Seriously? I have to drive this?

I really didn't want a minivan. After ending up with one as a rental last year and seeing how nice it was to sit on the floor between the girls to help them eat lunch, I decided it might not be the worst thing ever. And after the trip to Spokane last Thanksgiving in which I got to spend most of the five hours leaning over my seat trying to catch the vomit before it got all over Hope, I decided it might be a pretty good thing to have a minivan so I could actually get to her in situations like that. But holy cow, I don't want to drive one. They're just such a soccer-mom thing. But here's our new car.

Who cares what the polls say

People in this country think we actually elect the president. How foolish. I just watched an hour-long debate about who is going to win the election. Do these people not remember the last two elections? George Bush lost the popular vote, and yet he's still the one residing in the White House. We don't elect the president; the electoral college elects the president. Yes, it would be nice if the process was a little more democratic, but it isn't. Living in a very blue state, I know my vote counts for nada in any presidental election. Washington State's 11 electoral votes will always go to the most liberal candidate. So why even bother? I will vote, because I have a responsibility to do so. But don't try to convince me that "my vote counts" or that just because the polls say McCain and Obama were neck and neck a few weeks ago, McCain has a shot in heck of winning. Obama already has 260 electoral votes that are a given- the states historically vote Deomocrat. There are 90-some votes that are up for grabs in the battleground states. Obama needs 10 of those to win. There is no way he won't get them. That's basically one state. All he needs is one of the 7 or 8 states to go his way. Even if McCain gets all the votes for the states that are strongly Republican, weakly Republican, exactly tied, and weakly Democrat, he still doesn't have enough votes to win. Obama will be president; it's a mathematical certainty. So can we waste air time on something else?

Neighborhood of Make Believe

Hope is sitting on the couch making up some story between her hat and a hair clip. They got married-she performed the whole ceremony. I asked her how she knew what people said at a wedding. Her reply? "I knew cause we watched that movie where the boy and girl got married outside in the snow". Ah yes, the episode of Friends that we watched about SIX MONTHS AGO!! So the make-believe continues and pretty soon the husband tells his wife he doesn't like her. So the hairclip that's the girl tells her mom that her husband said he didn't like her. The mom says, "I'm so sorry he said that to you. Do I need to kill him?" Looks like Hope has the basics figured out: when someone says something mean to you, tell your mom and she'll kill them.

The days are long, but the years are short.

Today actually didn't seem that long:)
I was just upstairs rocking Joel and had to fold his legs up so he'd fit. It's amazing that he's already that long- to go from a little tiny thing- ok, he was never technically tiny- but little enough that we'd have to really bend our arm up just to support his rump, and now he lays his head on my shoulder and his feet are hitting my legs?!? Holy cow, that's gone fast. And Hope and I went shopping for shoes today for her. She's already out of the little girl shoes and into regular girl shoes. HOW is that possible? Naomi is so much more fun now that she's grown up a little that I don't mind the fact that she's getting bigger, but I bet in a year when she's too big to comfortably sit on the arm of my chair and look at pictures on my computer or snuggle in front of me on the couch, I'll wish these stupid years would slow down for her too. I don't recall giving any of them permission to grow up.