As I mentioned in my previous blog, we now have a reindeer living with us.  His name is (insert juvenile snickering) Chestnut Jingles.  The seventh grader in me just gets a kick out of that.  On the subject of chestnuts, I have actually blogged about them from one of our trips to Paris.  I had no earthly idea what they were.  Even when they told me I did recognize the word.  I’d heard the incomparable Nat King Cole sing about them for countless Christmases but I had never really seen or had one.  They roasted them on the street and they are one of the most delicious things I have ever had.  But I digress.  The wonderful thing about Chestnut Jingles is that he takes Noel the elf back to the North Pole each night, but our little one is allowed to touch him!  (If she touches Noel Magique Christmas magic will be lost.)  Like the excellent pet sitting assistant she has become, she has fed her reindeer carrots and apples and admonished me to look after him while she was in school.  Before she left she gave him fresh “hay” — the glittery “pine needles” from our aluminum tree — and put it in his stall.  I thought that was so magical and clever!  She brushed him down and then covered him with this “blanket.”  The patterns in the paper towel remind me of the designs in a Native American horse blanket.  She’s a natural.  So this is how I chose to photograph him, just as my little girl left him … loved, cared for, and awaiting her return.  One of my favorite American writers, Erma Bombeck, once said, “There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”  I want to stay a child at Christmas for as long as reindeer fly.