Celebrate ’08 – Come Home to Kingsland is the theme for the 39th annual event that begins this weekend with the Miss Aqua Boom Scholarship Pageant and resumes on the Fourth of July with all-day events and parades, on and off the water, and a fireworks finale seen for miles around.

Saturday’s pageant activities culminate with crowing of the 2008 reigning Miss Aqua Boom, winner of a $3,500 scholarship. Five contestants will vie for the title this year.

38th Annual Miss Aqua Boom Krystal Horrigan of Burnet will confer the crown on her successor.

Girls age four to 18 compete in five divisions of the annual pageant. Tiny Miss, Little Miss and Young Miss contests begin at 2:30 p.m.; Miss Teen at 7:30 p.m. and Miss Aqua Boom at 8 p.m. at Kingsland Community Center.

All 45 of this year’s contestants have been encouraged by a committee with a firm belief in the value of pageants in the lives of young women. Three are former Miss Aqua Boom contestants who have valued the experience as they have gone on to careers and are returning to give back to the pageant.

Miss Aqua Boom 1985 Sandra Lueck of Burnet is the pageant coordinator and she is joined by pageant chairs and former pageant participants Monica Cloud of Kingsland and Jo Carol Thornblom of Highland Haven.

Mistress of Ceremonies Billye Fietz of Horseshoe Bay allowed her own daughter to enter a first pageant at the age of 10, but she, herself didn’t begin the experience until the year 2000.

She was crowned All American Lady last October holds the titles of All American Ambassador and Texas Lady for Global American.

“It has been a great motivator for me,” she said. “I could never have been the president of South Llano County Republican Women, stand up and speak with my knees knocking without pageant experience.”

Fietz moved to Horseshoe Bay with her husband Bill after his retirement. Back in Albuquerque, N.M., she owned and operated a travel agency. Her oldest daughter, who had continued to enter pageants through the years, had just won one in Washington State and called her mother about entering the same pageant as an at-large contestant to represent New Mexico.

“She thought it would be a mother-daughter experience,” said Fietz. “I didn’t do well that first year, but I went back the next and was runner-up.”

“I will compete for Elite Texas American Beauty next month and in the National American Beauty Pageant in San Antonio in November,” she said.

Aqua Boom is the annual Independence Day festival of the Kingsland/Lake LBJ Chamber of commerce and programs outlining the events are found all around town and at chamber offices at 2743 RR 1431, 325-388-6211. A schedule also is posted on the chamber website: kingslandchamber.org.

The Kingsland Community Center is located at 3451 Rose Hill Drive, one block south of the Kingsland Community Center marquee on RR 1431. A $3 admission fee is charged for evening events.