This is a “Save the Date” notice, especially if you are from Illinois.

Final plans are being made for an Illinois Day Celebration on Saturday, Jan. 25. It will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Fountain Hills Community Center, 13001 N. La Montana Drive.

The Illinois Day is being organized by the L. Alan Cruikshank River of Time Museum.

A variety of activities are planned for the afternoon. Be watching The Times and Let’s Go in the coming weeks for additional details about the event.

The museum held a successful Wisconsin Fest March 16 and the board members decided to expand the concept by adding another state celebration this year. The 2014 Wisconsin Fest will be held again in March.

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The “Holiday in the Hills” Christmas sales promotion comes to an end with the Grand Prize Drawings tomorrow. The promotion began the week before Thanksgiving. Drawings were held weekly with five $25 winners picked from each of the three previous weeks.

Tomorrow, Dec. 19, all of the weekly winners will have their coupons re-entered into the bin containing this week’s weekly drawing winners and entries.

We will then draw the three Grand prize winners. These prizes are $500 for first, $300 for second and $200 for third.

So, go out today and sign up for the final drawings. And do some last minute shopping at the same time.

We find ourselves just a week away from Christmas and two weeks away from year’s end.

That means the staff is busy working on the year-end wrap-ups. They will run in the Jan 1st and 8th editions.

Next year is a big anniversary for The Times. The June 25th edition will mark our 40th anniversary. We will be printing a special edition that will have stories and photos of the newspaper’s 40 years of covering the news of Fountain Hills.

It doesn’t seem possible that 40 years have passed.

Since Christmas and New Year’s fall on the next two Wednesdays, we will have a change in our delivery schedules. Be looking for your edition of The Times on Tuesday if you have home delivery.

To meet that schedule, The Times will be printed on Monday evening these next two weeks.

To meet that presstime, deadlines are also different for the next two editions. All display advertising is to be submitted by Thursday at 10 a.m. for the following week’s edition. Classified deadline is Friday at 2 p.m.

All letters to the editor, press releases and meeting notices are to be submitted by Friday at 10 a.m.

Normal deadlines and delivery schedules will resume with the Jan 8th edition.

So, what are your plans for Christmas?

We’ll be having a Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchange with our grandson, Hunter. My mom, brother Steve and sister-in-law Linda are coming from the west Valley. Daughter Holly and her family are coming in from California. Son Brent, his girlfriend, Gina, and her son, Michael, and good friends Frank and Janie Kainrath who all live in Fountain Hills, will be there, too.

Daughter Toni and her husband Jason can’t make it in until Christmas morning from Las Vegas. She works in retailing and has to work until midnight on Christmas Eve. We’ll be watching on Skype Daughter Tammy‘s family opening presents on Christmas morning in New Jersey.

Daughter Dani is there living at Tammy’s until Tammy has her baby, which is expected in early January.

Here’s wishing you all the very best and Merry Christmas.

And Happy 16th Anniversary to my wife, Diane.