Boxing Day

Boxing Day!  Boxing Day!
December 26 is Boxing Day

No punches were thrown.
No fighting was known.
No pugilists were seen, No referee to cry "Foul!"
We just put up our feet and threw in the towel.

With a nice covering of silent snow blanketing North Texas, and nothing in particular to do, my less than ambitious plans included nothing more than a dash to the woodpile.  The remains of our storm-broken peach tree and our surgically removed 40-foot Ash tree branch, were all cut into 30" logs and stacked next to the garage during the summer and autumn.  Now we were perfectly prepared for just such a lazy snow day as this.

Strike a match, set the fireplace ablaze, pull up a chair and do a little bit of reading.

A perfectly wonderful Boxing Day.

Stockings were hung with Care -
Now there sugary treats have been emptied
Candy for Breakfast!  It's Christmas!



The Wife steals Mark's gift of
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
to begin the Holiday reading



Toasting Tootsies

Strider keeps a lazy eye on all of the household inactivity

Thunder Snow Christmas Day

If anyone was listening for the sound of tiny hoofs landing on the roof that Christmas Night, what they likely heard instead was thunder and a healthy rain pelting the rooftop amidst an unlikely Yuletide thunderstorm.  The third-string TV meteorologist that had to work Christmas no doubt reported that this year Santa was bringing not just toys for the the good girls and boys, but also an arctic air mass - with the possibility of snow [White Christmas!?]

Indeed around mid-day the rain turned to large Texas-size snow flakes that floated and danced through the air.  Since the beginning of recorded weather events, this was only the second White Christmas, the first in 1937.

We sat by the fire and enjoyed the exchange of gifts until the striking of the clock chimes signaled mid-afternoon and time to prepare for Christmas Dinner.  We invited a couple of recently divorced friends over for the feast, Dianne whose daughter was off to California to visit her Dad and Jeff and old friend.  The feast featured salmon steaks, risotto, artichoke halves in garlic butter, cornmeal yeast rolls and a few bottles of wine followed by a hearty multi-sensory rum cake.

The snow ensconced yard was nice to view from the windows, though Inga was the only one intrigued enough to cover up in coat and boots and go out to romp upon the frozen landscape.

A Cool Yule!

Inga Silhouetted against the Shining Christmas Lights of Home

Inga ventures into the Winter Wonderland

Strider Loves Snow Days & Treats in his bowl

Inga discovers Reindeer Hoof Prints on the rooftops

Thunder Snow Christmas Morning

Christmas Eve Eleven PM Service at First Presbyterian features the reunion of young adults who have returned home for the holidays and who are encouraged to reunite in the chancel choir section and provide voice for the Christmas Eve anthems.  This year the choir director called a rehersal the week leading up to the Christmas Eve service, but once the dozen or so former members of the High School Choir gathered, he decided they would not reherse, just have dinner together and he'd select something with which they were familiar.  And so it came to pass, the "Youth Choir" (ages 18-27) sung their anthem in worship and exchanged updates on their lives in the 'real world'.

We lingered long past midnight visiting after we had extinguished our candles having sung Silent Night to close the service.  We drove home in two separate cars listening to the local Public Radio station's rebroadcast of the Christmas Blockbuster, an extended playing of ecclectic Christmas songs from Handel to the Kinks, interspersed with history and legends and factoids imbedded into the Christmas traditions.  One tradition is that if you feed your pets by candle light before sunrise in Christmas Day, your pet will behave well all year.  Grant fetched a Milkbone treat for Strider and lit a candle and after making the dog sit, he tossed him the treat while hold the burning candle in the otherwise darken kitchen.  What can be the harm?

Parents and children, enjoying the late Christmas Eve atmosphere stayed up until 2 AM laughing and chatting.   We were up late enough to hear the cold front roll down from Santa's North Pole, bring loud claps of thunder, bold flashes of lightning and tiny pecking sounds as the rain turned to ice and sleet striking the windows and leaves of the shrubbery.  We retired to bed beneath the welcomed and strange turn of weather with dreams of a White Christmas and a plan to rise late to find what Santa had hauled down the chimney.

Inga sips tea while viewing Mom open her gift

Grant styles his Oregon Ducks cap

Say "Cheese" = Sue gets a knowlege boost for her new hobby, cheese making

Inga is bemused by her brother's gift clue

Sue puzzles over the Suneson traditional rhyming gift clue



Grant receives a set of Nerf Rifles to bring on to campus -
 it seems to be all the rage this year



Inga suspiciously cracks open Steven Colbert's latest



Sue has a good time trying to get through all of that bubble wrap





Grant & Inga

Targets of Dad's new Camera

 

Inga studies rhyming clue after rattling a
mysterious box with her name on it



Inga connects the dots:
Windshield Ice Scraper, Tire Pressure Gauge & Key Ring
-It a new (used) Subaru gift from her Grandparents!!



Tree Hunt

It is now a fine family tradition.  The trip to Kadee Farms 60 miles from home to where all four Sunesons wander about the acreage, shouting to one another, "Come look at this one", then we all gather and circle the tree, debating.  
"It is not green enough."
"It looks sallow, I don't like it."
"It does not have a good top."
"Its branches are not well balanced."
"No, too scrawny."

All reasons to exercise a veto.  The process continues as someone else shouts, "Come look at this one!".  We circle again until it is unanimously agreed, this will be our tree.  We have been doing this for most of the past 18 years.  This year, Inga did not arrive into town until December 17, so selecting our tree on December 21st was cutting it pretty close to being able get a live tree before Kadee Farms closed for the season.

The hand saws that we pick up at the processing shack that are used to cut the tree are all very dull now.  I think next year we bring our own saw.  Once the tree has been felled, the tree-farm hands tie the netted tree to the rack on the roof of the 4Runner.  Then we head for the second half of the tradition, a Texas barbecue dinner.  In the beginning this meant a stop at the Double Deuce BBQ (home of the secret sloping bathroom).  The Double Deuce was razed some years ago, so we switched to Big Daddy's Texas Smoke House.  Last year I thought we found an upgrade at Big Baby's BBQ in Greenville, but this year Big Baby's was out of business, so it was back to Big Daddy's.  The tradition survives, it may change location and sauce, but the tradition must survive.

We ended up with a taller tree than usual, but what the heck, it's Christmas.  Once the living room furniture was rearranged, Grant and I balanced the tree in the stand and cut the netting off, allowing the branchs to unfurl and fill the room with evergreen holiday spirit and the scent of pine.  

Now it is Christmas!

Oh Christmas Tree!
Filling the house with the 'smell of Christmas'

Last Minute Addition
Live Tree Cut December 21

Christmas Holiday Begins

As for me, these things like Christmas now have a tendency to sneak up on me before I am really ready, much less having spent days or even weeks to anticipating the arrival of the Christmas Holiday as in bygone days.  Like the victim of a playful ambush with a packed snow ball rudely filling my ear - I think, "Where did that come from?"  Christmas already?

The kids now away at college look forward to arrival home and some sleep-in time and some of the vestiges of the old home routine and a reunion with High School friends.  Grant at the University of Missouri is on a semester system; finishes up with Fall semester finals mid-December, returns for Spring semester later part of January.  Inga at the University of Oregon is on a quarter system; finished finals early December but has classes begin for Winter quarter the very first week of January.

Grant texted he had plans to finish up his last final the morning of Wed. December 12 and drive home in 10 hours arriving late that night.  Sunday night the revised text message arrives, "B home 2morrow night".  

I just gotta ask, "What about your Sociology final on Wednesday morning?"  No problem, he can take the final online from his laptop computer at home (in bed), the professor will post it, it is an open-book final, an he can take it twice before Friday, and the Prof will use his best score to compute his semester grade.  So he and fellow classmate Sean (also roommate) use skype and work on the answers and submit their best answers (twice) from Texas and New Jersey.  I am thinking, "Back in my day a final exam was something that one ..." - but I don't tell him what I am thinking.  Life is just so cool and easy these days, no sense in bring up the analog past and mimeograph sheets and all of that pain.

Inga's Christmas travels and arrangements are a bit more complicated than her brother's.  She texted her preferred days of departure from Portland (she listed 3) and she definitely had to be back on January 6th, as classes begin the following day.  She and her two apartment mates, Alex and Jasmine (plus a couple of boyfriends) ended up at Jasmine's parent's beach house in Tillamook for a few days after the end of Fall Quarter.  She was ready to fly home after a week of down time in Oregon with friends.  It was my job, as holder of the credit card, to book the flights.  She had a $50 coupon (courtesy of United Airlines through Jasmine) which took me awhile to get the codes right before I booked a one-way flight to DFW Airport.  I did make the reservation to Texas; but I emailed her and told her I did not book a return flight since a Mayan friend of mine told me that the world was going to end on the 21st of December.  I thought maybe I should save the money that I would spend for a return flight to use instead on buying a generator or something handy like gold or maybe more stone to carve a few additional years onto the Mayan Calendar.  Then I remembered that Hollywood already made a movie about this Mayan end-of-the-world prophesy, so I figured if Hollywood scripted it, it can't be true.  So, I bought a return ticket a couple of days later.

Here it is January 6, the world looks about like it did on December 20th, for better or for worse; and Inga has texted that Sean, her faithful boyfriend was waiting for her with some surprises at the Portland airport when she landed.  For Inga, she will sleep in Eugene and have visions of sugar plums (or more likely lemon tea and a juicy steak) dancing in her head, then the sun will rise on another winter morning tomorrow and she will trundle off to class with the lights of Dallas far behind her.

And somewhere in the steamy jungles of Meso America, the chip-chip-chip of the Mayans are no doubt hard at work carving out another set of glyphs on a limestone wheel that will add another two millennia to our predicted earthly existence and yet many will turn their attention all too soon to the next doomsday thing and then fret.  As for me and my family, I think tonight I will plug in the Christmas Lights that adorn my eves and front bushes and hold to the hope that is heralded by this Christmas Season: God's Light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.  

These are tiding of great joy!  Peace on earth and good will toward men with whom He is well pleased.

Season of Light

The first Sunday of Advent, a time set aside for preparation and anticipation for the fulfillment of prophecies of hope and redemption.  Or, a time to get great deals on 42-inch flat screen TV's and great discounts on this year's playstation and an amalgam of assorted electronic time-wasters. 

Maybe one does not have to choose either/or from the above.  But I am secure with my current size (of TV) and perhaps I have wasted too much time in other frivolous ways to consider wasting more time in getting excited over electronic games.  For me, I prefer dedicating some time to a few of the Christmas traditions and hold my doubts about the worthiness of camping in a Wal-Mart parking lot to purchase a bigger TV.

This Advent Season began with a 73 degree day!  Perfect for putting on one of my Hawaiian shirts and stringing Christmas lights along the eves.  I am not oblivious to modern trends, trends that add plenty of glitz, easily set up with the speed of a blitz.  Namely, yard art Christmas decorations, lighted lawn ornaments and manufactured Christmas light nets that can be thrown over a tree or a bush and plugged in without hassle.

For me, I have not modernized our outdoor Christmas display, I like to think it is out of some great virtue that lighted eves have over the inflated, internally lit lawn displays - but I must admit, there is no such virtue in the more tedious decorations, just a reluctance on my part to spend additional money when I already have "perfectly fine" outdoor Christmas decorations.  Not a scrooge - but a prudent approach toward the seasonal festivities and festooning I tell myself.  On the other hand, our neighbors when I was a kid proudly claimed they had an unlit "Bah Humbug! House"; we at least make an effort.

Not only are my Christmas lights not modern, they date way back, almost to the days of the Magi. I think they can be traced at least to 1972, the year of Nixon's re-election and pre-dating the Arab oil embargo.  These C-9 class color Christmas bulbs are individually crafted and screwed into their own socket, where they shine forth for but a few days before they must be replaced.  These C-9 bulbs were the kind of lights sanctioned by St. Peter himself as the official light of Christmas.  Now, we have strings of tiny LED bulbs made in China and sold for $2.89 for the whole string.  And when one goes bad, you do not lovingly and tenderly replace the now dimmed out beacon, but one is constrained by utilitarian economics to throw out the whole lot.  Sons of perdition! Indeed, the proliferation of these type of namby-pamby disposable Christmas lights are the harbinger of the "end times" I say.

Clothing myself in self-proclaimed righteousness and with my arms wrapped in a tangled mess of green electrical wire and fragile C-9 bulbs, I ascend the latter to tediously and precariously insert the C-9 with their specialized attachment apparatus between the eves and shingles.  The lights are alternating blue and green spaced 12" apart, casting a heavenly peace across the front of the house once the December sun has set.  I kind of like the look, even if it engenders within me an unholy smug self-satisfaction.  Jesus will forgive me.

Many of the houses in the neighborhood have a variety of seasonal displays that came out of the garage when the temperature was in the 70's, weathered  cold, strong 40 mph winds the next week, snow on Christmas day, and by the beginning of Epiphany (Jan. 6) it was back to 70 degrees. Two doors down, the Rivera family sets up quite the holiday display on their lawn.  They go for the inflated, animated and illuminated electric and eclectic lawn decorations.  For Christmas they display:  The M&M characters, an animated penguin that rises up out of a jack-in-the-box, the Holy Family kneeling at a manger, an 8-foot snowman, a Christmas moose (or is it a reindeer?) with 3-foot plastic candy canes lining the front walk. 

As Tiny Tim pulls himself up on his crutches and comes out from the chimney corner and walks down our street and sees one house with only lights set out and another with a lawn filled with M&M characters, candy canes and a moose and a vinyl snowman; I hear him shout, "God bless us everyone!"

Indeed, a Merry Christmas to all!

Shrimp Leftovers - Like I was sayin'...

After the big birthday party, we had dirty dishes and some leftover shrimp.

Like I was sayin', shrimp is the food of the sea and was now the dominant leftover in the fridge from my birthday party.  I bought 14.5 pounds of shrimp, I boiled and served 10.75 pounds of shrimp to 16 guests, I had about 3 or 4 pounds of leftover shrimp.  Bubba says there are lots of ways to prepare shrimp, so with the leftovers, we had many shrimp meals, including:

• Sauteed shrimp
• Shrimp and onions in remoulade sauce
• Coconut fried shrimp
• Shrimp bisque, and
• Shrimp and bacon quiche

...that's about it.