Simon Evening of Giving at Tippecanoe Mall a Great Start to the Holiday Week!

I always talk about what a wonderful community we have here in Lafayette and last night at the Mall the great community spirit was alive and well. WLFI was proud to part of the event and of course our on-air staff which is committed to you and the community loved greeting and meeting folks and thanking them for their generosity. You see from left to right our videographer Jamie Long, Kristin Crowley, Yours Truly, Steve Clark, and Laura Kirtley.

There were many smiling faces and Richard Markoff who is the Executive Vice President of the Simon Youth Foundation really appreciated everybody's support. He noted how welcome our community's and television station's enthusiasm was. Lafayette really shined through compared to other parts of the country this event has taken place in. I explained to him that Lafayette is certainly a place you cannot find anywhere else and he agreed. I estimated about 1,000 shoppers this year and Richard noted this was about twice the turnout compared to last year. I had the pleasure of also meeting the A-Team which is full of wonderful ladies that volunteer at dozens of events around town and when they give their time up for great causes like this one, Kohls donates 500 dollars. Great job and thank you Kohls! Here are some other shining stars of the evening including Courtney who was one of the many smiling volunteers and our very own Jeff Smith and Niccole Kahn.




This event helped more than 40 local organizations by having folks purchase 10 dollar coupons which allowed them to do some good shopping and make a big difference. Seven of the dollars went to local charities while the other three dollars went to the Simon Youth Foundation. Niccole Caan told me she got a lot of her Christmas shopping done last night! Now that is impressive and she enjoyed her own private mall to shop in so she didn't have to fight the crowds like you normally do this time of year. There was also an auction that included some great gifts like a diamond necklace and a GPS system. So once again thank you Lafayette for coming through again in a big way!

Now some folks at the mall did ask me to deliver a great looking Thanksgiving forecast. I made no promises, but I made sure to tell things were looking good despite a sloppy start to our work week. It is one of the busiest travel weeks of the year and certainly one of my biggest forecast weeks of the year. So yes I am fired up. Just ask my wife how hard I ran last night on the tread mill. By the way my wife Julie is becoming a really good runner and she has picked up the pace. I think I was more excited about her running with me than anything else and yes I was trying to show off around her without embarrassing her too much. I am proud of her! Now about the forecast....oh yes I still am very optimistic about heaps of mashed potatoes, turkey, and some nice weather all in time for Thanksgiving. Now next week could be a much different story with our snow chances going way up. I will talk more about this here on the blog so stay blogged in! Snow kidding. Some maps are showing several inches of snow with not one but two possible snow events. A snow day after the holiday cannot be ruled out, but let's just take it one day at a time. One day at a time.