4th Annual Kid's Pioneer Day

Our 4th annual Kid's Pioneer Day was a somewhat bittersweet day. For the first time it rained on this day! The rain was badly needed for the area since we hadn't had a significant rainfall since last fall but it did keep the usual crowd of children and adults home on this particular event. For those of us who did come though it was a fun time of food, games and fellowship.  Our "pioneer teacher" again came dressed for the occasion and thanks to a newly renovated wardrobe of dress up clothes, one of the students wanted to have that "pioneer look" as well. We had some new pioneer games for the children which I will now make use of during my Monday "after school hour" fun at the library. Two children are seen here playing with one of the bean bag games while staying under the roof of the cabin. Stew was again cooked over the fireplace inside the cabin and a more modern campstove was used to make fry bread. Lon came prepared to again have the children make fire without matches and the children continue to thoroughly enjoy sawing logs. One grandfather commented when trying to get his grandson to leave, "Guess I'll have to set up a sawhorse at home and let him saw logs all day to keep him entertained!"

New Kitchen Look

Showing off my absolutely wonderful new kitchen look! Everyone who knew what it looked like before are in "awe" when they see the transformation! The general comment is how it seemed to open up the entire area. There was no "island" before and the old cabinets did NOT go all way to the ceiling.  The new stove is now a gas burning stove instead of a flat top electric stove. The overall decor goes with the southwest flare one can also see in the living area space as the gas fireplace also has the same geometrical shaped design on the mantel as seen above the window in this picture.

RAGBRAI IN THE LIBRARY!

Just another busy day at the library!  YEAH! It was RAGBRAI! The library usually doesn't have people laying around on the floor or even sitting all around on the floor -  unless we're having a special children's event. This is just a couple scenes of how many RAGBRAI participants chose to spend the extremely hot afternoon of July 23rd!  Needless to say, with over 400 bodies in and out of our building the AC had to work overtime and I, personally, couldn't tell much difference from inside to outside but our visitors evidently felt  they were better off in our library than outside somewhere. They were most complimentary, too, of the patience shown by the library staff as many patiently waited their turn to use one of the 5 public access computers.

RAGBRAI 2012

Just a few pics of the scene around small town Lake View when literally thousands of bikers came into town on Monday the 23rd to spend the night enroute to Webster City. With the temperature in the upper 90s and hitting 100 degrees our beautiful Black Hawk Lake was a welcome site to some.  One of the couples staying in my yard took a swim in the lake as did many others. Many food vendors were set up along the lake shore near the Information Center but I feel the church meals were the most favored if for no other reason than to get inside a somewhat cooler environment.

50 Class Reunion Banquet

Just enjoyed a wonderful two days of high school class reunion events.  Pictures here are just a few scenes from the Friday night alumni banquet.  As the class celebrating their BIG 50, we were in charge of the banquet that is open to all graduating classes from ESCO. Three of our living classmates were cheerleaders in HS and are pictured practicing and later performing from in front of the head table.  I was privileged to sit at the head table this one and only time and can say it was a real treat not only because it was cooler up there but you can see so much more!! One of our classmates got her husband to pose with her behind the special photo op frame depicting the dress of our younger days!

Black Hawk Lake fun

Had an enjoyable but way too short visit by my granddaughter recently.  She and a local friend were treated to some tubing fun as seen here.  The granddaughter, who lives in Miami Beach, Florida, is a high school cheerleader and being a teenager, was ready to return to  city life and her upcoming practices in preparation for the fall sport season. 

I have been overly busy this month (the reason for so few posts) with preparations for the super busy weekend coming up here in small town Iowa! Sounds like it will be a very hot weekend but hope people will still enjoy our annual carnival of events and that all the RAGBRAI bikers will arrive safely.  As for the other event, my 50th class reunion... that will be a once in a lifetime event!! 

Iowa State Capitol Bldg.

My granddaughter and I had the priviliege of being part of the large crowd of people who attended the annual 4th of a July Yankee Doodle Pops performance on the huge expanse of lawn of the Iowa state capitol. I aplogize that I used the wrong setting on my camera to get a better night shot of the unique gold dome at the top of the building but you can still get some of its beauty. Fortunately there was a fairly good breeze and less humidity than the day before to make the event more comfortable than we had expected.  It was still good though to finally get back into the cool comfort of my brother's Ankeny home. May our country's leaders earnestly seek to remember what made America the greatest nation on Earth when we first had a 4th of July to celebrate!