Frog City RV Park, Duson, Louisiana
A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered. ~ Proverbs 17:27
If Santa placed my name on the naughty/nice list based on today’s behavior, I’d be the not-so-proud recipient of coal. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except that I have no place to burn it, and no equipment for making it into diamonds. Guess I should’ve bought that sign from the gift shop yesterday . . .
I woke up in a great mood, that began diminishing way before noon and remained there for several hours. It all started with a ‘simple project’ which I’m not at liberty to discuss because it’s Christmas. All I needed to do was run a final editing check on a document in my laptop and print it. I discovered a few things I wanted to change, which was no big deal. I pushed ‘print’ and it began. Yay!! Still good.
And then the printer and laptop got into a squabble and refused to speak with one another, dragging our jetpack into it, and before long, I only had half a project, a lot of heavy sighing, irritation that graduated to anger and a husband who behaved the angel, which truth be told, was kinda irritating in itself, because at that point, I was of the opinion that he should be just as angry and frustrated as I was. You know the old adage, ‘misery loves company’ is really true! But then where would we be? What good would it possibly have done for both of us to be irritable and irrational?
Eventually, the technologies resolved their squabble, after everything was turned off and re-booted. Sort of like a time-out punishment. If only I’d done that immediately instead of letting it escalate with me doing all the yelling . . . hey! This sounds just like parenting!
And now I can go to church this evening and enjoy what promises to be a wonderful Christmas program! Oh, and there’s the promise of a wonderful dinner beforehand too!
We left really early so we could walk around outside for a bit. Blaine found a couple of parks in the area, but we didn’t end up at any of them, instead, we chose a nice quiet walk around a traditional Louisiana cemetery. Typical Blaine and Terri, right? But even though the church was built in 1916, the earliest plots we saw were from the mid 1930’s; with most being in the 50-60 range. And there were plenty of new additions from last year, and even this year. Gorgeous church though. It reminds me of St. Basil’s in Moscow, Russia.
They charge you $5 to go inside. We didn’t feel like paying.
It’s impossible to capture it’s massiveness in a photograph!
but upon further inspection, we discovered it’s more like an offering.
We’ve never seen that before. : )
There’s still a marker, but the cement slab is cracked and sinking. Does that mean the body’s gone? Does it mean there’s room for more? Does it mean no one’s taken care of or paid to take care of the plot for a long time, so they’re kicking him out? We saw several more of these signs as we walked around.
We’ve never seen one that big! Can you just imagine what it looks like in the Spring when it’s in bloom?!?
After that, Blaine wanted a trip to Home Depot, and then we stopped in a JCPenny’s (there’s no Kohl’s here ☹) because I was looking for a new pair of black pants. We both found what we were looking for! And now it’s too late for a park, so we went straight to dinner at Don’s.
The promise was fulfilled! What an excellent dinner!! And we were beyond stuffed when we were through! Ugh! But everything was soooo good, and we couldn’t take a doggie bag because what we had, probably wouldn’t have heated up well, but I don’t think we could’ve stopped eating anyway. Our server was wonderful, too. Near the end of our meal, the good Samaritan in me couldn’t help but let her know that the e’touffe was served cool. I’m certain it was in a big vat in the kitchen, and I didn’t want other servers chewed out or something because the food was cold. She told the kitchen, and next thing we knew, the manager came out with a hot bowl of the stuff – and it was loaded with waaaay more shrimp than my original bowl was. We tried to get him to take it back, but he insisted. We picked out the shrimp and left the rest. 😊
These are the bowls of gumbo. : )
It took us an hour-and-a-half to eat dinner, which cut us kinda close for the start of the church program, but we made it with some time to spare.
The Real Story of Christmas was presented by Crossroads church. It’s a very large non-denominational church. They advertised in the tourist book we picked up at the Louisiana border, under the Christmas activities section. It promised to be a ‘Broadway-like’ production, and it certainly was! We sooo much enjoyed the show (which was free and required no tickets or reservations), we’re thinking about returning. They have 7 more shows to perform. I don’t know how they’re going to pull off three shows on Saturday, because it was so high-energy.
These pages are from their program. 
Basically, a video-taped Mr. and Mrs. Claus told some traditional stories and songs; like Rudolph, Frosty, The Night Before Christmas, etc. And then they set them to music and elves danced and sang, etc. I know this description doesn’t sound like much, but it really was! The ‘elf on the shelf’ kept popping up everywhere, as the ‘real elves’ proclaimed him a money-making gimmick, and not a real elf. At one point, when they did The Little Drummer Boy, they had quite the drumline going! The sets were wonderful too. And they had a professional comedian named T-FROG (Fully Relying On God) who told the Cajun 12 Days of Christmas. It was hysterical! We can’t remember what all he said, because he waxed eloquently for each one (okay, maybe not eloquently), while the elves sang and danced. Here’s a couple, in no particular order – crawfish, cracklin’s, politicians, boudin, Uber drivers, duck blind, and I can’t remember the rest. When we tried to find it on-line, we found a LOT of versions, but none were his. ☹
And all throughout the program was the underlying important story of Grace, the ‘misfit’ toy doll. She looked like a rough, dirty version of Raggedy Ann, until the Master Toy Maker got ahold of her and gave her a new heart to replace her broken one.
See poor Grace sitting on the floor?
Those are decorated cribs! And other things. So creative!
“Run, run, Rudolph”
That’s baby Jesus sitting on the floor in front.
I think he was the biggest guy in the program. : )
And then the Pastor came out and talked about the Real Christmas Story – – Jesus coming and changing hearts and minds. And they had a live nativity with three camels, three sheep and a donkey.
Probably the best Christmas show we’ve ever been to! Even better than the ones at our home church!