2011 Fire Department Christmas Run

Last Sunday was the annual Christmas visit from Santa to our community with the assistance of our volunteer fire department. The weather cooperated this year, with a sunny afternoon and temperatures in the 40s. (The 2010 Santa Run was canceled last year because we were having such troubling winter weather.) It was a wonderful time for all involved! And the many families that came out to meet Santa and hear the caroling seemed to be very blessed!

This year the River homemakers joined us with the Christmas caroling and we used the 12 foot bed on our dump truck to house the carolers, sitting on bales of straw. It was somewhat of a parade atmosphere with a tuck in front of the procession with a flashing red light, followed by the big fire engine, sirens blazing and lights flashing, with Santa and some firefighters on the back, followed by our decorated caroling truck, and a smaller fire engine with lights bringing up the rear. Matthew drove the fire truck at the end of the line and I drove our dump truck.

We drove very slowly and stopped where ever folks gatherd. Santa passed out toys to the children that the fire department had collected, and the fire fighters passed out fruit baskets (bags) to the adults. The homemakers especially targeted the elderly of the community to sing and pass out fruit to.

Even though Santa was a part of this event, our prayer is that folks experienced the love of Christ through our efforts. Many "God Bless You"s were exchanged and most of the songs sung were the classic hymns about the birth of our Savior.

The caroling truck was decorated with Christmas lights and a tree!

The fire fighters were helping to pass out the gifts:

Here we are caroling at one of the houses. Most of the time we sang from the road, but this was a house that is up a long lane where we stopped, and it was easy to take pictures.

After a long night of spreading Christmas love and joy we assembled back at the fire house for some pizza and fellowship. Doesn't Rocky look cheery and festive?

I am glad that we got to participate again with this year's Christmas run!

Merry Christmas to all...

Jenny Wiley Heritage Trail Event

On Saturday, much work done at and around our River Community Center came to fruition. Our 2nd annual Jenny Wiley Day was a success and all involved had a great time!

This article came out in the paper on Wednesday preceeding the event.

And here is the flier the extension office produced to advertise for it.

The children have put in many hours of helping to paint the community center in order to make it look like a log building.

This is the side facing the fire house.

We also have a small log cabin by the main building.  Next to that fodder shock decoration is the front door they painted on the Community Center and the mural in a following picture is just to the right of the above picture.  This side faces the road.

 

This is the side you can't see unless you walk around the building. You can get a good comparison of the painted log building and the real log building.

They also painted this scene of a guy stacking hay and have plans to paint a girl's face in the black window to the right.

How about we look inside that small log building:

Look who's over in this corner!

Christina was demonstrating her table top loom inside the log cabin.

 

Here are the tour guides for the trail, Jenny and Thomas Wiley.

The crowd is forming at the bottom of the hill and Matthew was ready for them.

Some folks along the trail.

The trail ends at the memorial marker for the Jenny Wiley grave.

There were a lot of folks who took part in the festivities and much fun was had by everyone.

Simon played the spoons and sang several songs.  He actually had people giving donations for his playing, which was unexpected!

Dolly's favorite was "Skip to My Lou".  She skipped around in cirlces whenever Simon sang it which was really cute! 

Soon she had Timothy joining her.  We didn't even know he knew how to skip yet!

You can tell how fast Timothy is moving in this picture by the tail on his coon skin cap!

Here's Simon, Timothy and Dolly before everything began in front of a TeePee up on the hill next to where they were cooking the sweet potatoes and soup beans.

The Cooking Crew

Patsy

Charolette

Rocky

Lisa and Erica

Inside the Community Center was plenty of food and fellowship.

They built a nice little flower bed using rocks the children brought from our property.  We have plenty of rocks at Pure Water Hollow!

The new flower bed made a nice place for Timothy to rest his sad, weary feet.

Now he is happy again!

The festivities continued into the evening. The whole place had a different "feel" to it after darkness set in, almost as if the entire grounds had been transported back in time with the setting of the sun.

Lisa was in charge of the gift shop table inside of the small cabin.

Here she is with our good friend, Virgie Brown, whom we recently purchased Pure Water Pastures from.

Christina continued to show how the loom works.

The night air outside was cool, but not too cold.

It was a perfect night for a warming fire!

After awhile, as the fire continued to burn, an impromptu wood splitting contest commenced.

I loved these shots of Matthew in action.

Before too long it was time to clean up and call it a night.

By the time the whole day was done, some of the workers were pretty tired, but everyone was pleased with how well the entire event turned out!  Plans are already being made for next year's Jenny Wiley Day...