Last night I was with a group of cowboys and had a chance to talk with one of them who stood out. This particular cowboy had a beautiful white beard and he reminded me of Santa.<\/p>\n
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Indeed, as we talked further, I found that it really was<\/strong> Santa.<\/p>\n \n In fact, I have a signed card to prove it!<\/p>\n \n I suspect that most of us don’t stop to think about what Santa does on the off season. Many of us probably think he sleeps the entire time between one Christmas and another because of the talks with so many children during December and the exhausting deliveries on Christmas Eve. Oh, there may be a little pre planning with the elves, but it wouldn’t take all year – many might say.<\/p>\n \n Well I am happy to tell you that Santa is alive and well on the off season and that he has hobbies…just like the rest of us.<\/p>\n \n It seems one of Santa’s hobbies is being a cowboy…complete with guns.<\/p>\n \n I saw him shoot cowboy pistols, a shotgun and a rifle yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n \n He’s very good.<\/p>\n \n While safety is always first, Santa was in a cowboy match to see who could shoot the fastest and most accurately. He was having a great time with all the other cowboys and cowgirls. He even had cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. On top of his hat was a real<\/strong> rattlesnake skin with 10 rattles. He had added it to the hat several months ago.<\/p>\n \n Santa was so pleasant to talk with at dinner. He had many stories to tell and has actually written a book called The Real Deal<\/strong>. It just came out this past December. It was his first book and since we had writing in common (my book – Sardines, Cheese and Soda Crackers: Reflections from a Country Girl <\/strong>– just came out in October), we enjoyed talking about what it was like to publish a book and be first time authors.<\/p>\n \n I liked Santa. He was a cool guy. He acted just like a normal person. He was enjoying life just like the rest of us do.<\/p>\n \n Santa will be back to play cowboy again real soon.<\/p>\n \n I’m just glad to know he does some fun things in-between all the busy times at Christmas.<\/p>\n \n My wish for you today<\/strong> is that you enjoy the people you come across in life and take the time to listen to their story. You may just have some remarkable conversations if you take the time to discover who people really<\/strong> are!<\/p>\n \n ~ Joellen<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night I was with a group of cowboys and had a chance to talk with one of them who stood out. This particular cowboy had a beautiful white beard and he reminded me of Santa. Indeed, as we talked further, I found that it really was Santa. In fact, I have a signed card […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,15,16,27,31,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","category-jobs-careers","category-life-events","category-living-life-to-the-fullest","category-releationships-general","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}