For the Kids

This television season, we enjoyed watching The Celebrity Apprentice together. The thing that is beautiful about the Celebrity Apprentice is the way all of the people work together to raise money for various charities, showing the giving spirit of those we enjoy watching or listening to on a daily basis.

This season showed an unprecedented amount of giving, with something like 3 million dollars raised for various charities in a time when it seems money everywhere is exceedingly tight.

Last night we finally got to see the season finale and it was awesome.

The two contenders at the very end of the show represented an organization helping give hearing aids to children in third world countries and St Jude's Children's Hospital.

Both are causes that are important to me, and obviously St Jude's is important to Caramon. (For a brief and beautiful amount of time, I served as an interpreter for a deaf family in North Carolina. Words cannot describe what it is like to help a son talk to his mother, to tell her the simple phrase of, "I love you. Thank you for everything you do for me.")

We get asked frequently if Caramon went to St Jude's. The simple answer is no, he did not.

We were quite lucky, his cancer was not only very common, but it was easily treatable. There was no need to travel the extra distance when we had a wonderful Children's Hospital less than half an hour from our home in Ohio. However, it is due to the research at St Jude's that we can thank for the ability to say "easily treatable".

Like St Jude's, our hospital worked to try to make things better for families going through this terrible tragedy that is known as pediatric cancer.

John Rich won, which gave him another quarter of a million dollars for St Jude's.

This is so important given how little money pediatric cancer research truly gets.

We wanted to share this video with you from the finale of The Celebrity Apprentice. It is probably one of the most beautiful moments of television we have ever watched. It is Marlee and John performing his new song, "For the Kids" at the live finale event. The words of the song are matched in beauty by the signing. Watch for the end where instead of typical applause, the entire crowd applauds the deaf way - waving hands "jazz hands" style.

You can purchase a single of the CD and $.50 goes to St Jude's or you can purchase it on iTunes where proceeds also goes to St Jude's. We've purchased our copy and if we can find a way to work it into our giving of pillowcases, we will. Why? Because it really is "For the Kids".

John Rich, thank you for your efforts on The Celebrity Apprentice to help kids like Caramon going through the battle of their lives. Marlee Matlin, thank you for trying to give the gift of hearing to those who live in silence.

Lady Ozma and Caramon, The Million Pillowcase Kid

Big Event at Youth Last Night!

We will have photos and a summary for you later, we're a little swamped over the next week. Stay tuned!

However, the skinny - we used our regularly scheduled youth activity at Church to let Caramon work on his Eagle Project. Leaders and teenagers alike took up stations and we left with lots of finished pillowcases, pinned pillowcases, and stuffed pillowcases (stuffed with goodies).

Expect more details later! However, I did update our pillowcase count!

--Lady Ozma and Caramon, The Million Pillowcase Kid

First Official Sew-A-Thon - With Pictures!

Ok, here we go! You ready?

The awesomeness kid of the day is our buddy J. He offered to let us invade his 11th birthday party and show the kids how to make pillowcases. He and his mom picked out some of the coolest fabrics. We had some of the coolest kids show up and we got a lot of good stuff accomplished!

One of the neighbours came over with ten pillowcases she made before the party. That was really cool. She also helped a little and plans to make more pillowcases. To our friends up north, thanks for working so hard on this project! Your support? Totally rocks! And gives us hope!

Joram, Caramon the Million Pillowcase Kid's brother, used his mad dog sewing skills to help us teach the other children and prepare the "hot dogs" for making. Mmmm hot dogs.

It was super crazy and super wild and SUPER FUN!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get how to photos. So no tutorial yet. We'll continue to work on this. I promise.

Now, are you ready for some photos? Yeah? Well here goes:

Yup, it was super fun! Once again, THANK YOU!

Are you interested in hosting a Million Pillowcase Sew-A-Thon? Ask us what you need and if we can come!

We have to look at the calendar at our local church building to see when during the crazy holiday season we can host a sew-a-thon here in our town. I hope we can do something. My table is but only so big. We'll make it work if we need to!

--Lady Ozma and the Caramon, Million Pillowcase Kid