Mini Visit to Mason City

My good friend, Chris, needed to use a groupon she bought a while back and never used.  It was for a night at the Clarion Hotel in Mason City and some spending money for eating at their restaurant.  She also had to use the groupon before the end of Sept. because they are tearing down the hotel.  Sooo Chris invited Pat and me to come and share the room and meal with her.  Did I  mention there was an indoor pool?  So Chris knew that Pat and I would use the pool, which we did.  In fact, we also used it for recording my ALS ice bucket challenge.  See it on Face Book.

When we arrived, Chris, as the great hostess that she is, prepared a brunch for us.  Then we toured Mason City, especially the Frank Lloyd Wright Hotel downtown.  Very interesting, but I didn't have my camera.  Darn.  Then we ate at the restaurant.  After that we were content to hang out in the room and watch the Emmy's with visiting in between.  You know these are the Golden Years.  Right?

The next day, after swimming, doing the ALS ice bucket challenge, having a nice free hot breakfast, and checking out of the hotel, we toured Clear Lake, mostly the Surf Ballroom where Buddy Holly performed his last concert before his plane crashed and he dead at a very young age.  It was very interesting to see all the celebrities who performed there.

"Let Me Entertain You."  Sing to that tune.  The stage lights are blinding.  You cannot see anyone out in the audience when you are on stage.

There is an autograph room just off the stage where the performers have left their autographs.  There were a lot of them.   Here are a few of them.

The phone Buddy Holly used to call his wife just before he left the Surf to board the plane that tragically crashed.

We also drove around the lake and stopped to enjoy it for a little bit.  No boat though.

After a very delicious meal, we said our good-byes.   It was a very nice and relaxing visit.  I guess it was a trial run for our GROUP visit there next summer.  I'll be looking forward to it as well.  Thank you, Chris, for a delightful time.

Boys Town Magic Show and Added Visit in Omaha

Every year the Omaha Magic Club has a summer pot luck "picnic" and magic show in their grand hall at Boys' Town in Omaha.  Bob was one of the performers, and we invited Logan and Sheyanne to join us, which they did. 

One of Logan's and Sheyanne's most enjoyable time was learning how to do Poi's, which are fancy ribbons weighted with tennis balls, and the idea is to move them in a variety of circular patterns.  This is the "teacher" presenter of the Poi's.

She also taught us how to make simpler poi's using fancy long socks, putting a tennis ball in the toes, and tying a know at the top of the socks.  Then you twirl them.  Logan and Sheyanne really loved playing with these.  It kept them entertained for a long time.

Before eating, the magicians roam around and interact with the audience doing close up magic.  

Here is Bob performing his tricks.  He got a compliment for involving the most people from the audience.  His tricks were mainly ESP type tricks.  They are amazing.

First he made some "runestones" appear.

He gave each participant a stone.

They had to "pick" the most magic stone and give it to one of the participants.  Without Bob's watching, they followed his directions of moving around.  Then Bob was able to pick the one who had the magic stone that they had picked.  Amazing.

His other trick was having these 3 participants pick 5 turkey decorated plates that had 4 digits on them.  From those they each picked one of the plates and discarded the other 4.  Then, one by one, each participant gave one of their digits to Bob which he wrote on a board in columns representing a  place value.  Then they each picked another one of their digits which were on the plates.  Again Bob wrote them on the board in columns, representing a different place value.   He continued until he got 3 four digit numbers.

Then he  picked a 4th participant to add up the numbers.  Amazingly Bob had written a predicted number on another turkey decorated plate that he had displayed for all to see at the beginning of the trick.  When he revealed his number, it was the same as the one the participant got when he added up the numbers.  Wow!  How did he do that?

Here are some of the other magicians who did some really amazing tricks.  I'm not going to explain all of them.

Sheyanne and one of her looks of amazement.

Logan watching intently.

I didn't get ALL the looks of amazement, but here's another one.

A lot of magicians mix in humor and comedy which makes them even more entertaining.  Here's an example.

Logan laughing.

It's always amazing to see the egg dropped into the glass trick, and he did it very well.

This poor boy was waiting for this magician to pour water over him after having shown us the water he poured into the container he was using.  The boy was given a torn up umbrella, 2 very small towel smaller then his hand, and a chicken to hold out for the water to be poured over instead of the boy.  Well when he poured the water, no water came out.  Whew.  That was a good thing.

Thank you to all the very entertaining magicians from the Omaha Magic  Club for a very entertaining show.

Of course whenever we go down, we have to go swimming so we did.  Notice all the times, Logan is under water and even swimming, his style.  A few toys may have helped him feel comfortable going under.  Oh and he had some new very awesome goggles which had 3D skulls on the eye parts of the goggles.  Freaky.  Sheyanne is always wanting to learn new tricks so she learned the "Nestea Plunge."  For those of you too young to know what that is, you fall into the pool backwards.  Logan even did it.  Sheyanned also did a triple flip in the pool.  Logan and Sheyanne are great kids to "play" with.

Mitzi and Al watched them swim for a while.  Then we all went out to dinner where Aly works.  It was fun to eat there  and enjoy her serving us.  She did a great job.

Sunday, we always enjoy going to church with the Cardonas.  Afterwards, we ate lunch with Aly and Logan.  No pictures but we had a nice visit.  Then it was off to Sioux Center.