Estate Sale
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

On September 11 we will start one of our biannual estate sales. We have some wonderful items, including some unique antiques and some larger pieces of furniture. We have 34 Rinx records that are used for dancing on roller skates, an old violin and wooden case, a very large easel, a very old Lionel train set, a treadle Singer sewing machine in very good shape, old postcards, John Deere pictures, nice bar stools, wonderful glassware including Fenton and cut glass, pewter, an elephant collection as well as many other fun and unique items. This is just a small sampling. We have started using the back end of our store during our estate sales because we just don't have enough room in our regular retail area. The sale starts at 10:07 a.m. on Monday, September 11.

We Learn from our Customers
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

A couple of years ago a customer brought us several big boxes of Dutch books. Her mother had passed away and she didn't know where else to take them. We have been selling them for $1.00 each and only have a few left. However, we had a lady in the other day from another state and she was trying to teach herself Dutch. She bought a book and was going to translate it through her computer program. She was learning Dutch through Duolingo. Duolingo is a completely free application that shows you how to read and talk the Dutch language, or pretty much any other language. I have signed up for five minutes a day and I'm amazed at what I've learned already. We thought we would pass this on to our newsletter readers. I had looked at some other sources of learning Dutch before, but most are quite expensive and also look like they would be quite time consuming. This program just reminds me in my e-mails that I have to do my five minutes. And it has really been a lot of fun.

Juliana Korver's Frisbee Adventures
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

In our last newsletter we told you about Juliana going to the UK to take part in the WFDF World Overall Flying Disc Championship. The weather was not very conducive to good health and Juliana came down with quite a cold while playing in the cold and rain. Nevertheless, she still did very well. The overall is similar to a heptathalon and consists of 7 Frisbee events. Points in each event are accumulated to determine the overall winner and in this case the World Champion. Dispite her cold, Juliana managed to take first in Accuracy, DDC, Disc Golf, and Freestyle. This was enough to give her the overall win and another Overall World Championships title (her third). Click here to see Juliana's Freestyle routine with her partner Bianca Strunz from Berlin, Germany.

Following the Overall, she travelled to Northern Italy to compete in the FPA Freestyle World Championships. Although she didn’t place in this tournament, she was in the finals for two events, which is pretty good for someone quite new to this discipline. This pretty much marks the 2 year anniversary of when she started working on Freestyle and it was the second Freestyle World Championships that she has attended. The weather was quite different than England with highs around 100 degrees every day. Juliana was not able to place (top 3) in any of the divisions she competed in, but she had a wonderful experience in the beautiful town of Udine and can't wait for next years FPA Worlds which will be held in Trnava, Slovakia next August. Juliana will be working hard this year to make it to the podium at next year's event.

RAGBRAI
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

RAGBRAI was a great success in Orange City. Over 650 volunteers kept our city nice and clean and gave our visitors a first class experience. There was a music group that performed on a stage set up about 60 feet from our front door and we had to remove some items from our shelves because of the vibrations from the music. We actually weren't very busy until about 2:00 Saturday afternoon, but after that we had people in the store until about 8:30 that evening. It was really fun hearing their stories and seeing where they all came from. Our board of states had many of the states turned over (see our "Perusing our Guest Book" article). We sold quite a few Rickaroons, which is an energy bar made especially for athletes who need quick energy (See our add in the left column for Rickaroons). Our Chamber Director, Mike Hofman, said he was ready to do it again and I believe many of the volunteers would support that.

New Products
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

This week we will be getting in a nice order of new discs. The college students all have a Welcome to Orange City coupon book that contains two coupons each worth 15% off on disc golf items. Other new items include a new bolt of Warm & Natural batting for quilting, more USA License Plate games, Christmas present ideas and school supplies. Our supply of Mistral soap has just been replenished and several “new” Dutch antiques have come in recently.

Margaret Fernow Recovering
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

Those of you who have been in on Monday or Tuesday have probably met our very friendly worker with the very white, attractive, hair. Margaret has been off work for several weeks now waiting to have a hip replacement. Well, the operation was a success and she is recovering at home now. We look forward for when she can join us again and hope that it won't be too long from now.

Perusing our Guest Book
By Owner: Bonnie Meier

We had more states represented this month than usual because of RAGBRAI coming to town. This month we had people visit our store from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Vermont, Wisconsin, and all over Iowa. That’s over half the states in the union. We also had people from Yokosuka, Japan and Calgary, Canada.