Yes, I really do cook things besides bread and dessert.  We do have to eat reg­u­lar meals here, too.  Last night I got ambi­tious and made egg­plant parmi­giana.  Ok, not so ambi­tious.  While it sounds fancy, it’s really a very sim­ple dish and def­i­nitely one of our faves.  It’s also the only thing I know how to make with egg­plant.  If you have any great egg­plant recipes, send them my way.  I’d love to find more ways to use this inter­est­ing veggie.

So, I don’t really have a recipe for this.  A lot of what I cook is just fly­ing by the seat of my pants, but I’ll try and make it an eas­ily dupli­cated thing.  My recipe is very basic.  Egg­plant parmi­giana is one of those dishes that I will toss together on nights when I want easy Ital­ian that doesn’t involve noodles.

So, first we slice up the egg­plant into thin slices–1/4 to 3/8″.  You can peel it or not.  I don’t; call me lazy.

Next, you’ll need two bowls.  In one, break two eggs, add a lit­tle milk and beat well.  In the other, put about 1 1/2 cups or so of bread­crumbs.  I use the Pro­gresso Ital­ian Style–they come in big cans at Costco.  If you don’t have bread­crumbs, you can use flour.  Just add a lit­tle pep­per, gar­lic pow­der and Ital­ian sea­son­ing to it to jazz it up a bit (I’ve done this many times).

You’re going to dip each slice into the egg mix­ture and then into the bread­crumbs, turn­ing to coat well.

Then, you’ll fry the egg­plant in a pan over medium heat, that you’ve heated about 1/2″ of oil in.  Some recipes call for you to use as much as two inches of oil, but I’m not big on deep fry­ing, unless I’m mak­ing potato chips, and I’ve found that 1/2″ does the job just fine and makes for a much less greasy dish.  Fry them until they’re nicely browned on both sides.  After fry­ing drain your egg­plant slices.  I put a cool­ing rack over paper tow­el­ing and dry them that way.  Putting the egg­plant right on the paper tow­els tends to make it a lit­tle soggy.

Next, you will need a jar of spaghetti sauce (any brand you like is good–personally, I pre­fer home­made but I don’t hap­pen to have any right now), 8 ounces of shred­ded mozarella (yes, I know most recipes call for thin sliced, but I’m not good at thin slic­ing cheese and shred­ded tastes exactly the same) and about 1/2 cup of grated Parme­san.  The fresh stuff (can you call Parme­san fresh after it’s been aged two years?) is absolutely best, but in a pinch you can use the stuff in the can.  At our house, we con­sider those to be two com­pletely dif­fer­ent types of cheese.

Take a casse­role dish and lightly spray with cook­ing spray.  Spread a layer of spaghetti sauce in the bot­tom and then a layer of egg­plant on top of that, cut­ting to fit if you need to.  Top with half the moz­zarella and half the parme­san.  Repeat.  If you’re using a larger casse­role or dou­bling the recipe, you may need to do this in three lay­ers.  Because there are only four of us right now, we only need one egg­plant.  When every­one is home, we use two and dou­ble the recipe.

When you’re all done, it should look pretty much like this.

Now, all that is left is to pop it into a 400-degree oven for about 20–30 min­utes, until the cheese is melted and lightly browned.  While it’s bak­ing, make a salad, maybe a lit­tle gar­lic bread and you are good to go!

Buon Appetit!!

Now doesn’t that look yummy?

The weather has turned cold and gray and that means it’s time for a lit­tle some­thing to warm our hearts and our tum­mies.  So I decided to make some pret­zels because I knew it would make the girls happy to come home to these yummy lit­tle treats.  Besides, pret­zels have no fat and almost no sugar so I con­sider them a healthy snack.  Yes, I know they have the evil white flour, but that’s life.  You can try whole wheat flour if you want, but I make no guar­an­tees about any­thing there.  The recipe is at the bot­tom of the page.

Pret­zels are also amaz­ingly easy.  I lack the coor­di­na­tion and the patience to roll and twist the ropes, so I roll out my pret­zel dough with a rolling pin and cut it with a donut cut­ter.  That way it makes cute lit­tle round pretzels–just the right size for my spatula–and we even cook up the pret­zel “holes”.

I also dou­ble this recipe when I make it.  I dou­ble pretty much every­thing I make.  I fig­ure it isn’t any more work to make a dou­ble batch and I only have to clean up once.

So, we start by warm­ing up the milk in the microwave and mix­ing together all the dry ingre­di­ents, which is every­thing else in the recipe.  See how easy that is.

You can either mix it with an elec­tric mixer or mix it in a bowl with a spoon and knead it for a few min­utes.  I’m rather par­tial to the knead­ing, gives me a lit­tle work­out and dough is great for get­ting rid of stress and frus­tra­tions.  Then it has to rise for about an hour.  Thank­fully, it was laun­dry day today, so I was able to speed up the process a bit by set­ting the bowl on top of the dryer (it’s really cold today–leaving it on the kitchen counter would have taken forever).

So after it rises–isn’t it pretty?–you can either cut the dough into 6 pieces (or 12, if you were smart and dou­bled the recipe) or you can do like I do and roll it out with the rolling pin and cut it into circles–you could cut your dough into other shapes as well.  I just hap­pen to like circles.

Oh, and in case you’re won­der­ing and you’re one of those really exact peo­ple, that is not a donut cut­ter. I broke my donut cut­ter and haven’t found a suit­able replace­ment yet, so I just use two dif­fer­ent sizes of cir­cle cutters–one for the out­side and one for the inside.

After cut­ting, you dip them briefly into your nearly boil­ing bak­ing soda-hot water and line them up all pretty on your greased bak­ing pans.

Now all that’s left to do is pop them in the oven for about 15 minutes.

While they’re cook­ing, it’s the per­fect time to make a cup of hot herbal tea (we like Celes­tial Sea­son­ings Fruit Teas) or hot apple cider.

And when they come out of the oven, you are ready for a per­fect warm-your-heart, warm-your-tummy snack on a cold win­ter day.

Pret­zels

Makes 6 large pret­zels
1 tea­spoon yeast
1 table­spoon malt pow­der or brown sugar
2–3 cups all-purpose unbleached or bread flour
1 tea­spoon salt
1 cup warm milk (approx­i­mately 110 degrees, which is 1 minute in my microwave)

Com­bine all of the ingre­di­ents in a bowl and mix together until it forms a ball. I start with 2 cups of the flour and mix it together until it’s well-combined, then add more flour until it forms a nice ball that isn’t too sticky that I can knead by hand.

You can either use an elec­tric mixer (heavy duty) to blend  the dough for about5 min­utes or remove it from the bowl and knead it by hand for 5 to 10 min­utes until the dough begins to get smooth and satiny.  I pre­fer knead­ing the dough.

Place the ball of dough to a clean, greased bowl, cover with plas­tic wrap, and set it aside to rise until it has dou­bled in size, approx­i­mately an hour.

Pre­heat the oven to 425 degrees while you make the pretzels.

This is the part where I roll it out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured sur­face.  I roll my dough until it’s just under ½” thick and then cut into cir­cles with a donut cut­ter or other round cutter.

If you want to make tra­di­tional twisted pret­zels, do this part:  Cut the dough into 6 pieces. Roll each one into a short log, cover with a towel, and let the dough relax for 5 to 10 min­utes. After it has relaxed you should be able to roll it out and stretch again fairly eas­ily. Roll and stretch again until they are about 15 inches long and about as big around as your  index fin­ger). They do rise up a bit dur­ing bak­ing, so this is not too thin.  Twist into a pret­zel shape.

Next you boil the pretzels—you can skip this, but it does make them taste bet­ter.  And you don’t really “boil” them.   Bring a pot of water with 2 tbsp of bak­ing soda to just below boil­ing. Dunk each of the pret­zels into the boil­ing water for 5 sec­onds, then scoop them out with a spat­ula and let them drain a few sec­onds before plac­ing them onto a lightly greased bak­ing sheet and sprin­kling  with Kosher salt or other top­pings (I’m a salt girl, myself).

Bake for about 15 min­utes or until golden brown at 425.  Remove from pan and eat immediately

It’s Expo time again at the Leslie house­hold.  Expo ranks right up there with root canals and income taxes on my list of painful expe­ri­ences to avoid.  For those of you who are not so unfor­tu­nate to have a child in the Rio Ran­cho Pub­lic Schools (please note:  I am not bash­ing RRPS.  I just HATE Expo), Expo is the name for our local sci­ence fair, which actu­ally isn’t all that local because it feeds into the Intel Inter­na­tional Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Fair.  Oh, and in case you’re won­der­ing I’m not a Lud­dite and I don’t hate sci­ence, either.  I actu­ally have enough col­lege cred­its for a degree in Geol­ogy; I just opted not to tor­ture myself with Cal­cu­lus, Trig and Organic Chem­istry, and decided that a sin­gle major was good enough.

There’s just noth­ing like a sci­ence project that involves  those nifty project boards AND 17 pages of forms that are appar­ently writ­ten in Greek that must be com­pleted and signed by par­ents when your stu­dent isn’t actu­ally old enough to com­pete in the ISEF.  But I guess they fig­ure we par­ents need train­ing so they start tor­tur­ing us in mid­dle school.  And I am blessed to have TWO mid­dle school stu­dents this year.

Yep, that means TWO Expo projects.  One of the projects involved burn­ing quan­ti­ties of sugar.  Other than mak­ing the house stink, it was actu­ally kind of inter­est­ing.  But not so inter­est­ing that I’ll be want­ing to repeat it. How­ever, we still have to ana­lyze the data and lay out the project board, so maybe I’ll wax philo­sophic on that one another day (and I’ll tell you the easy way to get burned sugar off the pan).  Ok, so it was a project on the carmeliza­tion of sugar, but it really did involve burn­ing the sugar by the end of the project.  Nasty.

Yesterday’s project was much more up my alley.  One of my big objec­tions to Expo is there is no equiv­a­lent for our stu­dents of the arts.  We don’t have the “Reflec­tions” pro­gram here or any big school-sponsored com­pe­ti­tions for art stu­dents.  I real­ize that the idea that one can make a liv­ing in the arts is appar­ently as crazy today as it was when I was a kid and used to tell my mom I was going to grow up and be a writer.  Her response was always, “But what do you plan to do for a real job?”  But I digress.

So, I’m think­ing you’re won­der­ing what this lit­tle rant has to do with the title of this post.  After all, it doesn’t say any­thing about Expo.  But there is a con­nec­tion.  Really.  My youngest decided that for her project she would study the rule of thirds in pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phy.  I did not pick this project.  She is the only one of my kids who wants to be a “ma-tographer” when she grows up (I think that was her word for mom-photographer when she was lit­tle).  Her inter­est is in wildlife and ani­mal pho­tog­ra­phy.  We shall see.  I think it’s cool.

So, since I’ve spent the last few weeks teach­ing her the rule of thirds and ana­lyz­ing dozens of well-known pho­tographs with her, I believe I am now pre­pared to share it with all of you, so you can improve your pho­tog­ra­phy skills as well.

Just as an FYI, 96% of the pho­tographs she ana­lyzed employed the rule of thirds in their com­po­si­tion.  So, for those of you who think it’s just some silly rule, it really isn’t.

So, what is the rule of thirds?

The rule of thirds visu­ally divides your pho­to­graph into a grid–like a tic-tac-toe board, though there is also a tri­an­gu­lar version–and says that you place your main points of inter­est either on one of the inter­sec­tions or along one of the lines, rather than place it in the mid­dle of a pho­to­graph.  This doesn’t just apply to pho­tog­ra­phy.  It’s a uni­ver­sal rule applied to paint­ings and other design work as well.  It’s prob­a­bly one of the most ele­men­tary rules of pho­to­graphic com­po­si­tion, cer­tainly one of the first I learned.  Well, that and keep the hori­zon straight so all the water doesn’t run out of the ocean.

Quick! Get a bucket! The ocean is spilling!

Much bet­ter. The ocean is stay­ing where it belongs.

When you place your sub­ject dead cen­ter in the pho­to­graph, it gen­er­ally cre­ates a very sta­tic com­po­si­tion.  Nature is not inher­ently sym­met­ri­cal and so we find com­pos­tions that are not per­fectly sym­met­ri­cal to be more pleas­ing to the eye.  Plac­ing your com­po­si­tion along these imag­i­nary lines cre­ates a sense of motion and inter­est in photographs.

And, no, it’s not a hard and fast rule.  There are cer­tainly times to break it, but before you can break it and do it well, it helps to under­stand it.

So, here are a few examples–these are all from my photo library, since we don’t hold with break­ing copy­right laws here and pub­lish­ing other pho­tog­ra­phers’ work with­out their permission.

Notice that the butterfly’s wings are pri­mar­ily in the upper right quad­rant and the head and upper part of the wings runs along the top line.

In this one, the flow­ers tend toward the upper right and the stem on the right flower runs more or less up the right third line.

And in this one, the bal­loons fall along the left line of the pho­to­graph. This also gives them some­where to go instead of just fly­ing right out of the pho­to­graph as it would look if they were too close to the right side.

So, now your assign­ment for today is to go out and look at some of your favorite pho­tographs and see how well they fol­low the rule of thirds.  I will admit that I was sur­prised that the per­cent­age of pub­lished pho­tographs was as high as it was.  Oh, and this does also apply to por­traits, too.

Here’s a ran­dom grab from my hard drive.  You’ll notice that the eyes fall in the upper left and the line of the body goes down the left line.  This isn’t some­thing I con­sciously think about when mak­ing pho­tographs any more, but that may just be that I’ve been doing it so long.  At one time I did have a cam­era that had the grid in its viewfinder.  Many cam­eras do have this fea­ture and it’s a great help when you’re start­ing out.

And once you’ve got this down, then we can talk about the Golden Mean which is a related prin­ci­ple and even cooler once you start see­ing how it works in your art.  But we’ll save that one for another day.

Or maybe that should say,

BUY MY HOUSE!!

Really!!  I am sell­ing my house.  As many of you know, my won­der­ful hus­band got a ter­rific job in Colorado–last May.  So, for the last 8 months we’ve been liv­ing in sep­a­rate states and it’s get­ting old.  My house is on the mar­ket.  It was with a real­tor, but now we are sell­ing it our­selves.  Hope­fully, this can speed up the process, cut through some of the lay­ers and get it sold and us back together.

My kids are tired of not being with their dad.  And so am I, for that mat­ter.  We’re ready to move on to a new life in Col­orado, but first we need some­one to love our home as much as we have loved it.

We’ve been in New Mex­ico for nine years now, all in this won­der­ful house.

We really do love our house.  My per­sonal favorite room is the mas­ter bed­room.  This great big front win­dow is in the mas­ter bed­room.  It has high ceil­ings and it’s light and won­der­ful and has the best bath­room we’ve ever had.

It’s a great house for enter­tain­ing, too.  I will so miss our great pizza par­ties and our Inde­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions (if peo­ple show up on the 4th, it’s not my fault, but they’re all really nice, so you’ll enjoy the com­pany).  We have an unri­valed view of the fire­works every year.  They orig­i­nally shot them from the arroyo behind us, but now they come off Loma Colorado–the hill behind the high school, if you didn’t know that–which is an even more awe­some view and means no 4th of July traf­fic in our neigh­bor­hood.  We’ve had as many as 150 for the 4th.  Our big back­yard and the gates that open out the back make it easy to acco­mo­date all your friends.

This photo was taken last sum­mer, so we do have lawn now, both front and back.  It’s dor­mant at the moment, but spring will come soon and you’ll be glad for our auto­matic sprin­kler sys­tem.  We’ve also got five fruit trees in the back, along with a Brad­ford Pear (flowering)–that’s the big tree you see.

The work­shop is at the left of this photo and it has elec­tric­ity, along with the side stor­age area, great for a pot­ting shed and all the kids’ toys.

If you want to see more pho­tos and get more details, we have a flyer posted here.   So, after you’ve looked at it and decided that you can love this house, too (or if you know some­one who will), give me a call or drop me an e-mail and we can get you a great new home!

Don’t miss our over­stock sale at Sage and This­tle!!  We have a lim­ited num­ber of 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 tra­di­tion­ally mat­ted prints for sale at an out­stand­ing value!!  Head on over today, because when they are gone, they are all gone.  These are prints that remain from our art show days.  I just came upon them and decided to offer them to you, my won­der­ful friends and clients, at a great price.

Wel­come to the 21st cen­tury.  As if hav­ing four e-mail accounts, three web­sites and two blogs wasn’t enough, I’ve decided it was time to throw a Twit­ter account into the mix.  I’m mak­ing a few pro­fes­sional changes in my life and I’m feel­ing the need to be up-to-date with all of my web presences.

Should I have thrown my Linked In and Face­book accounts and two Face­book fan pages into the mix?  And if you’re won­der­ing how to find those fan pages, here they are:  Marie Leslie Pho­tog­ra­phy and   Sage & This­tle.  Stop by today and become a fan to get advance notice of all the good stuff, plus the occa­sional Facebook-only special.

It’s one of those weeks where I already feel like I live in front of this computer–probably because I do.  It’s a good thing I have the comfy green chair to sit in again (thanks, Uncle Gene), because my back was scream­ing about that hard wooden chair last week.

Any­way, yes, I do have a Twit­ter account now and you can fol­low me @marierleslie.  Don’t for­get the “r” in the mid­dle or you’ll get some other Marie Leslie and I have no idea whether she has any­thing inter­est­ing to say or not.

I really am work­ing on the blog­ging.  It’s been a busy week, updat­ing web­sites, putting together some new mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als and get­ting ready for some big changes at Sage & This­tle, includ­ing a great mat­ted print sale.  Stay tuned for news this week on that.

In the mean­time, you’ll find me busily refin­ing my web pres­ence, edit­ing por­traits and putting in some new ses­sions.  And don’t for­get our Jan­u­ary Snow­Days Por­trait Spe­cial.  You can find all the details on our por­trait site here.

Oh, and when you stop by our newly updated por­trait site, let me know what you think.  We’ve made quite a few changes, both in appear­ance and in text.  Feed­back is always wel­come here.

I love bread.  I really love bis­cuits and muffins.  Ok, if it’s baked in the oven and it’s made with some kind of flour, I prob­a­bly love it.  You get the picture?

I’ve been on this bis­cuit kick lately.  I got tired of those bicuits in the can; they just weren’t doing it for me.  One of my hubby’s cousins owns this great restau­rant in Grand Junc­tion called “Puffer­belly Sta­tion”  (at least he did, he may be retired by now).  But he makes these killer bak­ing pow­der bis­cuits with a secret recipe.  Hubby went with him once when we were vis­it­ing to make the dough  (clearly, he was smarter than to invite me to watch him make the bis­cuits).  I told Hubby to watch closely.  He wasn’t very help­ful.  He said it was a big bag of flour and some salt and bak­ing pow­der and other stuff.

So, I’m inspired to make my own killer bak­ing pow­der bis­cuits.  I’ve tried at least a dozen recipes so far.  I even broke my bis­cuit cut­ter.  I haven’t found what I want to replace it yet.  It looked like this one, only it was copper–or at least cop­per col­ored, and prob­a­bly as old as me.  My mom gave it to me years ago.  But it finally suc­cumbed to the rav­ages of time and dough and the lit­tle brads that held the thing in the mid­dle and held the han­dle on finally broke off.  Maybe it had some­thing to do with the fact that we used it to make pret­zels (yeah, we make fun lit­tle round pret­zels) but pret­zels are another post.  In the mean­time, I found a round cookie cut­ter that works well enough for bis­cuits (no pret­zels, though).

So, I finally found a recipe last week that actu­ally rises like I want them to.  Look at these big beau­ti­ful bis­cuits.  They were so easy and soooo yummy.  Hubby called me after he went back to Col­orado to tell me that he wished he taken me up on the offer to make him a batch “to go.”  Guess he’ll just have to wait for his next trip home.

Fluffy, Fluffy Biscuits

12 ServingsPrep/Total Time: 30 min.

Ingre­di­ents

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 tea­spoons bak­ing powder
• 3 tea­spoons sugar
• 1/2 tea­spoon salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup milk

Direc­tions

In a small bowl, com­bine the flour, bak­ing pow­der, sugar and salt.

Cut in short­en­ing until the mix­ture resem­bles coarse crumbs. Whisk egg and milk; stir into dry ingre­di­ents just until moistened.

Turn onto a well-floured sur­face; knead 20 times. Roll to 3/4-in. thickness; cut with a floured 2–1/2-in. bis­cuit cut­ter. Place on a

lightly greased bak­ing sheet.

Bake at 450° for 8–10 min­utes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Yield: 1 dozen.

Now to note:  I made a dou­ble recipe and used a 4-inch round cut­ter.  I like the BIG bis­cuits.  It made about a dozen and I needed to cook them for about 15 min­utes for them to be com­pletely done in the middle.

I haven’t quite found those per­fect bis­cuits yet, but these are as close as I’ve come so far.

Another year!  I won’t even begin to get into the whole is-it-a-new-decade-or-not argu­ment?  Does it really mat­ter?  Any­way, here it is Jan­u­ary 1st and a whole new, shiny blank cal­en­dar for us to fill with won­der­ful things.

I sup­pose first up would be New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions.  I’m not big on the whole res­o­lu­tion thing, but I do use this time of year to sit back and review my life and spend some time think­ing about the things I want to change and to accom­plish this year.  Obvi­ously, first up on this year’s list is to sell my house and get moved to Col­orado.  Unfor­tu­nately, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that, so we’ll set it aside and move on.

While I wait to move, I’ve been review­ing my pho­tog­ra­phy busi­nesses (yes, there are two–the art and the por­trai­ture are con­sid­ered sep­a­rate).  I’ve decided they both need some spruc­ing up and some new offer­ings, as well as a new look.  So, that’s first on my New Year’s list.  Keep an eye on the blog and the web­sites.  They’ll be sport­ing a fresh look for 2010 shortly.  I’ve already started on them, but have a ways to go.  If there’s a prod­uct we haven’t offered that you are inter­ested in, let me know and I’ll see if we can add it to the cat­a­log this year.

I’ll also be pay­ing for atten­tion to my blog.  My goal here is to blog on a more reg­u­lar basis–at least a cou­ple of times a week.  I find that blog­ging really helps get my cre­ative juices going and keeps me on my toes.

And, of course, what New Year’s list wouldn’t be com­plete with­out at least one goal related to health?  Like every­one else, I need to get more fit this year.  I don’t believe in diet­ing and don’t think I really need to, but I cer­tainly can eat health­ier and work out more.  I was work­ing out reg­u­larly for a while and then life got in the way.  In the mean­time, I aggra­vated an old back injury, so that’s been a good reminder that I really need to exer­cise more and get my back under con­trol again.  After all, when I get to Col­orado, I plan to take up cross-country ski­ing and I really need to be in great shape to do that.

And, lest you think my goals this year are all about work, rest assured they are not.  After all, all work and no play makes Marie a very dull girl (no snide remarks from the fan club, please).

I plan to have lots of fun this year.  I plan to spend at least one week­end each month out explor­ing new places with my fam­ily, my friends and my cam­era and cre­at­ing more beau­ti­ful art like the images here.

I also plan to spend more time in the kitchen this year.  I have redis­cov­ered my joy in the kitchen this year and am hav­ing a great time exper­i­ment­ing with new recipes, both from my exten­sive cook­book col­lec­tion and from recipes that I’ve cre­ated myself.  I def­i­nitely plan to do some food pho­tog­ra­phy and some blog­ging from the kitchen as well.

So, tell me, what do plan to accom­plish this year (or not)?

Yes, it’s been a pathet­i­cally long time since I’ve posted.  But that’s not the point of today’s post as I’m sure you’ve already guessed from the title.  It’s the week of Christ­mas and that means it’s time for me to share my favorite Santa story.

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Santa is a big deal at our house. He doesn’t bring a lot of stuff, but he’s respon­si­ble for some pretty amaz­ing lit­tle things that hap­pen around Christ­mas time in our family–at least in my kids’ eyes. There is no ques­tion that the magic and spirit of Santa are alive and well in our family.

I still believe–at least in all the good things that Santa represents–but then I had the advan­tage of hav­ing Santa Claus for a Dad. When we were kids (pre-teens), my sis­ters and I had the task of being the elves and mak­ing lit­tle gifts for Santa to give out each year on Christ­mas Eve. Santa was a fam­ily friend (actu­ally a few dif­fer­ent friends over the years) and my dad was Santa’s dri­ver. My mom was the orga­nizer and Santa vis­ited fam­i­lies in our church and town who had chil­dren young enough to be excited over a per­sonal visit from the jolly fat man him­self on Christ­mas Eve.

When I was about 16 or 17, Santa came down with the flu on Christ­mas Eve. Try as they might, my par­ents couldn’t find a replace­ment Santa at the last minute. My dad decided that he would do it, rather than risk dis­ap­point­ing the chil­dren. My sis­ters and I were horrified–even my mom wasn’t too excited. See, my dad had been a career Marine and there was no doubt in our minds that he had sprung forth from the womb a full-fledged Marine and all the tough­ness that entailed. He was also skinny as a rail.  He was the tough guy, not mean or harsh, but def­i­nitely a very strict dad, cer­tainly not the first one you would think of for jolly and we were con­vinced that he would “ruin” Christmas for all our friends’ chil­dren. Well, Dad being Dad won (I told you he was tough–determined is prob­a­bly a bet­ter adjective).

Mom ended up being the dri­ver that night and we girls waited at home for their return. About 30 min­utes or so after they left, one of my mom’s clos­est friends called. Their first stop had been to a very close fam­ily friend’s house to visit with all their grand­chil­dren. She wanted to know who the Santa was who was with my mom. We thought it was a joke.  She said he was the best Santa she had ever seen. She really had no idea it was our dad. We got sev­eral sim­i­lar calls that night. From that night on, I knew that Santa really was magic. When Dad put on the suit, he truly became Santa. He was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­son and I don’t think I ever saw him hap­pier than he was on Christ­mas Eve.

For the next 10 years, my dad was Santa every year on Christ­mas Eve. When I was 19, he decided he needed a “real” Santa suit. The one they had used for years was get­ting pretty worn and thread­bare.  So, Dad and I went shop­ping and picked out top qual­ity vel­vet, fur and leather for the belt. He even bought real boots and we went to a pro­fes­sional wig shop for the wig and beard. Here is the por­trait we did of him that year.

Sadly, he died the year before our son was born and our old­est was really too young to remem­ber, so our chil­dren don’t know all their grandfather’s magic. But we put his por­trait in a place of honor every year at Christ­mas next to the sign my mom gave each us the first Christ­mas after his pass­ing that says “We still believe in Santa Claus.”  And at our house we do.

Merry Christ­mas.

By the way, I know some of you who read this remem­ber our won­der­ful Santa.  I would love for you to share your sto­ries and mem­o­ries here with us.

Today is Veteran’s Day.  Not a day most peo­ple even think about any­more, it seems.  A gov­ern­ment hol­i­day, but even the schools don’t take the day off any­more.  I always think about it, though.  For me, it is a day to stop and remem­ber and be thank­ful.  We get to be here and surf this inter­net and honor this day or not because of the thou­sands and thou­sands of men and women who have made sac­ri­fices for us.  It doesn’t mat­ter whether or not we appre­ci­ate what they’ve done; they’ve done it any­way.  And in my opin­ion, any­one who chooses (or was drafted) to serve in the mil­i­tary is mak­ing a sac­ri­fice.  They could have cho­sen any of dozens of other career paths, but they have taken a time out (fore some) or cho­sen to make a career of defend­ing our free­doms.   Some of them have made the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice (thank you, James Akin) and I am grate­ful not only to them, but their fam­i­lies as well.

My dad the Marine. My hero. Sem­per Fi

I always think of my dad on Veteran’s Day.  He was a career Marine (by the way yes­ter­day was the Marine Corps’ birthday–hoo-rah!).  Though he was pretty much done with his ser­vice by the time I was old enough to really be cog­nizant of it, he was always a Marine.  As kids, my sis­ters and I thought he must have sprung forth from the womb already in Marine green.  He never talked much about his time in the ser­vice; I think that was his way of pro­tect­ing his daugh­ters from the “hor­rors of war.”  As I’ve got­ten older, I’ve learned how true that really is.  He fought with the First Marine Divi­sion in the bat­tle of Cho Sun, dur­ing the Korean war as a 20-year-old and though I’ve read much about it, I can­not begin to imag­ine what he really went through.  I only even heard him men­tion it once and that was to cor­rect someone’s mis­per­cep­tion about the hardships.

If I were home in New Mex­ico today, you’d see my flag proudly fly­ing in honor of my dad and all of the other fine men and women who I thank from the bot­tom of my heart for pre­serv­ing my free­dom and mak­ing our world just a lit­tle bet­ter place in which to live.

Please take the time to thank a vet today.