First Post in my Blog!

First thing is probably to tell a bit about who I am and what I do. I'm a list sort of person, so I thought I'd start with a list.

1. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
My conversion story is short and sweet. I was born a Methodist to a Baptist father and a Catholic mother. Throughout my childhood, I took a keen interest in the different churches in my city and often with with friends to other churches, but nothing seemed to really fit. Everyone seemed to be saying "I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and you're going to go to Hell if you don't believe in exactly what I do." Yikes! In college I explored different religions. Through this I learned quite a lot, but I kept comming back to the bone deep knowledge that Christianity is closest to the truth, even if there's not a whole truth.
After a particularly bad breakup with a boyfriend, I joined an anime club as a way to get back into social life without much commitment. Turned out that I was only one of two women there and the other one was already attached! Well so much for low stress! Sure enough I started dating one of the guys there, who later introduced me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Just over a year later, he also became my husband. :)
This decision to join this particular church was a fast one, but by no means a snap decision. I was never told that I'll go to Hell if I don't join. I was never told that everyone else is wrong either. In fact I learned that other denominations, and all other religions for that matter, just didn't have the complete gospel. This doesn't make them wrong or evil, just incomplete. So what makes this church complete? The presence of a living prophet.
Whoa, slow down! That part did take a while to get used to, and it was actually the thing that took the longest to come to terms with through my conversion. What gave me a testimony of living prophets was looking through General Conference reports that can be found on the church website. These living prophets tell people how to prepare for times to come. For example: the Family: A Proclamation to the World came not very long before divorce rates began to soar worldwide. Many other examples can be found, but what was clear was that these people had a lot more spiritual guidance from having prophets.
I was also given a Book of Mormon early on. At first I approached it with the same skepticism that I had approached all religious literature, however the more I read it the more I realized that this Book's sole purpose was to testify of Christ and to bring people closer to the scriptures. The Book of Mormon did not replace the Bible, rather it was another doorway for people to come to read the Bible and understand it more fully.
My testimony of the Church is still growing little by little every day, and not a day goes by that I have regretted this decision.

2. I am a wife.
As I said before, I met my wonderful husband in an anime club in college. I don't like using real names online, so I'll refer to him by his screen name, Steelblaidd. He was (and in many ways still is) a bit of a geek. That was actually a good thing since I was still pretty shy of dating since I had gone through a very rocky break-up just two months before. He started showing up everywhere! Just happened to be in the same lunch hall I was eating in. Just happened to be in the library when I was. Just happened to be walking along the same sidewalk I was on my way to classes. We have many of the same interests: gaming, anime, science fiction, books, and religion, which gave us plenty to talk about and get to know each other. Steelblaidd is by far the most kind, gentle, and intelligent person I know. He cooks too!
We were married in the Houston Texas Temple in 2002, had two renaissance themed receptions and a ring ceremony. Steelblaidd's grandparents gave us a honeymoon to Sedona, Arizona. :D

3. I am a mommy.
I love my baby! Our munchkin (as I usually refer to him online) has just turned three. He is so much fun to watch as he learns and grows each day. I often feel like I'm reliving my childhood through his eyes as I watch him explore things that are so common to me. I also spend all day with the munchkin and Steelblaidd works, so sometimes I do get a bit more mommy time than I would like, but it's all part of the job.
Right now we're working on talking and potty training. Our munchkin has a severe speech delay which until just yesterday was thought to be caused by autism. Imagine how relieved we were yesterday to hear that our baby isn't autistic! Lately his interests include pretending to be a kitty, playing with legos, swords (takes after his parents!), and staying up as late as he can get away with.

4. I am a gamer.
I play fantasy related games of all sorts, but my focus is on d20 systems. One of the ways my husband and I courted was through pen and paper roleplaying games. Since we have just moved across the country, we don't currently have a roleplaying group, but we hope to rectify that problem sometime soon. That is if we can ever find the time!
I also have spent a lot of time online in various MMORPGs, ranging to strict play by post games to more casual ones such as Dead Awaken, Urban Dead, Vampires, and Kingdom of Loathing. The online system I spent the most time with was a Neverwinter Nights persistent world called Wheel of Time - The True Source, which was based on the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. I was very involved with True Source since it launched Beta in Oct. 2004 until December 2006. During that time I contributed as a beta tester, faction leader, forums administrator, builder, briefly updates coordinator, continuity checker, and overall quality control. The quality of role play with that group of people was unmatched by anything I have ever played. The time has come to move on to other things, and I hope I can find another group as fun and talented as I have played with at True Source.

5. I am a Geocacher.
This is a relatively new hobby for us. We stumbled upon it a few months after moving across the nation to Iowa, and it's been a great way for us to get to know our new home.
The basic idea of it is a person will hide a small container, called a cache, containing a logbook, pencil, and sometimes a few inexpensive trade items. Then that person posts the coordinates online at the geocaching website. Other registered players (costs nothing to register) can get the coordinates of the cache, plug it into their hand held GPS receiver, and go out and find the cache. Sounds easy, but the hardest part is usually the last thirty feet or so, since these things can be very well hidden. We've found almost fifty caches in and around our city, and these caches often takes us to some very beautiful areas that we would have never known about otherwise. It's the perfect hobby for us since we're technology geeks and outdoor enthusiasts, and geocaching is a perfect blend of the two.

I'm many other things, but those five things are what I am most in this moment. I'll make no promises about how often I post to this blog, since I tend to be rather inconsistent on that score. However, I'll try to keep things cheerful and interesting.