LS #92, Karen's Sleigh Ride

This is another one I got toward the end of just trying to finish up my collection and have only read once, but I did actually remember one of the plot points.

This book starts out with Karen, Hannie, Andrew, and Emily making Christmas crafts at the big house. Karen and Andrew are spending December there, and even though it's only December 2, the kids are totally excited about all things Christmas, except Emily, who only wants to talk about presents. Karen and Hannie try to teach her some Christmas carols, but they're interrupted when Kristy comes in with some bad news. The Stones' barn has burned down, although luckily none of their animals were hurt. Karen's pretty upset, because she went to farm camp at the Stone farm. (LS#75, Karen's County Fair) Karen offers to share her bedroom with Ollie the lamb if he needs a place to stay, but her family are a bunch of jerks and say no. Then she suggests they could have a barn raising like she saw on TV. Everyone will bring food and spend a day building a new barn. Again, Karen's family are a bunch of jerks who have to ruin her brilliant plan by pointing out that nobody knows how to build barns anymore. Daddy does say he'll call Mr. and Mrs. Stone and offer to help.

It turns out that the Stones were underinsured, and won't have enough to rebuild their barn. Daddy says they might have to sell their animals or move to a smaller farm, and everyone is really upset by this, although probably not as upset as Mr. and Mrs. Stone. Karen and Kristy go to try and think up ways to help, and Emily comes in and starts trying to get into Kristy's dresser to look for presents. Then Karen comes up with a plan and calls a family meeting. She says everyone but Nannie is there, because Nannie has decided to give Emily a bath. But since Nannie is the only person not present, I guess she'll have to wait for Emily to get out of the meeting to commence the bath.

Karen's brilliant idea is that they can have a winter festival at the Stones' farm. They can have snowman making and ice sculpting contests, skating on the pond, sleigh rides, refreshments, and general merriment. The Stones agree, and they all put in a ton of work to get ready. Karen helps Kristy and some of her friends clean Mary Anne's family's barn to temporarily house the Stones' displaced animals. She informs us that Mary Anne's stepmother feeds them lunch of all natural turkey hot dogs on whole wheat buns, and they are "all right." I guess Karen isn't much for whole grains. Karen also helps Sam and Charlie fix up the Stones' old sleigh to use for the sleigh rides. And she and her classmates make signs about the festival during art class. A lot of other people are volunteering to make refreshments and things. This festival is a lot of work.

There is a meeting and between some funds that have already been raised and the projected outcome of the festival, they will have raised about $5000. Karen thinks this is a lot, but it turns out that it's only about half of what the Stones need to rebuild the barn.

The night of the festival arrives, and tons of people crowd onto the Stone Farm to take part in the action, such as it is. The festival is one of those things that sounds nice in theory but once the people arrive and eat a refreshment I don't really know what they're doing after that. Milling around and making there be too many people in a small space I guess.

Karen, Hannie, and Nancy win second prize in the snowman contest with their snow bunny. Claudia wins third prize. I guess being the best thirteen year old artist only gets you so far when you're competing with Karen Brewer. First prize goes to a contestant who made a snow angel. I know this probably is meant to imply that they did angel wings on their snowman and made a snow halo, but I'm going to just pretend that the winner flopped down and made an actual snow angel. Then they go on a sleigh ride. Then there is a little ceremony where Watson has Karen present a check to the Stones. Karen feels sorry that they couldn't do more, but when Mr. Stone looks at the check it is the exact amount they needed to rebuild the barn.

When they are taking things down and getting ready to go, Karen overhears some people talking. It turns out that they really didn't raise enough, but Watson paid the difference out of his own pocket but didn't really want to make a big public deal out of it. (That's the part of the book I remembered.)

Emily has still been talking about presents the whole book, and she trashes Karen's room looking for presents. Karen yells at her but then remembers that Emily is just little and it's really hard to wait for things when you're little, so she gives Emily a few small presents in the days leading up to Christmas. Little things like a tennis ball with Emily's initials written on it and a barrette Karen doesn't wear anymore. It's really quite thoughtful of Karen. Also, I know I say this a lot, but seriously, how cute is Emily?