Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 12/26/17> so the preacher said “the best laid plans of mice and men”

This hopefully will be my last post that has anything to do with Christmas and the Christmas season. To say that I would be" burned out" on Christmas would be a gross understatement of the facts. I’ve got a couple things left to do today that I didn’t mention in my “plans” but those things are of no big consequences in the grand scheme of things. They are so inconsequential that I will not even mention them; I’ll save you the boredom.

I feel though that I owe you a recap of Christmas with Sultnpapper since I drug you through the plans and what I expected to take place.

So let’s start with Christmas Eve; it turned out that the Sultnpapper clan wasn’t the only ones to boycott the traditional family celebration. As you know from a previous post, last year’s family “celebration” was more of a civil war or family feud than anything else, call it what you like. Well Beaudroxe and his wife showed up but his son Chester and his family opted out, good for them. I would like to say we had organized a boycott, but we didn’t, just intelligent people think alike. Another family that was absent was the wife’s cousin who also happened to be the singer I mentioned. He definitely would have good reason not to be there since the party was from 11:00 until 2:00 and he had to sing at the 2:00PM church service, and the church is about 45 minutes from where the party was being held. A convenient and plausible reason; but I suspect it wasn’t the primary reason.

You see, I never told you the story about my wife’s sister and how she sold her cousin out several years ago to People Magazine. Yes, he got married several years ago to some “pretty woman”, it took the whole world by surprise. It just so happened that someone couldn’t resist the temptation of a quick payday and sold some pictures of the wedding to People for a six figured sum of money. The bride looked so cute in that white dress and barefoot on the cover of People magazine. That someone caused a major disruption in the family that lasted for years, it was eventually forgiven, but I suspect that the trust has never been restored. So it would come as no surprise to me that him and his current wife would not attend, the same person might just snap a few pictures of their six month old twins and shop those around to some magazine. Like the old saying goes, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. So while the church conflict is plausible, so is the reason I just mentioned.

Speaking of church; the Sultnpapper clan broke tradition. We did not attend the early service as planned; we opted for the second service of the day. We just couldn’t get it all together and it was really just too damn early in the day to make it feel like Christmas Eve. It is no secret that hurricane Harvey caused major problems for this area that we live in, but I believe hurricane Harvey should be thanked for one thing that it caused. Our preacher has now been with the church for his third Christmas season, the first two Christmas Eve sermons we had to hear about his teenage years and some car story, same story both years. Well that all changed thanks to hurricane Harvey, now we got to hear about the 51 inches of water that Harvey brought to the inside of his family’s house and the new black lab puppy that got last week that they named “Harvey”. If I had to hear that teenage car story one more year I would have thought we were celebrating ground hog day not Christmas Eve, so thanks hurricane Harvey, not so much for the destruction, but at least for causing the preacher to have a distraction from his normal Christmas eve sermon.

The preacher mentioned that the “best laid plans of mice and men” and how they are subject to change. We’ll it couldn’t have been more appropriate for us since we had in fact changed our best laid plans and we were hearing it at the second service of the day, not our traditional first service. His sermon was well received by me; maybe we had been putting too much stock in keeping with firm plans and traditions. I am happy to report that one tradition that is important and was fulfilled was the German rendition of Silent Night by my wife’s cousin. Each year it brings tears to my eyes as he sings it, he had a very close relationship with his aunt, my mother in law, and I know that he is really singing it for her. He never sang that song in German until after she had passed away; I think it is his way of tying the church back to the original family that founded the church. He’s never said that, and I have never asked him; some things are just understood and to me that is one of those things.

One reason we pushed back the church service was because it was just going to put our Christmas Eve dinner plans back into an appropriate time frame for dinner. The two o’clock service would have us eating dinner just too early; if we had eaten that early we would have had to cook another meal later that evening instead of the late dessert that we planned. The Christmas cookies the kids and wife baked made the perfect late night dessert, nothing beats homemade cookies and hot chocolate milk in my book.

The dinner at our Italian place was as good if not better than expected; I liked the fact that it wasn’t crowded too. The place is big on trying to push a bottle of wine with your meal and we aren’t wine drinkers, that didn’t stop the oldest boy, who is too young to drink, from accepting a sample glass of the wine the waiter was pouring. I didn’t try any of it and the boy wasn’t impressed with it, so he says. The wife passed on the sample as well, had the guy been giving away Crown & Coke samples I know she would have been in on that, getting our group together is a task, and she is the one who ends up with that task, so a drink might have been in order.

We didn’t spend a lot of time looking at lights, we did make it to some of our favorite streets but the kids and the parents just wanted to get home and relax. So we cut the sightseeing of lights a little short and opted for some quality time playing the game of Life. I normally play to win any game I play, but not this time, the thing about being the first loser is that you can fall asleep first. I took advantage of losing quick and stretching out on the couch; wake me when you are done. The cookies and hot chocolate did me in fairly early and I wasn’t about to fight it.

Christmas morning and day had some highlights, the biggest being Shortie and her must have present that she knew she was not going to be getting, that FAO Schwarz bear. You remember that bear, the one that couldn’t be purchased for any price at the local store. The one that Mrs, Sultnpapper won on Thanksgiving day in the Black Friday early bird drawing, yes that bear. The bear was wrapped in a box that was four feet tall and pretty wide, he filled the whole box. Shortie was almost speechless when she unwrapped that bear, she had no idea that her mother had won that bear and it was a magical moment for all of us when Shortie realized what she had been given. She had already un-wrapped the small identical bear and was excited with it, so the “big daddy” bear was just the most exciting thing for her and us. She is one animated little girl, that is for sure. She was pretty worn out later in the day; I think the picture is evidence of that fact.

The youngest boy got his fishing stuff; the weather was a little cold for fishing so that didn’t happen. Maybe if the weather is better while I’m off this week we’ll get some in, but the forecast isn’t promising. The enchiladas are cooking as I am writing this so I can’t report on the quality of those, but they smell damn good right now. I probably will give a taste report further down in this blog, so don’t go away.

The home town NFL team is on the TV so this is a good time for me to write the daily dose, since NFL means “Not For me League”, as I have kicked them to the curb, is that national anthem still a controversy with them? Don’t bother to tell me, I really don’t care. I managed to get in and out of the 5:00PM Steem Poker League game pretty quick, just wasn’t into it like normally.

All in all this has been a pretty relaxing day, I haven’t had my nails painted yet, but the day isn’t over either. I never told you about our boxer puppy, she is ten months old and this was her first Christmas, she was pretty good about not screwing with wrapped presents under the tree, she is generally pretty curious, but we did keep a pretty good eye on her leading up to Christmas, the last thing we wanted or needed to do was have to re-wrap Christmas presents. She did get one package and with some help she managed to un-wrap it, so I hate to see what she thinks next year when the packages get placed under the tree, now that she has experienced the joy of opening presents.

I don’t know what it is about empty boxes that kids love so much but you always see the pictures or videos of expensive toys being placed aside and the kids playing with the boxes. Well, Shortie loves her big empty box that the big bear came in. She has played with it and in it a couple times on Christmas day, maybe next year we’ll just buy empty boxes and wrapping paper and call it good for the little one.

I am debating about including the video I shot at church, the Silent Night song being sung in German. The thing is, I don’t want people to think I am trying to use it to enhance the earnings of this post with it. If it is attached to this blog, all the author earnings will be donated by me to a charity on Steemit after I receive them, the video is not a high quality video, but the song is beautifully sung by the wife’s cousin and the choir. It was a spur of the moment thing to record it, and since we were at the back of the church you really can’t see him on the screen anyway. Yes, like normal we were just a couple minutes late for church, but it makes for a quick get away at the end of the services when you are the back of the church. If it is not included you can always go figure out what church we attend and watch the replay of the livestream service of Christmas Eve the church did, yes the church is high tech, we can even tithe online. Hint, the church was featured on the Today Show on NBC recently because of the work the church has done to help hurricane Harvey victims. ( I tried to upload it , but it didn’t work out, file was too big to send from my phone to my other phone , and I don’t know my damn Microsoft account password. ) Sorry, go check livestream if you want to hear it.

We will be going over to see the cousin and his family today, the 26th, got some presents for thing1 and thing 2, it is their first Christmas so we wanted to give them Christmas day without any unwanted interruptions. I hope others were as considerate, but I doubt it, knowing how people are now a days.

The Mexican fiesta, dinner, was delicious. The wife doesn’t have a drop a Mexican blood in her, but you would never know it from the quality of the Mexican food she cooks. I could just about live on chips and salsa if the whole truth be known. I think that might be one reason I wasn’t opposed to adopting a half Mexican child, I knew we would help him learn is heritage through the food of the Mexican people. The family photo does look a little awkward though, his jet black hair and dark complexion really stands out with the fair skinned, blonde hair blue eyed rest of the family. He truly has been a blessing to have; the doctors said the wife would never be able to have children. Never put full faith in what the doctors have to say, we have three natural born kids that according to the “expert doctors”, we would never be able to have. We put our trust and faith in a higher power than a few doctors who think they know everything.

Well it is getting late, need to get this wrapped up and delivered to you; I truly hope your day was as special as ours. So, for the final time this Christmas season, Merry Christmas from all of us in the Sultnpapper clan to you.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper

https://sola.ai/sultnpapper

Photos property of @sultnpapper