Friday, October 26, 2012

My first and most likely only political post ever.

     I had the chance to attend the Denver Obama Rally on Wednesday October 24th with my best friend from High School and his family.  I have not seen G in over 20 years but we picked up like it had been 20 minutes.  It is so great to have somebody in your life that does not judge you and is family in all but blood.  So Kai and I drove through the night to get from Heber to Denver arriving just with the rush hour traffic, which I have to say was not as bad as I thought it was going to be but bad enough to remind me why I live and work in a small town.  Getting to his house I was greeted by his 2 lovely children B1 and B2, Kai was a little unsure of the situation given they had both a dog and a cat in the house but soon warmed up to G. and basically followed him or his mother-in-law around for the rest of the day.  We left the house and went to City Park at about 11 which ment we had 3-4 hours to wait till the President got there.  Lucky for us we were able to get in a pretty good location near the band and as long as other people did not have their cameras in the air we were able to see the podium where the President was going to be speaking. 
     The crowd was great, I felt like the turnout was huge but then again reference my small town statement above.  People were having fun, were polite and excited all in all it was a great scene that I have not really been close to since the mid to late 80's when we used to march against all sorts of things in Eugene while in high school or the rally I went to with Up House and Adverb when she was little for Jessie Jackson.  I will say the energy for Obama was more positive than it was at the Jackson Rally and that I feel Obama is a better speaker.   Just a personal opinion here. After about 2 hours of listening to a fairly good band and then some local politicians like the mayor of Denver and the Governor of Colorado we finally got to hear the President and I must say I think he is great, his message is positive he knows there is still work to be done and he is ready to take it on.  I will be voting for him based on what he has done over the last 4 years to help our country and what I hope he can do over the next 4 years.  I know that nobody is perfect and I would agree that he has his flaws but I truly think that he cares for the people of this country and will do what he can to make it better for the poor and the middle classes.  He is also for equal rights for all citizens which is a very important consideration for me and others I know and love, fair pay for women, and a women's right to make her on healthcare choices.  While I do not see his health plan being the best for the country that is only because I think we should have gotten the insurance companies totally out of the picture.  I do believe though that his health plan will provide care for millions that were not able to get it before and they can get preventative care and not only emergency care which is going to make it less expensive in the long run for all of us.  Ok so off of my soap box, here are some of the pictures from the rally.

Here is a link if you want to contribute to his re-election effort. 

https://donate.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/2012/amberletuli

B2 and some sea shells from Oregon

Kai waiting in line just to stand in a crowd and see Obama, for a autistic young man he did great !

B2 playing of the statues outside of the Natural History museum

Kai and G, new buddies for life.

My second oldest and dearest friend

A smiling Kai

B2 was getting tired 

and so was unknown girl next to her

Banner, so bright spots against a pretty dull sky


Lots of these signs present

Looking out at the boat house City Park, Denver

A couple of young Obama fans

Colorado Congresswoman

Security was everyplace

Colorado Governor

The people in the bleachers, I wish I had been one of them after driving all night I would have liked to have not had to stand for 4 hours.


Our President walking out to speak



speaking and geting the crowd excited





sometimes this was all I could see

M. G's lovely and gracious wife.

B2 I just can not get over how much she looks and acts like Adverb.

Denver Mayor

Dixon the Parrot that for some reason thought I was funny.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Patterned Paper Love

I always get so excited by a new class and as far as I can tell Shimelle's classes are the best ones online. I really do not think there has been one that I have taken that I did not learn something from. This new class is all about using and mixing patterned paper. Anybody that knows me knows that I love patterned paper more than just about anything except travel and my kids. So when the new class started today I was ready to jump right in. What do you know she used a pp line that I could only find two sheets of in my stash. What was I to do? Below is what I came up with. Thanks Shimelle for the inspiration. Sorry the last pic of the layout is blurry I will try and get a better one tomorrow if the rain and wind stop and I can take it out side.
 The 2 pieces that inspired the kit I put together.

   
The 12 sheets of PP that ended up in my homemade kit.


 E
 The finished Layout, used a sketch from the Page Maps 2 book for inspiration.