2012 Summer reading winners

Here are four of our 2012 Summer Reading Program winners. As you can see they chose these cuddly stuffed animals instead of some book choices. I guess they did so much reading during the summer and with school now back in session they felt they needed a comforting change of activity. Maybe these cuddly treasures will help them do their homework this school year! Absent from the picture is one boy who did choose a book on cars. These are children who also attend our weekly "After school hour" on Mondays. We are having a special emphasis on pioneer games this month since the annual Kid's Pioneer Day at our local log cabin was rained out last month.

Crimson Dawn Band

What an awesome band of young people from the Omaha area! This group called Crimson Dawn were one of the two bands that played at our final summer concerts held on our historic stone pier. The blonde guitarist is the grandson of my dear friend Diane. He has so much musical ability as do all the members of this special group of teenagers, but of course I am biased having known Tag before he became such a talented musician. Who knows how famous he may become and then these pictures will really be valuable! Perhaps this group will be able to play again during next year's Stone Pier Concert series on Black Hawk Lake. 

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!