Bike Giveaway

On Sunday, Variety the Children's Charity handed out 180 bikes to selected Boys and Girls Club kids. I'm on the board for Variety so I was out at the event and took these pictures. I've never seen such happy kids. It was like Christmas in September! Helpers and local police officers also helped fit the kids with helmets and the kids had to promise to always ride safely.

To learn more about the charity or to donate just go to www.varietyiowa.com. Our reporter Joe Augustine also did a nice story on the event, you can find it in the video section of our website.

Rachel Pierce

rpierce@myabc5.com

Hello High Definition!!!

It's official. ABC5 is now HD! We've been anticipating this big change for a while and the big day finally arrived. We couldn't be more pleased. It would be difficult (if not impossible) to try and explain what our station had to undergo in order to acheive HD status, but it's well worth it. We think you'll be extremely pleased with the new quality of our programming and newscasts. Please let Rachel and I know what you think. We also welcome your feedback.

Amanda
akrenz@myabc5.com

Baby Food

Lydia is now five and a half months old and we've started giving her baby food about a week ago. Every parent is different but with the research and advice we've received, we're doing kind of a different route. First we aren't doing rice cereal, I feel there's no nutritional value and they there's ingredients in it that I don't know how to pronounce...so no thanks. Instead with the help my, as seen on TV, "Magic Bullet" I'm making my own baby food. We started with white root vegetables like parsnips (the picture above are parsnips), rutabagas and turnips. It was so easy to make. I peeled and boiled the veggies. Then cut them up and threw in a little water into the Magic Bullet and tah-dah, purred baby food! It made a lot of food, so I put them into all these little labeled freezer containers and we're all set. She seems to like it okay, minus the grimace face she gives during the first spoonful.

Today I introduced a new food, squash. She made a face and then stopped and realized she loved it. The spoon would get close to her and she would grab for it and try to get it in her mouth. Looks like I'll be picking up more squash at the farmers market!

Later I'll probably introduce some sort of organic grain.

If you have any baby food tips I'd love to hear from you! E-mail me at rpierce@myabc5.com.

Rachel Pierce

12 weeks later....

I've returned to work and the blogging world! I had a wonderful maternity leave, hard to believe it's over. As I said on the air, it was hard to leave my new baby but when you get to come back to a job where you like what you do and who you work with it makes it so much easier (I'm not just saying that in case the boss reads this).

Rachel's done a great job keeping up the blog. Thanks for your patience if you've been antsy to hear from me.

I had the pleasure of moderating the debate between Governor Culver and former Governor Branstad in Sioux City at the remarkable Orpheum Theater. Here are some photos courtesy of the Sioux City Journal.

Above is a shot of our rehearsal.

This is a nice shot of the theater. This was taken right before the broadcast started. You can see me in the middle of the stage with Larry Wentz. He was the other moderator. He's an anchor with KCAU in Sioux City and was a pleasure to work with.

The debate.

Got caught on camera adjusting my earpiece.

Shaking hands after a lively hour of television.

And again, the beautiful theater. It was such a great venue for this event. If you missed the debate, I believe you can still watch it on Iowa Public Television, they've been rerunning it.

It was an incredible experience to be part of this debate. Granted, it was a bit stressful coming back from maternity leave and trying to tackle this big of a project, but the debate was a huge success.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Amanda

akrenz@myabc5.com

Big Busy Weekend

(Our running group: Rachel Pierce, Sarah Danik and Heather Yost)

My big busy weekend started on Friday. I took off from work and headed to Waterloo with my sister Natalie Licht and my daughter Lydia. The reason for the trip, so I could be there to run the Park to Park half marathon on Saturday. We had fun at the hotel. Our friends were also staying there and we all went swimming. Lydia's first time in a pool. She didn't like it at first but then seemed to not mind.

Saturday I ran the half marathon with my good friends Heather Yost and Sarah Danik. I was really proud of us. We averaged 8:42 miles and our total time was 1:54. My goal was to run it under two hours and we did it!

(Above: Heather Yost and Rachel Pierce)
(Below: Sarah Danik, Rachel Pierce and Lydia)

After the race we went to Brad Edward's house for the big Cy-Hawk game. It was a blast. Brad and his family know how to throw a party.

(Above: Rachel Pierce and Natalie Licht)

(Below: Brad Edwards)

On Sunday we went to church and then headed down to the East Village for the Sunday Bazaar. The Bazaar will be going on every Sunday from noon-to-four until October 31st. The event has antique furninture and clothes, jewerly, food, plants, live music and much more. Plus all the shops in the area are open too.

(Below: Amy Hassebrock, event organizer and owner of Aimee in the East Village)

Rachel Pierce

rpierce@myabc5.com

Great Big Family Reunion

Every Sunday of the Labor Day weekend is our big Licht family reunion held in a little park in Wisconsin. The event is anything but little. This Sunday about four hundred people were in attendance. It's a big potluck and all we do is eat, socialize and play games. It's always a good time. The reunion has been going on for years. My parents went after they got married, that was 38 years ago, so its been going on for at least that long.


The picture above is our family tree. From my great grandparents Joseph Licht and Magdalena Reba there are more than a thousand people! Most still live up in central Wisconsin.
I'm glad we were able to make the trip home and spend some quality time with family, even if it was a quick trip.

Rachel Pierce

Above: Grandma Jenny Licht holding my daughter Lydia.

Great Grandma Hazel Licht, holding Lydia

Me and my husband Matthew Pierce

The line for the potluck at the reunion.

At the reunion

Sophie The Giraffe

My daughter may only be four and a half months old but she already has a favorite toy. We picked up Sophie the Giraffe at Suite Dreams in Clive before Lydia was born. I pulled it out of its box when Lydia was about two months old and we quickly learned she loved this toy. The small hunk of plastic was more than twenty bucks, but really its worth its weight in gold. Its actually the number one selling toy on Amazon. It must be the shape of the giraffes head and legs are perfect for a baby's mouth. She just chews on this toy non-stop. Now that she can pick her toys she always goes for Sophie. If she's getting cranky, we hand her Sophie.

Well we were leaving town this past weekend for a wedding in Omaha and we could not find Sophie anywhere. We turned the house upside down looking for her, with no luck. Even though the dogs stay away from Lydia's toys we wonder if Sophie is buried out back in the flower beds. If that's the case it's now my dogs most expensive toy. Needless to say we couldn't go another day without her so we spend another twenty plus bucks for another Sophie and we once again have a content baby.

Rachel Pierce

rpierce@myabc5.com