Dragons and Cheese

Well, we're one month into 2021, and in most respects, life doesn't look much different than it did 31 days ago.  COVID-19 and freezing weather still keep us at home most of the time, we're still homeschooling kids who love math and hate writing, and it's still socially taboo to hug people you don't live with.  A couple things do look different for our family though. (OK three, if you count my DIY haircut yesterday.)

First, I have suddenly developed a surprising fascination with cheese.  Maybe it's because sampling new cheese is an easy way to add variety to a life that feels rather repetitive lately.  Whatever the reason, I find it amusing that we have about ten different kinds of cheese in our fridge at the moment, and my family, who hadn't tried anything more exotic than Parmesan before last month, is now debating whether they prefer Gouda or Gruyere.

We usually break out the cheese knife on a day when I go to Trader Joe's and come home with a baguette, but I've also been tinkering with a simple bread recipe at home lately, so we can have bread and cheese any day we want to.  Incidentally, one of the homemade loaves in the photo above is missing a portion because we used it for our home sacrament meeting this morning.  It feels like such an honor to see bread that I made being used for a sacred ordinance.

The other thing that is different lately is that we've really gotten into Dungeons and Dragons.  We've had family DnD sessions at least once a week lately, and we're thinking of sharing an adventure with a couple friends from church next month.  Joy has especially loved delving into the lore, rules, monsters, and anything else she can learn about DnD.  She is our family consultant when we're working on creating new characters.

Joy recently tried leading an adventure she'd prepared, but quickly pulled the plug on it because it wasn't working as well as she envisioned.  I've led an adventure as well (and I'm working on two more!), and I can attest that it's not nearly as easy as good Dungeon Masters make it look.  You have to keep track of the game's mechanics (which I still don't know very well), narrate in an engaging way, and mentally rework your story every time a player does something you weren't expecting.  I find it exhausting, but also exhilarating to bring a story to life and share it with my family.  I'm curious to know how Joy's story would have played out, and I kind of hope she'll give it another try someday, but hey . . . 

. . . no pressure.