Election Day.

This morning I woke up as giddy as Chris on Opening Day (that is really giddy).
It's Election Day!

The problem here is that I'm a nerd. My favorite show as a teenager was the West Wing. I mean, from like age 12 to 19, I watched every episode. It was on Wednesday nights, and I would have my mom record it on VHS so I could watch it after my church youth group. I read presidential biographies in jr high. At 18 I was a senior in high school and I voted in my first presidential election. There were probably dances and sports games to be excited about, but my excitement over voting leaves a distinct memory, as does my sparkly brown and pink "Vote" t-shirt (oh, dear). I was a political science minor in college up until my last semester. I had to make a choice: drop my minor and graduate before giving birth, or keep it and try to finish after having my baby. I 100% made the right choice; it would have been an impossible challenge to finish after having Carly. But it was painful. My political science classes were some of my very favorite classes I took. And on our 5th anniversary, Chris knew me well enough to take me to the Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, and it was TOTALLY AWESOME.

That, my friends, is how big of a nerd I am.

So I woke up thinking about red states and blue states and the beauty of it all. Four years ago during the election I followed it closely and kept up on all the details. This time around I feel like I have so many mouths to feed and bums to wipe and brains to stimulate that I just haven't made it a priority. Not to mention the excess negativity and hatred that exists in the Facebook world . . . it makes you not want to even get involved. But it is now that I should care more than ever. In the coming years there will be houses to buy, kids entering the public school system, then heading off to college, and before I know it retirement is right around the corner. There is a lot of life yet to be lived, and the leaders we elect make an impact on how that life is going to play out.

This election season has brought something else out in me: the desire to share with my kids things I feel passionate about. Its amazing to me the things said on Facebook, snide remarks, negative comments, hostility, and name-calling. These things are coming from adults. That is not educated political discussion; that is ignorant jabbering. I would never want my child calling anyone stupid or worthless or the "cause of all our problems", so why would I say those things about someone? I want to teach kids to speak kindly about everyone, even people they disagree with. They will feel one way or the other about political subjects, and they should state what they believe, and defend it, but also hear the other side, and respect it. I want to teach them to appreciate our government and the President of the United States, regardless of his/her party. It is a beautiful thing, how the Founders took aspects from existing governments and combined them and invented some new things, and created this democracy. It is obviously not perfect, but it is an amazing system with checks and balances so it is not just one person to blame, and so we are all, more or less, represented as a whole. And I want to teach my kids that they are lucky to live where they do. Because people living in so many other countries don't ever get the chance to wear an "I Voted" sticker.

All that being said, I decided to treat Election Day like a bit of a holiday.

We all wore red, white, and blue. Probably to a fault. People at library story time probably thought we were over-the-top. Which, I suppose, we were.

I made a few little ballots for Carly to vote on things throughout the day. She looked completely confused at breakfast, but jumped right in and colored her box at lunch time.

I took Carly to vote with me. A friend came over to watch the twins, and would have happily watched Carly too, but I wanted to take her. I thought it would be a learning opportunity, a chance for her to see what I was talking about first-hand. And it was. She was initially very interested and excited, but I think her excitement was feeding off of mine, because by the time I was a third of the way through my ballot she was asking "When are we going to vote?" "This is voting," I told her. She wasn't impressed. I got to the last question, which was a referendum asking about the sale of a golf course (what?), so I let her pick which way I was going to vote, and let her fill out the ballot. She was happy she got to vote, and she even got a highly-trendy "I Voted" sticker. But she was more interested in the nearby playground. I suppose she is 3. I'll take what I can get.

We decorated Election Day cookies. The original plan was for bipartisan cookies, but Obama's logo was a bit too complicated for my non-existent decorating skills.

Tonight when Chris manages to come home, we'll color Electoral College maps and then put the kids to bed, and I'll stay up and watch returns for as long as I can stand it. But isn't it always fun to wake up the next morning and see what news awaits you? Its like Christmas morning. Almost. 

I love Election Day. These campaigns go on for months (or, heaven help us, years) and we are bombarded by facts and fiction, television ads and yard signs. It is the system doing exactly what it was designed to do, but it can be too much. But Election Day isn't about campaigns. It is the end-result; it is the destination. It is a whole nation of people going to cast their votes, going to put in their two cents. And at the end of the day when all the votes are counted, we have ourselves a new or re-elected president. There are no violent overthrows, no White House raids. Just democracy at work.

[with "Righty" the Elephant.]

Its a beautiful thing.

Happy Election Day.
xoxo.