ELECTION DAY

Posted by meli on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 in kidisms, life of play, social justices and controversial topics | No comments

My children are almost excited as I am about Election Day. If you ask them, they see no reason why people their age aren't allowed to vote. According to them 'We're part of this world, too. We should be able to pick who we want to take care of us, right?"

While they weren't allowed to legally vote in this election, they did throw their support to Obama, and quietly wispered their hope that everyone else in line was going to vote for him, too.

While in line, Larson was reading one of his new Magic Tree House books. He brought it with because, in his words "this voting thing will probably take a while". Once he was finished reading it, Owen quickly grabbed it, upside down of course, and started laughing hysterically. Apprently he opened up to a very funny section of the book. Haa, everyone in line got a good chuckle out of that. Rylan was quite content to hang by myside and take it all in. He knew the enormity of the day, of the outcome, and he was just as in awe as I was.

At some point I stepped in a glob of paint - where it came from, I have no idea. It was all over the bottom of my shoe, shoved up into the arch and everything. Ugh. Critical Thinking to the rescue ... "Mom, go stick your shoe in that puddle over there". Great idea! It worked to get some of it off. Rylan advised that I use one of the pinecone to scrape of the thick glob. What another great idea. It actually worked to get most of it off, and then back to the puddle I went to rinse off the rest. Ahhh, my thoughtful children saved the sidewalk from becoming speckled with white paint.

Once up to the machine, all three of them were eager to be involved. Rylan and Owen went with dad, and Larson came with me. He was reading the screen right along with me, and let out an excited gasp when he finally got to Obama/Biden. "There he is, Mom, there he is, push that one". I did. He and I went through the rest of the ballot, and then very carefully looked over the review screen. He checked, double checked, and then triple checked to make sure that it was infact OBAMA we were voting for. "You never know when those machines might mess up, so it's always best to look a lot of times, Mom". He's absolutely right! We hit the cast ballot button, smiled, gave eachother a fist bump, and went to wait outside with the other two.

What a wonderful process to share with them.

The rest of the afternoon, after Dad had to return to work, was spent making election day cookies (all three of them helped with ingredient ideas (we didn't use a recipe), measurements, blending, seperating into even balls, and dehydrating), talking about past presidents, talking about the changes we hope come to this country when and if Obama becomes elected, and coloring our own US Flags.

We don't have tv programming in the house, so we watched the election coverage through cnn/live online. I had printed out a US map for us to color the states either red or blue as they were called, but in the excitement I completely forgot about that. Hmmph! Will have to remember to use that in another 4 years, haha. As soon as Obama was the projected winner, they all let out a squeal of excitement. "We DID it! WE DID IT"!!!

An absolutely amazing night in our country's history, and my children were able to be a part of it.