda Express and Wetzel's Pretzels in Barstow, a lot more rain, some patches of really dense fog, and about 16 hours later we were home. Exhausted, but home. It was after midnight so already Christmas Eve.
We had learned during lunch that Dad had fallen chasing Erin's dog (which had taken off with the bag of rolls I made) and cut his head open and so they were in urgent care waiting for stitches. Which was really just the cherry on top of the super crappy several weeks of life at Erin's house.
After getting some sleep we began the whirlwind process of getting ready for Christmas with grocery shopping, house cleaning, baking, cutting a lot of things from the "to do" list, and then a whole lot of wrapping.
