A book sale come and gone.

The FRIENDS of the New Milford library held their annual book sale from July 17th to 20th. I'm President of FOL and Mike is the Recording Secretary, so needless to say, we are involved in planning and pitching in with both hands for set-up, sales and clean-up. For the sale each year FOL moves over 40,000 books from the basement of the library, which is on the Green in town, to the gymnasium of the High School, about 5 miles away. The top photo shows just a corner of the gym and what we had to offer!

This move takes three truck loads and a BOAT load of hard labor to accomplish, but with all of our wonderful volunteers and a few hired hands we got everything moved and opened the sale on Thursday morning. We had the best-ever first sales day! The 4-day sale brought in over $15,000 which we will donate to the library for various family and children's programs that they would otherwise not be able to afford to host. We've only 9 board members in FOL so as you can imagine, it's a very busy week for all but a very rewarding one as well. The bottom photo is a week later as we cleaned up the gym and loaded all the unsold books on the bulk-book buyers truck.

Now that the book sale is behind us we're looking forward to a stay next weekend at Pine Springs (Katy's house in Vermont) and playing a bit of country golf, then driving over across to New York to spend a week in Saratoga Springs enjoying the horse races. Katy has been attending the races each August for 30 years and Mike is hoping for another 30, as he really loves the ambiance and excitement of it all. Saratoga Racetrack is one of the oldest in the country and a beautiful venue. The town is charming and bustles with horsey-fun all month so it's a terrific and relaxing vacation spot. PLUS there are several great golf courses to play!

The following weekend Mike and Jon will have a weekend get-away and attend a Met's game in PA. The week after that Mike and Katy are attending a Met's game at Shea and a Yankee game! Plus, in between those two games we are taking Grandpa Jack to the horse races at Monmouth Park. Talk about total immersion in sports!

In the midst of all the sportiness it's also full-speed ahead for the next big charity event: Katy is chairperson of the Rotary/Red Cross Golf Tournament held on September 3rd. Who was it who said: busy hands are happy hands?!