La Mirada~Enjoy the California sun in February at Buccaneer Bay's large slides, which will be open this Saturday, February 4 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The cost is $4.95 for unlimited use, and includes Recreational Swim from noon to 5 p.m. in the 25-yard pool. The slides are open for anyone 48 inches and over.

For more information, call (562) 902-3191 or visit www.SplashLaMirada.com.

Recent News in La Mirada High Sports

Girls Soccer won at Mayfair, their perennial nemesis, by a score of 3-1 this past Monday for the second year in a row. The win puts the Matadores in position to win their second consecutive Suburban League crown.

Ileen Mejia scored two goals as the Mats (14-6-3, 7-1-0) begin looking towards the CIF playoffs.

In boys basketball, the Matadores (14-10, 5-3) lost to archrival Mayfair 67-50, however the playoff-bound Mats put up a fight against a Monsoon (18-5, 9-0) squad that is very tough.

In girls basketball, this past Friday night against Artesia, the Lady Mats were down by nine with 3 minutes left in the game. With: 15 left in the game they hit a three-pointer to send the game to OT, however they ended up bowing, 51-47.

This past Monday night, The Lady Matadores were down by only two at the half, 24-22, on the road against the Mayfair Monsoons, but ended up losing 55-46.

Alyssa Acuna led the Mats with 17 points.

The Mats (11-9, 4-3) are looking to make the playoffs for the first time under second year coach Nicole Hyde.  There could be a showdown with Cerritos on February 10^th for the final playoff spot, but a lot remains to be seen.

La Habra~Visit the La Habra Historical Museum, 215 E. La Habra Blvd, La Habra and learn about Betty Lou Nichols , the local artist who operated her ceramics business in La Habra from 1945-1962.

She is associated mostly with the popular head vases of the late 1940s and 1950s, yet Nichols also made a variety of figurines and paintings as well.

The exhibit, The Life and Art of Betty Lou Nichols, opens January 7 and runs through March 31, 2012.

There is no charge for admission. The museum is open on Saturday from 12-4 p.m.

Morgan Hurley, Daughter of La Mirada Lamplighter Publisher Dick Hurley, Remembers Early La Mirada and Welcomes the New Lamplighter. Look for this story in this weekends edition of the new Lamlighter.

When I first heard that the La Mirada Lamplighter might be stepping back into the spotlight in my beloved home town, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that.

After all, I was born right around the time my father, Richard (Dick) Hurley really began to come into his own with the original Lamplighter newspaper.

My older brother Jet was a few years older but away each week at school in Riverside, so until my sister Palmer and brother Blaze were born five and six years later, consecutively, the Lamplighter was my only sibling.

I say sibling because even though it was my dad's profession, my household lived and breathed that newspaper and it was an intimate part of my own childhood and life from my earliest days.

As a youngster, I proudly greeted every adult I ever met with, "do you know that little green newspaper, the Lamplighter? That's my daddy's paper."

I reveled in my dad's profession, accompanying him to the office while he worked, first in the stationery store down from Thrifty's in the Mall and then in an office in Ed Spitalnick's Realty office on Adelfa.

I can still smell the ink from the typing tape on his old fashioned Remington Rand typewriter, and the loud hum of his IBM Selectric in his later years.

Dad often brought me along when he had to do a photo shoot at public events, where he always held his Yashica Mat twin lens camera arms-length high above his 5'6" frame, eyes looking up into the viewfinder, to  get the best angle and shot over the crowd.

I was one of the first (if not the first) news-girls in town in 1975. I got up at 4 am every Thursday and 6 am every Saturday to stuff, fold, rubber-band and deliver up to 50 papers on my bicycle, to my neighborhood route , sandwiched between La Mirada Blvd and the Biola Creek.