Voting Day

If you don't live in Texas, you probably had no idea that our primary elections were held today.  If you do live in Texas and didn't know that, please tell me where you live so I can move there to get away from the robo-calls, wasteful postal flyers and millions (not kidding!) of campaign signs that make our roadways look like they're covered in huge pieces of confetti.

When Ryan got home from work this afternoon, we loaded the kids up in the van to go vote.  Evan was only half paying attention when I told them where we were going.  His eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "We're going to get a boat?!?"  I wish, kid, I wish.


Despite the huge "I just got off work and I am grumpy" crowd, we managed to get in the building and  the kids did a great job of sticking close to us.  The boys accompanied Ryan to his voting booth and Sydney accompanied me to mine.  She's watched me vote before and understands the importance of it (hurray for the Voting badge for Girl Scouts!), and was convinced that I was going to let her turn the dials and push the buttons on the machine.

I informed her that she couldn't push the buttons until she was old enough to vote herself.  The election clerk overheard me and turned around to smile at us.  And then it dawned on me:  at the age of nine, Sydney is halfway to voting age.  Scary!

Anyway, all three kids got "I Voted" stickers and as crowded as it was, I'm glad we took them - modeling positive behavior and all that good stuff.

I just hope they weren't listening too closely when a woman promoting a candidate that I absolutely loathe approached us to encourage us to vote for said candidate.  My response to the woman was not exactly a model behavior.  ;)