Our 5 Minutes of Fame

We were surprised a few weeks ago to receive a phone call telling us that our local library branch had selected our family as their "Library Family of the Year" for 2010. There are 5 library branches in Amarillo and each branch chooses a family every year that they (the library staff) feel utilizes all the many library services.

I admit that I am at the library a lot -- probably 3-4 times each week. During the school year I usually stop by during the day by myself but in the summer the kids frequently go with me. I generally don't stay long, but will pick a few pictures books off the shelves for the kids and almost always have books or audio books that I've placed on hold waiting to be picked up. So almost all the librarians know me by name (and they are a wonderful group -- so friendly and helpful). I love being able to manage our library account from home and request books through the computer. I also love being able to request (free of charge) practically any book that our library doesn't have in their system through the Interlibrary Loan program. Needless to say, our family loves the library!

The first part of being a Library Family was to go to the downtown library and have our picture taken for the plaque that gets displayed at the library branch. Fortunately this wasn't a terrible ordeal, despite the fact that Brian and Hannah had both been sick with the flu. (Hannah had stayed home from school that day with a fever, but we tried to keep her away from everybody and they let our family go first.)

Then last Saturday we attended a special ceremony honoring each of the library families. We got to stand up at the front while the librarian from our branch introduced us and told a little bit about our family. We heard a few words from the mayor of Amarillo (the kids were excited to meet her) and a few other people. I think the kid's favorite part were the fruit and cookies!

As part of the ceremony, we were presented with our own plaque to keep (an identical one is displayed at the library) and we also received a book bag and a very nice World Atlas book from Barnes & Noble.

They had told us the newspaper usually prints up a little story about the library families, but I haven't seen anything yet so I'm not sure if they will this year since it's been a week now. The kids have been waiting to take our plaque into their classes at school but they've been waiting to see if anything is printed in the paper.

It's an honor to be selected -- hooray for libraries!