Beautiful Summer Evening

Our town has a beautiful little common area, in the historic part of town, with a quaint gazebo. They have fairs, fests and concerts there regularly and tonight was the last in a summer series of a renowned  German band.  We were fully unprepared as we did not have enough chairs or a picnic dinner with us, (or a camera with a charged battery),  so we only stayed for a bit, but it was lovely.  

People are serious about these things.  There were people with coolers, picnic baskets, dollies with chairs stacked upon them and of course even folks who had made runs to Sonic, Subway, Wendy's, etc to bring something along.  We had two chairs and two water bottles for the five of us...boy we need to work on the locals thing. There were all kinds of girls and boys dressed up in traditional garb and there was even a grown man in his own Lederhosen...I'm not sure that was entirely necessary, but it did add to the ambiance.  

Here is a shot of a few of the young ladies and one little boy (who clearly is sad about something).

We relaxed for about 45 minutes before heading home for dinner but I imagine folks stayed much later.

We look forward to the next concert, where we will be fully prepared with much food, enough chairs for all of us and a camera battery that is fully charged.

On the way to town tonight, Brooke saw a help wanted sign at the Dairy Queen (which I've passed by a million times and didn't know it existed there) and said she wished she could work there??????(must be the lure of free ice cream).  The boys explained that she was too young to work and after a few minutes she said, most seriously, "ahhh, doesn't matter, I already have a job waiting for me."  I said "oh yeah, where?"  She said, again most seriously, "at the library in Valdez, they told me there would be a job waiting for me whenever I want to come back." Ahhhh, the innocence.  And while I'm telling Brooke stories...once I asked Brooke what she wanted to do when she grew up.  She mentioned a few things and said "...oh and also I want to be a librarian."  Wow, I thought to myself, Charlie and I have done a great job raising our kids. They are all avid readers, in fact Brooke loves reading so much she wants to be a librarian.  So I said "yeah I really love books too."  She said "no, I really wanna work there for the peace and quiet."  And there you have it!  She does love the quiet...we were making lasagne the other day and she asked me to be quiet while she was laying out the cheese.  I thought she wanted to concentrate, then she whispers...don't you just love how quiet it is when I'm putting on the cheese...don't talk when I do the next layer in a few minutes."  And I didn't!  AAAhhh...she's just a gem!  

Tomorrow morning we are off to Corpus Christi.  Should be fun...I'm hoping the recent hurricane didn't do too much to the town.  My battery is fully charged so, we'll see.  We are looking for the beach and some seafood.