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I hope you had a chance to take in some of this years Center City Days. Mother Nature tried her best to ruin this years celebration, but everyone persevered and had a great time.

Normally, you could have bet money that the weather would be cooperative and Center City Days would go on without a hitch, but this year, we seem to be in a moisture bubble. Being a huge fan of the lakes, rain usually makes me quite happy. But when it comes at the cost of a community event, we could do without.

Congratulations to Rebecca Olinger of Lindstrom. Rebecca was the lucky treasure winner. Rebecca had to decipher clues and figure out where in Center City the treasure was hidden. Luckily, she had Cynthia Carlson-Paetznik there to drive her from spot to spot.

The lucky finder of the lost lutefisk was Matt Jerrard. Matt found the missing lutefisk in a pine tree in front of City Hall. For being the lucky finder of the fish, Matt received $40 compliments of Silver Shears Full Service Salon.

The classic car show also had a great turnout this year. There were twenty five cars that were all beautifully restored. Look for a photo of the People's Choice winner next week.

With all the talk about celebrations, it is very important to remind everyone the importance of purchasing your celebration buttons. You can currently purchase your Karl Oskar Days button all over town for the cost of just $2 per button. With your button, you will receive fabulous deals around town, as well as discounted entries to such events as the Karl Oskar Days queen coronation. You can even get discounted gas at a few local gas stations. To top it off, if your button number is drawn, you could win some cold hard cash. Not too bad of a deal for $2 right?

The good folks that run the Lindstrom Farmer's Market would like everyone to know that they are running at full speed and they have many, many wonderful things to offer. Whether you are in the market for some fresh vegetables, or some beautiful flowers, the Farmer's Market has it. If you would like to visit the market, they are open on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings in the St. Bridget's parking lot.

I just had the privilege of completing what will probably be my last year coaching LARA baseball. I and a good friend have been coaching in LARA for six years now. The time has come, where our sons will be playing traveling baseball, which takes too much time to play in both leagues.

It seems like every year we sit down and reminisce about our team that year, and every year we end up saying this team was our best bunch of kids. Saturday evening we were doing just that. We had just played the final tournament in scorching heat with our third and fourth graders, and it was time to reflect. Once again we came up with the same assessment, great kids, great times.

The point of my writing is to let you know just how wonderfully lucky we are to have such a great organization like LARA in our area. To have an outlet for children of all ages to play all kinds of sports is awesome. I grew up playing in the LARA system, to see how much it has grown and fine tuned itself is amazing. Someone asked me why would I ever want to coach? What about your free time? My answer is always the same, to coach is a privilege, and I am lucky to be able to spend time with these wonderful kids.

Thank you to all the great people that make up LARA. Thanks to Jim Gillatch for making coaching in LARA easy and interesting. If you have a young one that will be playing sports in the future, I would highly recommend giving coaching a try. Even if your team struggles, like many of ours have, the reward of coaching these kids far outweighs the wins and losses.

Remember Wednesday evenings in Lindstrom, Harmony in the Park takes place at Lion's Park. The next scheduled musical guest is the Alzen Family Bluegrass. If you think that bluegrass is not your cup of tea, you should really come and listen. It is a relaxing evening with friends and the music will surprise you. Think about sipping some cold lemonade tapping your toes to some great music. If that doesn't scream summertime, I don't know what does.

If you have ever thought about sending you child to camp, but were not all that crazy about over night camps, we have just the solution. How about trying the Chisago Lakes Safety Camp? Held at Ojiketa Regional Park in Chisago City, the camp teaches kids the importance of all around safety while having a blast doing so. The camp is for third and fourth graders, and take it from me folks, they absolutely love it. My son did it last year and had the time of his life. Both my son and daughter will be at Safety Camp this year. Look for Safety Camp Registration info in this edition of the Press.

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