“Variety, variety”

It’s Variety Club weekend here. The telethon started last night, and will end today at 6PM, with the goal of raising funds and community awareness for children’s charities. Variety Club gives money and other supports to over 100 children’s charities in Iowa. Childserve, for example, has been a recipient of Variety Club generosity since 1979, with on-going financial support and Sunshine Vans. If you’ve ever been to Des Moines, you’ve probably seen at least one of these distinquishable vans shuttling through the city.

This telethon is broadcast on channel Five, and besides the ongoing telephone panels, includes numerous interviews with children’s charity representatives, with children and families who have benefited, and LOTS of entertainment with a cast of celebrities. For example, Miss World is always there. This year, “Superman” is there (he’s from just south of Des Moines), along with other TV “stars”. 15 years ago, when we first moved to Des Moines, Tiny Tim was usually there. It’s always fun to watch. Lloyd was answering phones for awhile last night, and then again this AM with a whole crew of other Childserve emplyees, all wearing the same T-shirts.. At one point, he decided to make a donation from Emma Kuiper and also one from Claire Kuiper (as if they had called in to his number). When the microphone came his way, he read the names of the donors aloud. So Emma and Claire were “on TV”:) We remember when Michael was on the panel with Lloyd over 10 years ago. He was SOOO excited! I remember him going back and forth from Lloyd’s lap to Andy Bales lap (Andy was next to Lloyd on the panel and was representing Good Samaritan Urban Ministries, where Michael used to live with his Mom). The past few years, Michael has been there as a young man, with his Dad,Julius, who usually serves on a phone panel for awhile with a bunch of other Pepsi people.

At 4PM today, we are going back to the “Palace” at AdventureLand where it is happening, because Variety is going to buy at wheelchair from Childserve. Variety, in turn, is going to donate it to a child. In-between the Variety trips out to Adventureland, we are trying to do the rest of the weekend: some reading, some running, lots of coffee breaks, some painting (in Kristin’s old bedroom, which was also Salome’s….it is now going to be plum purple), some cooking ahead for anticipated visitors this week, and several videos. We saw “Man of the Year”, with Robin Williams, “The Guardian” with Kevin Costner, and later tonight, when the Variety stuff is all done, we are gonna look at “Quinceanera”. This one was recommended by one of my (Vicki’s) colleagues. So by the time the workweek starts, we will have had our fill of nestling on the couch watching movies. We are so spoiled at this time of our lives:) It’s great.

On the pic below, you can see Variety’s newest heart. Lloyd has 15 different ones in his collection now.

Posted by vicki Sunday, Mar 4th, 2007 at 12:20pm