Election Day, Night, and Party

Seriously, where is everyone?!
I've been behind on blogging for months! And now that I'm caught up with at least 10 posts in the queue . . . where'd everyone go?

I am determined to get caught up on blogging. And now that I've read all of my friends' blogs, I'm working on ours. So here goes. We've been doing so much that I've hardly had a chance to sit and post squat, so though I've mentioned some of these activities, here are pictures and recaps:

Remind me, have I mentioned that we live in a beautiful state? Oh yeah, I have. Well, we do. Here are some pictures from one of our nature hikes:

ELECTION DAY

We had a FANTASTIC Election Day. I've never before felt more involved and excited about the political process than I did this year and it was a lot of fun and a great high as well.

Our town goes all out with flags lining the historic main street part of town--they do this on lots of holidays: Flag Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, etc. It's so awesome.



We haven't felt comfortable putting out a political lawn sign given that our business is in our home and you could easily alienate people and affect your business over politics. That and, sadly, racism is alive and well, so that's an issue to consider as well. Mostly, it's been a business decision. Though on Election Day, we couldn't help ourselves and we simply wrote "VOTE" on our sandwich board sidewalk sign with a subliminal Obama message. :)
(We've photoshopped the business info from the bottom).



Here we are at the polls. No crazy laws here stopping us from wearing our political pins, so we did. What's cool is that we're in a college town and we were there when a HUGE group of college students walked together to the polling place from the college and it was a sea of Obama pins, shirts, and stickers. There was such a jubilant feeling of camaraderie and excitement.
It was palpable. And it was awesome.



We got to volunteer with the campaign by doing some canvassing, encouraging registered Dems to vote with reminders about polling places and times. We visited entire neighborhoods and helped to "Get Out the Vote!"






I didn't get a picture of us with our friends at the polls, but Rebecca and the kids did join us to do greeting at a couple of the polling places. It was fun to talk with other supporters and feel the excitement of the day/night. Rebecca had to get home to get ready for the party she hosted that evening at her house--18 of us gathered to watch the historic even together and it was
SO MUCH FUN to do it together. Anyway, here are the kids helping greet at the polls.


Election Party!

(Shawn, the lone McCain voter at the party, wore red to represent his vote. It's the only time you'll catch him in red, though, since he's otherwise as BYU blue as you can be, where red is the color of the enemy--seriously, he was a good sport to host us all)

4 families gathered together to talk, celebrate, and enjoy this historic event together

Rebecca was awesome--she printed out SO many fun activities for the kids to do--political buttons they could color as they please, maps to color in, etc.

Here's Thing 2 keeping track of the results on his handy dandy electoral college map (we've all been having so much fun with the interactive ones online speculating which states would go red or blue that to really color it in was pretty fun).

I'm on the laptop here, but watch how it moves around among everyone throughout the night--everyone was getting results and playing with maps and talking

and watching
and talking
and playing and singing songs

and doing crafts and watching results come in

and, of course, having light saber battles

and snuggling (the kids were playing so hard that they were getting sweaty and changing into lighter, cooler clothes)

Good buddies and hey, check it out! Thing 2 lost his first tooth! He's so excited that he lost his first tooth "on Election Night!" He keeps telling everyone!

Awesome.

And there it is. The official announcement. Surreal.

Historic.

Awesome.
Really exciting!

There was a sense of sincere reverence and respect at McCain's concession speech--it was lauded and applauded, even by those who didn't vote for him, which I think is pretty cool.

Taking it all in.

The new First Family.

Our new President. What a historic moment.

The aftermath the next day. :)